Bottom up super simple hat - making it without a pattern

You need:

A hat yarn you really like. It can be bulky or worsted weight yarn. If it's bulky yarn, you need about 100 to 120 yards. If it's worsted weight you need 130 to 150 yards.
A circular needle thick enough to work with your yarn. It should give a size on the ball band of the yarn. If not, ask a saleslady for help. The circular needle should be 16 inches long. This is very important.
A ring marker big enough to fit on the needle.
A measuring tape.
Scissors - just for a little while at the end.
Yarn sewing needle with a really big eye - just at the end.

and you need a test piece, also known as gauge swatch:
Cast on twenty stitches and knit in stockinette (knit the front and purl the back) for ten rows. If you don't like the way it feels, use a bigger needle to make it softer and a smaller needle to make it thicker. When you do like how it feels, continue on from there and make your ten rows. Now measure how wide the piece is. Try not to stretch it or scrunch it. How wide is it?

Divide the width in inches into the number of stitches (be sure you really have 20). That tells you how many stitches make an inch. This is a very important number.

Example: My twenty stitch piece measured 5 inches. 20 divided by 5 is 4. It takes me four stitches to make an inch with this yarn and these needles. ( If I change yarn or change needles, this number might not be the same.) This is called gauge when people write patterns. We say the gauge is (in this case) 4 stitches per inch.

Design the hat
Measure around your head about where you want the hat to end. You will want to make the hat the same size as your head because knitting stretches a little, so it will fit pretty closely and not come off or slide down on your nose. So take the number of inches that your head is and multiply that by how many stitches it takes to make an inch. That tells you how many to cast on.

Example: My head is 22 1/2 inches around about where I would wear a hat (and yes, that's small for an adult.). I multiply 22.5 times 4 and get 90 stitches. We call that the number of cast on stitches.

Start the hat
Cast on the number of stitches you got when you multiplied your hat size by your gauge. Count them carefully. When you get to the end of the casting on, put a ring marker on the needle and instead of turning around and using your empty needle as the right hand needle, just keep on going around. Keep knitting around and around. Every time you get back to the ring marker, move it onto the right hand needle. Keep on knitting. Eventually the piece of knitting will be a tube about 10 to 12 inches long. Twelve inches long is better if you have enough yarn but 10 inches will do.

Finishing the hat
Bind off your last row all the way around and take the marker off when you get to it.

When it's off your needles, put some yarn - either the same yarn or a different one that looks good and sew the yarn through the knitting, in and out and in and out all the way around the tube about an inch to two inches below the bind off. When you are done, draw the yarns through so that the tube scrunches up like a paper bag when you just grab it instead of folding it neatly. Tie a bow knot or a square knot.

Wear your hat. It's called the paper bag hat. Wear it with pleasure and pride.

copyright cjwyche, 2000-2006 These patterns and documents are essentially learning tools and I favor free access to knowledge on the internet, I have placed them on this web page under Copyleft|GNU Free Documentation License (version 1.2 or any later version). This means you have permission to freely download, ocpy and use content from this web site under the same License. Any creative changes you make to this source material cannot be copyrighted, but must also be freely distributed under the License.

Modified: 2006-02-01