Today I’d like to show you how to make a beanie with knitting. The most important thing is to make sure you have a 16 inch needle, and the size will be determined by the type of yarn you use. But the length definitely needs to be about 16 inches from point to point.
This length of a needle will work for a six-month-old up to an adult size beanie. If the beanie is for a baby that’s a preemie or younger than six months, you will need a shorter needle, and those are can sometimes be harder to come by. Once you have your pattern for your beanie and all of your materials, you’ll go ahead and get started with a cast on.
Getting Started
Most beanies are done from the bottom or this portion here, and then knitted upwards. Very few are done from the top down. Cast on all of your stitches on your 16 inch needle, and then place a ring marker on your right-hand needle. Before casting on, make sure that you know the size of a hat that you’d like to make. What you should do is make a gauge swatch so you know how many stitches per inch that you’ll get with your knitted fabric using the yarn and needles that you’ve chosen. Also you should measure the head of the recipient. For example, if the recipient’s head is 22 inches and you are getting 3 stitches per inch on your gauge swatch, you should subtract 2 inches from the head size. So that’s 22 minus 2 is 20. Then 20 times 3, your stitches per inch, equals 60. So you’ll cast on 60 stitches.
Once you’ve finished casting on, making sure to leave your tail long enough to weave in later, you’ll go ahead and place your ring marker on your right- hand needle before connecting the stitches. Make sure that the part that looks like a braid, from your cast on, is all along the middle and doesn’t come up and over the needle like this. This would cause you to make a figure 8, also called a mobius, and that’s the worst thing you could do, because that could never be a hat. So make sure that you don’t have any twists and the little part that looks like a braid is along the inside.
Putting It All Together
Now we’re ready to connect. So we will just connect between the first and the last stitches that were cast on. With our working yarn here, attached to the ball, we’ll go ahead and just knit into the first stitch cast on. For your first round you can use a combination of knits and pearls. If you like to make ribbing or seed stitch, then that will make a border like this on your hat. If you just use the knit stitch all along, for the whole hat, you’ll end up with a border that rolls automatically. You don’t need to do anything special. It will just happen by using the knit stitch.
Once you have knitted 4.5 to 5.5 inches, depending on the size of the person you’re making the hat for, approximately 4.5 if it’s a baby or a child, and about 5.5 for a larger adult, then you will start to decrease. Make sure that you finish a round, which will be where you’ve placed your marker. Then you’ll go ahead and start your decreases.
Decreases & Final Product
Decreases are determined by the number of stitches that you’ve cast on. For example, if you’ve cast on 80 stitches, that would be 10 groups of 8 stitches. So for your decreases, within each group of 8 stitches, you’ll do knit 6 and then knit 2 together, equaling 8 stitches. So each 8 stitches will decrease to 7 stitches, so that you have only 70 stitches after one decrease round.
Now you have a hat completed at about 5.5 inches, and we’re at our ring marker, which is the end of the round. We’re going to make our first decrease round. So I’m going to go ahead and knit 6, and then decrease by knitting 2 together. So we know have 7 stitches instead of 8 in that first group. Once you’ve completed your first decrease round, which was the knit 6, knit 2 together, for 80 stitches cast on, the next decrease round will be knit 5, knit 2 together. You’ll repeat that all the way around until you come to your marker again. Then the following row will be knit 4, knit 2 together, and so on. The last decrease round will be knit 2 together, all the way around. Once you’ve completed that, you will break your yarn, leaving approximately 3 to 4 inches, and use your darning needle to pull the tail of yarn through all of the remaining stitches and cinch up the top of your hat.
This resource was created by BeaniesForMen.net where you can find information about the best beanies for men to where on a daily basis.