No-one does it better than Davina from SheepandStitch.com, in this second part of the video she shows you how to finish what she started in Part 1 of the tutorial. In this video she decreases all the way from 44 to 6 stitches, with a couple of grunts for good measure.
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Transcribed text from the video
Hello and welcome to Part Two of How to Knit a Big Hat. I'm Davina of Sheepandstitch. comand I'm going to walk you through the whole process. Now, if you want to start knitting from the very beginning, then click on Part One right at the bottom.
And if you've already knit up to Part One and you're ready to keep decreasing your hat, then let’s keep knitting. So you’ve done your first row of decrease and now we're at the end. So I'm going to knit two together to finish off that first row of decrease. Alright, so there we go. Let's put this stitch marker back on. And so now we should have 33 stitches on our row. So we've decreased from 44 to 33. So we've decreased 11 stitches. Now what we're going to do is knit one round even. So let's do that. Just knit and knit and yet another knit and we'll just knit the whole round even.
And this is what we're going to be doing for our second decrease row. We're going to do one row of decrease and then one row of knitting. Now you might notice that your stitches are spread out now because you’ve decreased so many stitches.
So you might be pulling at them to make the right needle meet the stitches on your left needle, and knitting them might be a bit ofan effort. That's why we are going to start moving on to our double pointed needles on our next decrease row. And the double pointed needles are a way for us to knit in the round with a fewer number of stitches. Now you'll notice that if we continue decreasing down to 22 stitches, our stitches are really going to be stretched out on the circular needle. And when we decrease even further to 11 stitches - I mean how are we possibly going to be able to knit those on the circular needle.
Well, that's exactly why we need the double pointed needles. And you'll see how they come in handy in just a little bit when we migrate all of our stitches onto them. But for now, I hope you can see that we can't knit all of these stitches. We can't decrease all of them on our circular needles because we would be stretching and pulling and it would be impossible. We would end up throwing our knitting down in frustration and never finishing our hat, and that would be really, really sad.
So we don’t want that to happen. That's why we've got our double pointed needles. So we are nearly at the end of our one knit round. And we've got one stitch left. Let's knit this puppy up. Here we go.
Alright, so now we are ready to move on to our doublepointed needles. So let's get these little things out. So what we're going to do is we are actually going to migrate all of our stitches onto these needles. So I'm going to take mys titch marker off and I'm going to put, let's say, eight stitches onto this one needle - our first double pointed needle. So one, two and we're picking them up from our left side, our left hand needle. And we're just going to work our way across the whole circular needle until we've picked up all the stitches. So we've got six, seven, I'm going to say eight on each needle. So let's take our second double pointed needle and let's put eight stitches onto them.
Oops, four, five, six, seven, eight, so I hope you'redoing this along with me or you're not just staring at me counting because that can't be very interesting. And this is pretty much our last leg of the journey before we finish off our hat. So this is pretty exciting. This means we're near the end. So if this is freaking you out, don’t let it freak you out. Take a deep breath. We will do this together. It's a little bit weird, a little bit alien at first, but knitting with double pointed needles will really come in handy later on when you want to knit any kind of project in the round. When you're knitting hats or socks, you're going to need to knit with double pointed needles. So this is a really, really great skill to have.
