Knitting keeps me humble. It does not come easy to me in the least. I have tried to knit on my own to no avail. I have taken knitting classes with very limited success. I admire women who can knit effortlessly while talking or watching television and still produce these beautiful, flawless blankets, hats, scarves and sweaters. I did knit a baby hat once, but I found myself gripping the knitting needles with white knuckles and holding my breath. Still, I long to knit. So I keep trying.
At the recommendation of one of My Creative Mommy's facebook fans, I decided to try a knitting loom. I jumped in with a
Boye Loom Hat Kit for toddlers, since I happen to have one of those running around my house. I took my baby girl to
Hobby Lobby where she picked out a super soft, chunky yarn and I grabbed the knitting loom.
The end result? Easy and awesome! See for yourself : )
Here's what you'll need to make yours:
- One Boye Loom Hat Kit
- Yarn (kit calls for #4 medium yarn. I used #5 for this project)
- Scissor
Start by tying the yarn to the anchor peg with a slip knot, or any knot. Just don't make your knot too tight because you'll have to untie it after you've knitted a few rounds on your loom.
Next we are going to begin by "casting on/e-wrapping our yarn onto the loom. It is called e-wrap because when you cast on the yarn it is supposed to look like a lower case "e." You are basically just wrapping the yarn around a peg in a clockwise motion and moving on to the next peg and doing the same thing over and over. Again, not too tight because you will need to remove loops as you work.
When you complete the whole first row it should look like this.
Push all your loops down to the bottom of the pegs like this.
Now, wrap all the pegs a second time beginning with the first peg and ending with the last peg. Continue to work in the same direction as you did in the first row.
Once you have completed the second row, hold the working yarn in your hand or secure it to the anchor peg. Begin with the last peg wrapped and using the loom tool lift the bottom loop over the top loop. Boye built in a groove in the peg that really makes this easier. Continue this process with each peg, all the way around the loom until you again have only one loop on each peg. Push the loops to the bottom of the pegs.
After you have completed a few rows, release the slip knot from the anchor peg so your knitting can fall inside of the loom.
Continue wrapping the pegs and then lifting the loops until you have knitted the desired length for your project. I kept holding the loom up to my little one's precious head to see how long it needed to be and then I made some extra rows after that so I could roll the brim.
To finish your lovely little knitted hat, you will need to "bind off" which for our purpose, simply means closing the tube you knitted.
When you have knitted your last row and only have one loop on each peg, cut the working yarn leaving about a 24 inch tail. Thread the yarn onto a yarn needle.
Starting with peg 1, insert the needle below the loop and pull the yarn through. Insert the needle into the loop on the next peg and repeat. Repeat with each peg all the way around the loom making sure there is no gap.
Now remove the loops from the pegs.
Turn your hat inside out and pull the yarn tail until the opening of the "tube" is completely closed.
Secure the opening by stitching back and forth over the opening. Then tie a knot with the yarn tail. (If you want to add a pom pom, stop here and see below, if not, continue with weaving the ends through.) Weave in both the ending and beginning yarn tails at the top and bottom of the hat.
Basically, your lovely little knitted hat is finished!
My Mom thought it would be a fun idea to add a pom pom on top, so she made one and I took the pictures so we could show you how to do that too : )
Take a 4 inch piece of cardboard and begin wrapping the yarn around it. We wrapped it about 30 times.
Now carefully slip the yarn off the cardboard and tie a piece of yarn around the middle, tightly.
With a scissor, cut through the closed loops at each end of the pom pom. Then trim the ends to shape, or leave it wild and woolly if you like : )
Take the needle threaded with the 24 inch yarn tail from your hat and slip it under the yarn you tied around the middle of the pom pom.
Slide the pom pom down the yarn till it meets the hat.
Now secure the pom pom to the hat by stitching back and forth through the top of the hat and tying a knot or two.
I put a lot of photos in this post to help you visualize the instructions, but trust me, this was easy and if I can knit this hat on a loom you can too!!!
***COMING SOON***
In the near future, I will be offering supply kits for sale!
These kits will include the craft supplies necessary to jump right in to select projects from my blog.
Just a few of the kits I'm working on putting together right now are:
- Lip Balm Kit
- Handbound Leather Wrapped Journal Kit
- Hand Rolled Beeswax Pillar Candle
- Beaded Earrings Kit (upcoming post)
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There are about 196 countries in the world, and my goal is to take the whole world on a creative journey one project at a time. So I want to offer many thanks to all my readers in 76 different countries so far...
The United States, Israel, Canada, Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, Malaysia, Italy, the Bahamas, the Philippines, Sweden, Egypt, Columbia, the Netherlands, Spain, the Sudan, Turkey, Mexico, Moldova, Denmark, China, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, the Czech Republic, the Ukraine, South Africa, India, Taiwan, Panama, Serbia, Latvia, Argentina, United Arab Emirates, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
New Zealand, Japan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Chile,
Romania, Hungary, Portugal, Indonesia, Guernsey, South Korea, Pakistan, Greece,
Hong Kong, Poland, Slovenia, Lithuania, Ireland, Belgium, Venezuela, Sri Lanka, Macedonia,
Trinidad & Tobago, Peru, Ghana, Estonia, Dominica, Nepal, Norway, Slovakia, Croatia, Algeria,
Finland, Mongolia, Myanmar [Burma], and Lesotho!
Many Blessings,
Jana : )
