Extras – Texture Issue

It is fun and easy to turn a circular woven medallion into a hat – you can just pick up stitches around the edges and knit or crochet straight until the hat is the desired length, with or without a brim to turn up. The trick – and why this is a recipe and not a pattern – is to calculate how many stitches to pick up.

Hats are intended to fit heads, and heads come in different sizes. Yarn works up to different gauges depending on the size of the yarn and the hook or needle being used. Different circular looms make medallions with a different number of loops around the edges. So before you pick up stitches and start making a hat, do a bit of calculating.

Suppose your weaving was done on an 11-inch loom with 37 warp threads. The yarns you wish to use for the sides vary a bit in weight but could all be knit to an average gauge of 3 stitches/inch. You want to make an adult hat with a circumference of 24 inches (a loose-fitting, slouchy hat that won’t flatten your hair too much), so 24 inches x 3 stitches/inch = 72 stitches. You have 37 loops around the edge of your medallion so picking up 2 stitches in each loop (k1, p1 in each loop) will give you 74 stitches which is close enough!

If you want your hat tighter, go down a needle size, maybe just for the last inch or so, to keep it slouchy. Knit or crochet until your work measures 9–10 inches from the center of the woven medallion for a brimless hat that will cover your ears. For a longer and more closely fitting hat with a turned-up brim (like a ski hat or toboggan), pick up 10–15% fewer stitches, and knit additional length to form the cuff. If you are worried or wondering how your hat will fit, slip your stitches onto waste yarn and try it on.

This basic formula can be adjusted to make smaller or larger hats, hats that will be knit or crocheted at a different gauge, or hats made on different sized looms (7–12 inches works for adult hats). Just do that little bit of calculating before you start, and it will be fine. You can make the sides all with the same yarn or mix up both yarns and stitch patterns. Play around – have fun!