So here we go. Alright, so all of our stitches are off our circular needle. Look at that! No more stitches on our circular needles. So this is where we say good bye to our circular needles and hello to our double pointed needles. Alright, so now you can see all of our stitches have been migrated to our double pointed needles. Cool. So we also have one other needle and this is going to be the needle that stays in our right hand. When we're knitting on our circular needles or on flat needles, the needle in our right hand is the one that does all of the knitting. It's the one that goes into the stitches and brings in a new stitch from our working yarn, and our needle in our left hand is static. It's kind of passive. It just sits there and holds all of our stitches waiting to be knit up. So you can think of the double pointed needles as that left needle. It's just holding all the stitches. It's not really doing anything. Our right hand needle is the one that is knitting and purling and doing all the work. So this is our passive needle except that it's been spread out over four needles rather than one long needle. Okay, so I hope that makes sense.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put my stitch marker here. This marks the beginning of our round except that, you know, this is going to fall off really easily. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to knit into this stitch first and move it onto this needle so that we can keep our marker secure. Alright, so if that doesn’t really make sense, I'm just going to show you what I mean. Let's look at round three of our decrease. Round three says we need to knit one and knit two together to the end. So we're going to do that. We're just going to use our right hand needle and knit into this double pointed needle just like that. It's a little bit of a needle party in here. There are a lot of needles and we're going to knit one. So I'm going to tug it a little bit to make sure it's tight. And rather than keep it on this needle, I'm going to move it over to my right hand needle like this because I want to keep my stitch marker secure. I don’t want it to fall off. So now it's bracketed by these two needles. Now, this needle is really full of stitches. So I'm just going to bring over one stitch to the needle right behind it. And you can do that. You can play with the needles or play with the stitches and move them around. It doesn’t really matter where your stitches are on the needle. It doesn’t even matter if you have eight on each needle. As long as they fit on the needles, you're golden. Alright, so let's move on. Knit one, knit two together. So let's do that. We did ourknit stitch right here and now we're just going to knit two together. Here we go and knit two. There we are. And I'm going to tug it a little bit and make sure it's tight. We're going to do that decrease again. So knit one, and knit two together. Here we go. And we are going to do that one more time, knit one and we don’t have two stitches to knit together. So I'm going to steal one from the needlebehind. Here we go. Just take that off and I'm going to keep on knitting. Knit thesetwo stitches together like this. So now we have just finished knitting all the stitches on one double pointed needle and now I have a new needle to knit with. So let's keep goingaround the round. I just did a knit two together. So now I'm going to do a knit one. And we'rejust going to tug that. Whenever there is a join with two needles, I like to make sure it's tight, and knit two together. Here we go. Knit one, and knit two together. I can see we're going to have to steal Oh no, we'renot going to have to steal a stitch. We're good because this is a knit stitch, so knit one and let's turn it again and do a knit two together on this needle. So here we go,knit two together. Some of your stitches may be a little tight and that's okay. It's natural to be a little bit tighter than usual when you're knitting with double pointed needles because you don’t want your stitches to fall off any of the needles. Now that means that when we're coming back and doing our knit round, we may have to grunt a little bit just to get our needle into the stitches because they're going to a bit on the tight side. Okay, and knit one. Now let's -- I think we've got one more. Yup, we've got one more needle to do. And I just did a knit one. So I'm going to do a knit two together here. So I hope this is making sense and it's not too hard. It's a little bit of hand gymnastics, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be able to knit so many awesome things using double pointed needles - like more hats, some socks,wrist warmers, things like that. Anything that is circular and uses a small number of stitches. So this is our last knit two together. Cool, alright. Now we have finished our first round of decreases on double pointed needles. Good job! So now we can knit one row even, which is going to be pretty darn easy. So I'm going to flip my marker and just keep on knitting. So now on this row, we don’t have to do any knit two together. It's nothing fancy like that. We're just going to knit this puppy off. So now you can see that we have significantly decreased our stitches. When we first started our stitches were all over these needles. They were going to fall off, and now they are comfortably sitting on our needles because we have decreased. Really cool, huh?
So now we're going to knit one row even and then we're going to move on to our next decrease row. So meet me back here when you’ve knit one row even and we will do the next decrease row together. Alright, so now I've got - I've almost got my knit stitches done.
I'm working on the last stitch of my knit round. Here we go. So, we have just finished the plain knit round and now we're going to move on to round five of our decrease. Now round five is just knitting two together all the way around, which is pretty awesome. That means we're going to be doing quite a lot of decreases. So, I'm going to -- I'm going to move -- what am I going to do? I am going to steal. I'm going to steal a stitch from this needle.
And I'm going to knit two together. Alright, so knit two together, there we go. Alright and now I've got my free needle here. So now we're going to knit two together across this whole round and we're going to decrease 11 stitches. You know, we're almost done. After doing this decrease round, we're going to do yet one more decrease round and then we're done. We are seriously almost done knitting our hat! And then you can either wear your hat and prance around and look in the mirror and make funny faces and show all your friends.
Or you can sit down and make a pom pom and then do all of the above. But can you believe how fast this went by? I mean, I'm amazed. We are nearly done this hat. Holy moley. Alright, so let's focus on the task at hand, which is knitting two together all the way across. Now I've only got one stitch here, so I'm going to steal another stitch from the needle behind so I can knit these two together. And this is just looking like a weird needle party. There is just too many needles around,huh? That's what I mean when I say that we're going to need to grunt a little bit when we move on because we're knitting quite tightly.
