Hat Swatch

I have been swatching.

This winter just past, I have been afflicted with that whole “cobbler’s children” thing (adapted to refer to knitters). Except that my children seem to have plenty of hats and gloves – I’m the one who doesn’t.

So I’m going to make myself a hat.

Of course, I’m doing my usual thing of starting to knit the garment I need right at the end of the season in which I need it, but hey, given my normal rate of completion, the hat I’m planning might just be finished in time for next autumn!

I went hunting, found Angela Sixian Wu’s rather gorgeous Three Tams on Knitty, and got all excited. Because, corrugated ribbing! Stranded colour work! Clever use of the chosen yarns’ features! Three patterns to choose from!

Displaying a somewhat predictable weakness of will, I indulged in some new yarn from This Is Knit, as pictured above (Lamb’s Pride and Noro Kureyon).

I decided on Tam C, because I like the definition of the central star. And commenced with the swatching.

This being a hat, knit in the round, I swatched in the round too. (You may remember my being burned last year by the Dragon of Oh No Gauge Is Different in the Round – lesson learned.) Here’s the back of the swatch, where I passed both strands back to the start of each row to knit it from the front again.

And here’s where I cut the strands at the back to spread the swatch out for measuring.

Gorgonswatch! Quick, find a mirror! (Get me and my classical references.)

Stranded colourwork was where I really cut my teeth with knitting, back when I was fifteen and much braver. (Get me to show you my Giant Improvised Cardigan some time. It’ll be a laugh.) I haven’t done any in a while, so making this swatch really took me back. I loved doing it.

Which is a good thing, considering, Because it is all wrong.

The pattern calls for a gauge of 20 stitches to 4 inches (let’s not worry about the row gauge for the moment – I rarely do, to be honest). That’s for a finished brim circumference of 18 inches, unstretched and unblocked.

Two issues here.

First, I have a big head (ahahaha, yes, dear, everyone’s a comedian). Its circumference is 23 inches. And although obviously, hats should have negative ease, and blocking will increase the brim’s circumference, I’m skeptical about accommodating a difference this big. Particularly since the stranding makes a dense fabric with relatively little stretch.

Second, even if my head were smaller, I don’t get gauge with 4mm needles. My swatch has more like 23 stitches to the 4 inches. This means that my finished hat, at this gauge, would be smaller still.

Not so good.

I could reswatch with bigger needles. But where would be the fun in that? No, no: out with the calculator, say I.

Now. Please correct me if I’m wrong here – I’ve had hilariously little sleep this past week or so, owing to the Feaster having come down with a vomiting bug. (Niall caught it too, but he delicately refrained from repeatedly throwing up on me in the middle of the night. Unlike the Feaster. Fun times.)

If 23 stitches gives me 4 inches, then 1 stitch gives me 0.1739 inches, and 20 stitches gives me 3.478 inches.

3.478 is 86.95% of 4.

So my gauge will give me a hat that’s 86.95% smaller than the pattern calls for.

The main pattern is repeated six times around the hat.

What if I repeated it seven times instead? (I’d get a seven-pointed star, but that would be OK.)

If six pattern repeats gives a brim circumference of 18 inches, then seven pattern repeats will give a brim circumference of 21 inches.

But my gauge will give only 86.95% of that, or 18.26 inches.

Hmmm. still a bit small. What about eight pattern repeats? That would give 24 inches at the prescribed gauge, and 20.87 inches at my gauge.

20.87 inches sounds reasonable for a 23-inch head.

So that’s what I’ll do. Instead of casting on 96 stitches to start, I’ll cast on 128. I’ll have to fudge the shorter pattern repeat, because 128 isn’t evenly divisible by 6. But I can live with that. [EDIT: No I wont! Having now read the pattern (always a useful move), I'll just increase an extra 2 stitches on the increase round, then decrease them again when I move to the 20-stitch repeat.]

Wish me luck!

[ANOTHER EDIT: I've been fretting about my calculations since I posted. I've never made a tam before, and I'm wondering about the soundness of my original assumption - that asking 18 inches of stranded colourwork to expand to 23 inches on blocking (an increase of almost 28%) is too much. Anyone with experience care to weigh in? I don't want to end up with an unwearable Monster Hat! Wibble.]