My Noro hat, a free-form recipe

Remember that hat?



Well, some of you had noticed it, and I have since regularly received queries for the pattern.
As I have no picture of my latest project, and nothing else to write about (hhhem), I thought that today was the perfect day (sooo warm and sunny) to offer you a recipe for my One Skein Noro Spiral Hat. Maybe the aussies will appreciate it. And yes, this is a very bad name. Any ideas for a better one?

INGREDIENTS
- One skein of Noro Kureyon. lovely.

- Needles. circular, double pointed... your choice, but usable to knit circularly. Of course I don't remember the number. Probably the size recommended on the ball band, or on other Noro patterns. Let's see (google, google...) I guesstimate size US7, 4,5mm. Of course I noted it on a notebook's page. Yes, but which one? Where is it? Oh! I just found this information...on my blog. I noted 5.5mm (= US9) but was uncertain. Beware!

PRELUDE
Cast-on 80 stitches. I used longtail cast-on. I almost always do. I am european, you know? Beware though: I have a BIG head, and my hat does not compress my head the tiny bit. Even slightly felted after two winters of moderate use and washing. It is big too. So you may choose to reduce the cast-on stitches by any multiple of 8 that you wish.

Join in the round. You can eventually do a small exchange dance between the first and last of your stitches to perfect the join, but I doubt very much i did this in my beginner days. I rarely do it now either. On a hat, where you have great chance to have that particular bit of knitting sitting in the middle of your forehead, I use the tail of my cast-on to close the gap and finish up perfectly the join. You may add a marker here if you dislike the looking-for-the-end-of-the-thread to recognize-the-beginning-of-my-row game.

If you want a non-curly border, rib on for a few rows. I did a 2x2 ribbing for 6 rows, but it is not my favourite part of this hat, and I would probably change this IF I do it again. I let you free here to use your imagination, or declare that you like my border and use it. Please, please tell me if you invent a great border for this hat. I would like to know.

Knit one row, remove the marker (or let it here, but it won't really help you unless you rewrite my pattern to include him in the explanations. Which is totally possible and may even be easy. But I won't do that today, thank you.)

FUGUE
Here starts my second favourite part of the hat:

* (yo, k6, k2tog) repeat until you meet a yarnover, then:
knit one row, until you meet a knitted yarnover. stop just before him, then go to *

repeat those two row until the hat seems "deep enough" for your liking. Mine is a bit too deep, so I would be very ill-come to give you some advice. For your information, I started my crow decreases at 15 cm high (google, google, about 6").

FINAL
And here begins that glorious best part of that hat. The part that makes me so happy that I would gladly have to bow to strangers, just so that they can see the top of my head.

(yo, k5, k3tog) repeat until you meet a yarnover
knit one round until you meet a knitted yarnover, stop in front of him.
(yo, k4, k3tog) repeat until you meet a yarnover
knit one round until you meet a knitted yarnover, stop in front of him.
(yo, k3, k3tog) repeat until you meet a yarnover
knit one round until you meet a knitted yarnover, stop in front of him.
(yo, k2, k3tog) repeat until you meet a yarnover
knit one round until you meet a knitted yarnover, stop in front of him.
(yo, k1, k3tog) repeat until you meet a yarnover
knit one round until you meet a knitted yarnover, stop in front of him.
(yo, k3tog) repeat until you meet a yarnover
knit one round until you meet a knitted yarnover, stop in front of him.

k2tog all around.

Cast-off snugly in the round (break the yarn and mimik a last cast-off stitch around the first cast-off stitch to end with a perfect circle). If you'ld rather not have a hole in the top of your hat, or if you feel insecure about my casting off in the round, you can simply thread through the remaining stitches once or twice and pull tightly. But you are lousy. (not really)

PS
I know, I know. This is a wordy recipe, full of "do as you wish" and strangely written. But hey, you can always ask me to explain it better. You can. I will try my best to answer quickly and clearly. I'll try, really.

Happy knitting.


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Publié en français, italien et espagnol