And that's natural because you don’t want these stitches to fall of, but that means that when you are knitting them on the next round, they're going to be really hard to get your needles into. So you're going to have to grunt a little bit, like those tennis players. You know, it's like if you grunt then somehow you can hit the ball harder. Same thing with knitting. You grunt a little bit then maybe you can get your needle in there. Okay, so let's - what did I just do now? That's weird. What in the world did I just do? Alright, I'm going to move these two here and just knit them together. I think that was what I was trying to do but I -- okay. Let's knit these together and then we are on our last needle. Okay and knit two, there we go and knit two. So now we have finished our third decrease row.
Awesome. We're back at our stitch marker, so let's move our stitch marker over and we're on our last decrease row. Holy crap! And what are we doing? We are going to knit two together to the end and then knit one. So basically the exact same thing that wejust did on this row except we're going to have one odd stitch out, so we're going to knit that little stitch instead of knitting it together with anything. So again, steal one stitch from the needle behind me and I'm going to knit this up. And this is so messy. Look at all these needles protruding at weird angles. We're going to knit two together andthis little guy only has one stitch on the needle. So we're going to have to take one from the needle behind this. And knit one, I'm goingto turn that over, knit these two together. And this is looking like such a mess, buttrust me, we're going to end with an awesome product. Okay, so knit two together and lookhow many stitches we've decreased! I mean, we're going to have six stitches when we'redone. From 44 stitches all the way to 6 stitches. Crazy huh? Okay, knit two together, and knittwo together here. So, you can practice your grunt. Practice your grunt while you're knitting. Your friends are probably going to think what is she doing in here? Why is she grunting?What is going on? And you'll be like, I'm just knitting. Nobiggie. I'm just knitting. What else? Alright and oh man, okay, this is going to be a toughone. Oh, okay and knit okay. So now, we're at our last stitch and we're just going toknit this guy. Something funky happened here. Alright and we're just going to knit thisguy. And woohoo! We are done. We are done, so I'm going to take this stitch marker offbecause we don’t need this anymore. And to make this less messy, I'm going to putthese stitches on one needle. We're going to consolidate our needles because there are so many of them. And again we can just move these stitches around. It really doesn’t matter. So here we go. It'll make our lives a little bit easier if I eliminate two needles. Alright, so now we are going to get our scissors out and we're going to cut off our tail end and weave it into these stitches. I'm going to leave maybe like this much, like six, or like 10 inches. And we're going to cut it off. And now we're going to weave this tail end into our stitches to make sure they are secure. So I'm going to pull this little lone stitch onto this needle. So we're only dealing with two needles now. Okay, not a huge bundle of needles. Alright,look at our hat, I mean, before we weave in, I just want you to admire this hat. You made a hat, isn’t that insane? Holey moley, you made a hat. Alright, I'm so proud of you and all of that needle wrangling and the grunting that you put up with resulted in this. I mean,I think it's worth it. I think it's so worth it. Alright, so now we've got our tail end,we've got two needles and our three stitches spread on each needle. And we're going to weave it in. So I'm going to take my tail end and just put it over my needle like this and take my stitch and pull it over. Pull it over my tail end and I'm going to do that again with this second stitch. I'm going to pull it over and my last stitch,I'm going to pull it over like that. And then I'm going to pull my tail end through. I'm weaving in the tail end and basically putting it through these stitches. Now if you have a needle that you want to use, that's fine too.
You can use a needle to weave them in,I'm just doing it this way because I don’t have a needle with me right now. Alright, so we'll do that on the other side. We're going to take our stitch and move itover the tail end like this and move it over the tail end again and move it over. And then we're going to pull through. Alright, so look at that. Now our stitches are secure. They're on our little tail end but we don’t want this tail end protruding because that's kind of weird and funky. So we're going to take one of our double pointed needles and we're going to put it inside of our hat and come out through the top and we're going to take our tail end, wrap it around a couple of times. We're going to push it inside to the wrongside of our hat. Once you've got a grip on it, just pull it through. Alright, and pulltight so it looks kind of nice at the top like this. So it looks pretty tight, it lookseven and then we're going to turn our hat inside out and we're still holding onto thattail end. So let's get that hat inside out and let's pull it again so it's tight. And we're going to take our double pointed – Whoa! that just flew over there. That was a needle. Okay, dangerous activity, knitting. Alright, we're going to take our double pointed needle and we're going to weave in this tail end into the back side of our stitches. So I'm just going to put a needle through one of these stitches and I'm going to weavethis tail end through it. Like that. Now if you have a needle, a tapestry needle, youcan use that as well, no problem. That's probably going to be a little bit easier than doing this but if you don’t have a needle handy, you can always use any of your double pointedneedles. So, I'm going to do the same thing to weave it in like that and you can do that a few times. You can do that as many times as you'd like to make sure that your tail end is secure and your hat isn’t going to unravel. That would be a nightmare. So weave it in four, five, six times. Enough to make you feel like this tail end is secure. So here we go. Alright, I'm going to do that maybe what, four times? Let's do it one more time. So let's see where our hole is. It's probably about here, this is where we pulled it through. So let's just do one more. Let's weave it in one more time just to be sure it doesn’t unravel. And alright, here we go. So I think we are all weaved in. We're pretty good. Let's look at our good side. That looks pretty secure. Alright, so let's just snip it off, there we go. So, oops, there we go. So, let's look at our finished product and admire it and oh and ah and you can go and show your friends and your family and they will be so impressed. Wow, look at that. That is our hat. Wohoo! Let's get the full effect.
