How to make a hat... any hat... any craft

Hat's are easy to make and quite fast to work up. You don't need a pattern to make a nice hat. These tips will work to help you make a hat out of what ever craft you choose be it knitting, crochet, nalbinding or what ever... it all works the same.

Now this method does tend to a bit of frogging some times to get it right but if you start at the bottom and work your way up this is minimal. With knitted hats you may like to see what your gauge is via a swatch but it's not necessary. For my knitted hats worked in standard worsted yarn on about size 7 needles I cast on about 70 - 80 stitches.

To make a hat you just make a strip long enough to fit generously around the head. It is common for this strip to snug up as you work into it on the next round which is why you don't want to make it just snug enough to fit or it may become to tight.

Work in the round how ever you like (joining each round, working in a spiral) untill the hat is long enough for your taste. you can make it a roll brim or a beanie style, it's up to you. when the hat has cleared your ears and is to the point you think it should start to round off for the top you can reduce it.

For a long time i reduced all my hats on 4 evenly spaced corners (I did this for knitting and crochet) and just kept reducing until the opening was not much more than an inch and i would run my yarn through the stitches and cinch it closed.

You can also reduce every 10 stitches for a more rounded top. If knitting reduce every other row.

you can use any stitch pattern your want to make your hats. Plain, ribbing, cables, single crochet, double or any combination you desire... it's entirely up to you. Make it out of what ever makes you comfortable.

to reduce you generally either knit 2 together, you put your hook into 2 stitches at the same time or put your hook into one draw up a loop and into the next and draw up a loop than draw a loop through all the loops on your hook, or put your needle into 2 stitches at the same time. How ever you do it, you are turning 2 stitches into 1. If using this for nalbinding I would suggest making more drastic decreases as the rows are so tall yet the stitches are close together so it will take more reducing, I'll work 4 stitches together by putting my needle into the next 4 stitches before completing the stitch.

Nalbinding hat

So I've learned me a new craft... nalbinding! I don't really have time right now to post in detail about what it is exactly but it's a very old craft which predates knitting and crochet. I believe it was used in the Viking era and probably even before. It uses wool yarn and a needle to create interlocked loops of yarn. You break the yarn into workable lengths (I'm using 2 fathoms) and than spit splice them together as you run low.

the craft is so old that there is not a clear translation of how to spell it. Nalbinding is one way of a few to spell it. I am using a big fat yarn needle.

This will be a hat.

The videos I used to learn this are right handed videos and he worked with his needle in his right hand. I am working with my needle in my left hand.