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Earflap caps have recently become very popular, and with that in mind, Iíve designed this
cap, called Method Air, which is named after a snowboarding term.
There are some tricky things involved with knitting an earflap cap that you donít see
in just normal, beanie type caps.
And weíre going to cover that here in this tutorial.
Uh, among those things are knitting the earflaps, and getting the cast on together with the
earflaps, the cable stitches, switching to double pointed needles when the circumference
of the hat gets too small to use the circular needles, and then we have a crocheted trim
around the edge with the twisted tassels.
So weíll cover all that in this tutorial.
If youíd like to follow along with this pattern, itís available for purchase and download
over on verypink.com.
So letís get started with the earflaps.
The pattern tells you to knit up these little ribbed squares, and since theyíre really
simple, and itís just straight back and forth knitting, weíre not going to cover that in
Just follow the instructions and make two of them.
And I have you put them on the double pointed needles. Weíre not going to be using the
double pointed needles, to start off with, in the cap, in the brim of the cap, but if
you knit these on the double pointed needles and leave them there, itís a way of reserving
the stitches so that we can get them into the cast on edge.
So letís take a look at the cast on.
Weíre going to be using the circular needles for this.
And youíll follow your pattern and use the long tail cast on to cast on the number of
stitches it calls for.
And that partís pretty simple.
Now weíre going to start incorporating the earflaps.
So the first one I want you to take ñ I had you leave one of the earflaps with a really
long tail on it. I want you to use this one first.
So turn the earflap so that the right side is facing. And the right side happens to start
with two knit stitches and end with two knit stitches.
The wrong side has ñ shows purls on the two ends.
So here we are on the right side. We are just going to use our working yarn.
Oh, also youíll know you have it correct if the long tail is over here on the left
hand side of the double pointed needle.
Just work across in ribbing, on these stitches, in the 2 by 2 ribbing that youíve already
established.
Remembering to yarn forward to purl and yarn back to knit.
Actually, since you already knit the earflaps, youíre probably pretty good at that by now.
Okay.
Now weíre done with this double pointed needle, weíre not going to need it again for a while.
Now I had you leave this really long tail, because we need two strands of yarn to cast
on more stitches.
These stitches right here are actually the front of the cap, the part that goes over
the forehead.
And now weíre going to be doing the back of the cap, kind of the nape of the neck of
the cap.
So cast on 18 stitches here.
Whoops.
And now weíre going to incorporate the second earflap.
Again, with right side facing, starting with two knit stitches.
And work across this in ribbing once again.
And youíll notice [laughs] when we make our way across this, weíve got a crazy cast on
row going.
With a lot of ends hanging and pieces hanging off.
Okay, so there we are.
We have two earflaps, and two cast on sections.
Now we need to start joining this in the round.
And to do that, we want to make sure that nothing is twisted.
Iíll make some sense of this and then show you what Iíve done.
Iím going to have everything hanging on the inside here, all the ends and stuff.
Now, my working yarn is here on this stitch.
So this, on the left hand needle is going to be the first stitch that I knit.
And actually I have you starting with purl two, because that is what is going to maintain
the rib pattern that weíve already established on the earflaps.
So you want to place a marker here, and I donít have one handy.
Youíll place a marker here to note the beginning of the round.
And start with purl two.
And Iím just going to double check again, to make sure that nothingís twisted.
My earflaps are hanging in, all the knots are lined up on the inside, everything looks
good.
Okay, and thatís how weíre going to start the cast on row for the hat.
You go ahead and follow your pattern, and I have you knitting the brim of the hat for
two inches, then after the brim of the cap weíre going to start with the cable stitch.
And weíre going to switch colors when we do, if you choose to do a two color hat.
When you switch from one color to the next, on the first row, just do a plain knitting
round, no purling.
That will give you a clean color break between the brim of the cap and the crown of the cap
where the cables are.
So next up, we will practice the cable stitch.
As you can see on this hat, itís covered in cables.
After the brim we have cables all the way around the whole cap.
Iím going to show you how to work the cable stitch.
Itís really simple, even if youíve never worked cables before, this is really pretty
easy.
So letís take a look at the hat first.
Youíll see here that the brim runs up in one color.
We switch colors, and thatís when the cables start.
And the cables actually ñ the cable twist follows the same pattern as the ribbing that
we had going initially.
Okay?
And I have this sample here knit up to show you how to work the cables.
I have the ribbing going ñ I didnít change colors, but then the purl stitches do all
line up with this.
And youíll follow your pattern to know, to know the exact row count for these stitches,
but I want to show you how to work the twist.
Okay.
Here I am up to the cable now.
Iím going to slide three stitches over on to this cable needle and hold it in the back
of the work.
I didnít mean to drop everything when I did that.
Okay.
So those stitches are going to hang out on that cable needle Iím going to completely
ignore them while I knit the next three stitches.
Now I go back to the cable needle, now Iím actually going to ignore this left needle.
Go back to the cable needle and knit those three stitches off of the cable needle.
Now Iím going to purl two.
And I have another cable twist.