Looking pretty good. I like it, I like it. Alright, now if you want to make a pom pom, a cute little pompom, then join me, we're going to do that next. If you just want to wear this as it is, then go ahead. Go and prance around init, keep warm. You made this, go and enjoy it. Alright guys, I hope you enjoyed wearing your Big Hat.
NEXT UP...POM POM!
I hope you had lot of fun looking in the mirror and wearing it and showing all of your friends because I know, I sure did. I love wearing my Big Hat. But I also noticed that it's missing a pom pom. Something like this to be attached to out hat. A little celebratory, merry little pom pom. So why don’t we make one? This is where our cardboard comes in. Something like this is totally fine or something even bigger is awesome as well. So what we're going to do is we're going to get our measuring tape and we're going to measure out about 3. 5 or 3. 75 inches into our cardboard edge,so three, 3. 5 or 3. 75. And we're going to make a little square ou tof it and we're going to connect these little dots here. So we have a square that is about 3. 75 inches in length. Alright, so something like this. And from here we're just going to draw a circle. Now you can sort of eyeball it, that's what I do. Eyeball a circle. That's a fairly decent circle. Alright, and then in the center, we're going to draw another little circle. That's about one inch wide. So something like that. So let's measure it and yeah, that's about one inch. So we're going to cut out the bigger circle and cut out the little circle inside. And we're going to do another one. So after you cut out one circle, place that over on this side of your cardboard and cut out another one. So we'll have two little donut shaped circles. Now, if you don’t want to do this or you think this is a drag, you can find a household object like a tin that's about the same size, that's about 3. 5 inches or 3. 75 inches and just place it over your cardboard like that and trace it. Alright, just trace it like that. And then, use something like a bottle cap, place it in the center and trace that as wellso that you’ve got a donut shape. And you can cut that out as well and cut two of these circle donut shaped cardboard things. Alright, so once you’ve done that, you will have something like this: two little cardboard donuts, and that's awesome. That's what we're going to use to make our pom pom. So we're going to put them together like this, likea little donut sandwich or like a bagel sandwich. And then we're going to cut a slit into itlike this. Then we're going to wrap our yarn around our donut to make our pom pom. So, where is our yarn? Here we go. We are going to take the end of our yarn. Let's find our yarn first and then we are going to take our yarn, put it through the hole here, wrap it around. And with our slit, we're going to wrap the yarn around our donut like this.
So the slit really helps get the yarn in there. And we'regoing to go around the whole donut shape. And the more wraps that you do, the bigger and fluffier and denser your pompom is going to be. If you want a thin, fairly spare pom pom, then wrap it around less times. If you want a super fluffy, super dense pom pom, then wrap it around a lot of times. So I'm going to go for a medium sized pom pom. I'm going to wrap it around so that I don’t see any cardboard underneath. And here we go. You can see it's going pretty fast. So do that all the way around until you reach the end. And then meet me back here and we will finish our pompom together. So now we've wrapped up our little cardboard donut with our yarn, and it's pretty dense like this and our two slits are still showing which is great. Now it doesn’t really matter if they are there. You can always wrap a couple of times more just to even it out, make sure it's really full. So now we are ready to cut our pom pom open. So, what we're going to do is you're going to cut off a few inches here, like this, and a really sharp pairs of scissors really helps. So I'm going to get my super sharp scissors, these ones right here out, and from our ball of yarn, we're going to cut off maybe like 10 inches or 15 inches, something like this. And we're going to put that aside for now. We're going to use that later. And with our super sharp scissors, we're going to cut into our pompom. Now this is our yarn thread where we cut off just now. So we're going to hold onto that, make sure it doesn’t flop around. And then we're going to slip our scissors in between these two cardboards, these cardboard donut things that we made.
