Kat's winter hat has been stalled for the past several weeks. I was able to extend the hat successfully. But once I figured that out, the hat has sat on the end table neglected. Which is just plain sad, 'cause the only thing I had left to do was weave in the ends.
I researched quite a bit to figure out how to extend the hat. I read lots of suggestions about ripping out the bottom row(s) of stitches (like this), but I wasn't a big fan of this method. First of all, it looked really tedious (and I'm lazy). Also, Kat's hat was knit from the bottom up, with ribbing at the bottom, and most sites that I read cautioned that adding on to ribbing would result in a half-stitch jump between old and new stitches. Finally, and probably most importantly, the thought of cutting into the work and having the whole thing unravel scares me!
Instead, I chose to use a contrasting color and basically sew a cast-on row to the bottom of the hat in the new color. I threaded a yarn needle with the new color (gray). I put the needle between the stitches on the original cast on row, looped around my knitting needle, and back through the hat in between the next stitch. The biggest trick was just making sure to cast-on the same number of stitches that I had in the original cast-on row. Once I had a new cast-on row, I continued the same rib pattern top-down. And because I looped my new cast-on stitches between the old stitches, I didn't really notice any jumping, mostly just that the ribbing isn't exactly smooth (but I expected that).
So, what do you think? I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and I think Kat is too! (What a ham, eh?!)
This project is listed on my Ravelry profile.
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