And we're going to cut through our loops that we made with our yarn. So I'm going to slip my scissor right into this cardboard and I'm going to start cutting. And the sharper your scissors are, the easier this is going to be. If you’ve got dull scissors, it may be a little bit harder but it will be okay. So try to make sure that these threads, as you cut them, don’t leave your doughnut. They are still sitting there like this. Handle it carefully and we're going to cut all the way around. Alright, awesome, so it's going to look something like this. And with the yarn that we just cut off, we're going to slide it in between our cardboard. So just like this. I'm going to slip it through like that. There we go. Let's make it even like this, and now we're going to tie a knot. So this is to make sure this is really to securing our pompom. Make sure it doesn’t fall apart. So, let me see under.
Alright, there we go. So I'm going to tie a knot like this in between our cardboard and make sure it's super tight, super, super tight. So pull, pull, pull, pull, pull and then I'm going to tie another knot. So I don’t want to get outside of the cardboard. I want to get in between the cardboard. So I'm going to move it over a little bit. And I'll tie another knot and then I'll pull through really,really tight, tight, tight, tight. Alright, and then just to be super secure, I'm going to tie a third knot, but I'm going to do it on the other side. So I just rotated my pompom a little bit. I'm going to do another knot and I'm going to pull really tight.
Alright,so I think now we're ready to release our pom pom from its cardboard holders. So I'm going to pull this cardboard donut off. There we go. And we'll put that aside. Then I'll pull the other side off, yeah. So here is our pompom. Now our pom pom is not super,super dense but I think it's okay. It's workable, it's manageable. So we've got these loose threads here. This is what we used to tie our knot with. Let's find the joins. So here is the join, and there we go. Here is our pom pom, pretty cool, huh?
So you can – oops- you can fluff it up a little bit and make it look fresh. And cut off any long uneven threads like this obvious guy over here. Let's get our scissors. Let me cut that one off, and there we go. You can always trim your pom pom to the shape that you want. So,I'm noticing some areas are a little bit jagged, so I'm going to take my scissors and give it a little bit of a haircut here. And you can see some of the pom pom fluff falling down but, this is pretty much it. This is our pom pom. Pretty cool huh? So, once you’ve given it a trim and you like the way it looks and you fluff it up a little bit. I mean how cute is this. This is so adorable. I love it. I absolutely love it. I love my pom pom. Alright, so you can trim all day to be honest. It's a little bit addictive but once you’ve figured out, this is my pompom. I'm ready to put on my hat. Then we are going to get our hat back out and I'm going to sweep away some of this pompom hair over here, get that out of our way. And I'm going to bring our hat back right here and we're going to attach our pom pom right to the top of our hat. So, we're going to bring out our tapestry needle right now and then we're going to thread these two threads here onto our tapestry needle. So I'm going to cut the thread so it's even,just easier to work with.
There we go. And I'm going to thread these two yarns onto my tapestry needle and this may require a little bit of concentration because they are both pretty thick but, well hey, there we go, not too hard. So two of my threads are on my tapestry needle and I'm going to put my needle through into the top of my hat right here, into that little hole.
And I'm just going to pull it through from within inside that hat. And ta-da! Look at that. Holey moley! There is our finished hat. This is what it's going to look like. I love it. It's so cute. Just look at that, whoa. So let's secure our pom pom so it doesn’t fall out. So I've turned the hat inside out. Here are our two threads.
And I'm going to pull the threads like this and I'm going to make a knot inside. Make a nice tight knot. And then I'm going to weave these two threads into the hat, into the little stitches in our hat. So now that I've got a needle it's going to be a little easier to do. Here we go. If you don’t have a needle, that's okay. You can use your double pointed needles or your other circular needles and work it through. But having a tapestry needle really helps.
So here we go. I'm just threading my tapestry needle through some of these stitches over here. And a couple times is pretty, pretty good. There we go, I think that's my fourth weave through and we'll do that for the other side as well. So once you’ve done that,you can snip off the ends here to make it nice and even and then your hat is ready to wear. I mean, look at this. Isn’t that incredible?This is your finished Big Hat. This is so exciting.
This is like a little tail, I love it. Alright, so here you are. This is your finished hat and you can fluff up the pompom a little bit. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and I hope you enjoy your big hat. Thank you so much for watching this video. I hope you enjoyed it and if you did, then please like it and leave a comment below along with any questions you have.
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