So again, Iíll slide three stitches over on to the cable needle, you always slip as
if to purl, hold that in the back of the work and ignore that cable needle for three stitches.
Knit three from the left needle.
And knit three stitches off the cable needle.
Okay.
And then Iíll finish up with purl two, which is what we have between all the cable twists.
And thatís what will give you cable twist going all the way up the hat.
Now youíll work a few of those cable twists, youíll follow your pattern, and thereís
going to be a time where you start, when we start to decrease for the crown of the cap.
When we do that, weíre not going to have enough stitches to fit around on the circular
needle anymore.
So weíre going to need to switch to knitting with the double pointed needles.
And thatís what weíre going to cover in the next video.
Okay weíre at a part of the cap now where weíre going to start decreasing for the crown
of the hat, because it needs to be rounded on top, and once we do that, weíre going
to get to a number of stitches, decreasing down to a number of stitches that no longer
fits on our circular needle.
So Iím going to show you how to switch to the double pointed needles.
Which is really pretty easy.
Okay Iím at the beginning of my round here.
And the first round of the decreasing tells me to purl two, what Iím going to do is Iím
going to pick up a double pointed needle, hold it in my right hand, Iím going to ignore
this right hand needle, Iím just going to start working right on to the double pointed
So Iím going to purl two.
Knit four.
Whoops, Iím sorry, Iím going to knit two.
No, Iím going to knit 4, and then knit two together. Sorry, Iíve already done one decrease
round on this.
And purl two again.
And Iíll be doing this so that I have about a third of the needles ñ about a third of
the stitches on to one needle, do the same thing with about a third of the stitches on
to the next needle, and the same thing on the third needle.
And then I will be completely finished with the circular needle, I can set that aside.
And I will then begin to work from one double pointed needle to the next.
I always start each needle with an empty needle in my right hand, and just work off the double
pointed needle like that.
And the double pointed needles will get us all the way down to the last few stitches
of the cap.
Then youíll break the yarn, cut the yarn, weave the ñ put that end on a tapestry needle
and string it through the last few stitches, and pull it tight like this, so you end up
with just a tiny little hole there.
And then youíre pretty much done with the hat, and all we have left to do is the trim.
In the next video Iím going to show you how to add the crochet trim and tassels.
Now weíre finished with the knitting part of the hat, so you actually need a crochet
hook for this next part, weíre going to do some crocheting.
And what weíre going to do is the trim around the bottom of the cap, which will give us
the tassels on the bottom of the earflaps.
Weíve been working with double stranded yarn throughout this cap, double stranded worsted
weight yarn, weíve been holding the two strands together of the darker and the lighter color.
For this next section, I want you to hold one strand each, one strand of each color
together. Itís a little bit different.
Why donít you take a look on this camera.
You can see that weíre holding it together so we get kind of a twist of both colors all
the way around the edge of the cap.
Itís much easier to see on this blue than it is on these brown colors.
So hold those together, and leave yourself like a 30 inch tail. Because we need to leave
some extra for the tassels on this.
And then, Iíve already done one side, so weíre going to go ahead and do the trim on
the other side.
Starting with the right side facing you, at the center bottom of one of the earflaps,
put your crochet hook in, and remember to leave yourself that long tail, pull the strands
through, and then if you know how to crochet, you want to chain one.
If you donít know how to crochet, just grab the yarn and pull it through that one chain.
Now as we look at the edge stitches along the earflap, edge stitches always look like
Vs.
We want to skip the first stitch, put our crochet hook under both legs of the V, pull
it through, grab the yarn again, and pull it through both loops.
Thatís called a single crochet.
Skip the next V, put your crochet hook under both legs of the V on the next stitch, grab
the yarn and pull it through, then grab the yarn again and pull it through both loops.
Skip the next one, under both Vs, grab it and pull it through, grab it and pull it through
both loops.
Now for ñ weíre only going to skip every other stitch on the bottom of the earflap,
thatís to kind of give it a rounder shape.
Now weíre going to single crochet into 1, 2, 3, skip one. 1, 2, 3, skip one.
So weíre going to go into this next one here, turning up around the corner, both legs of
the V, grab it and pull it through one, grab it and pull it through two.
We go into this next one, whoops.
And this third one.
Then we skip the next one, and go into this one.
And the following.
And the third.
Then we skip one again.
Anyway, thatís what youíre going to do all the way around half the cap.
Youíll see, I have a long tail here, I started here, went all the way around and finished
here, and now weíre doing the other side.
So I want to show you how to work the tassel part of it now.
Once youíve finished your single crochet all the way around, youíre finished with
the crochet hook and this is, this is, weíre just going to use our hands for this part.
We have two strands from one side of the earflap, or one side of the trim that we did, and two
strands from the other.
And weíre going to twist them together.
You want to pay attention to the direction that you twist them together.
I twist the two strands together in a clockwise way, thatís how I remember what Iím doing.
So you twist these two together clockwise, and get it, get it wound pretty tightly.
I know these two colors arenít different enough to really see the twist.
Let me go ahead and pull the blue in here.
You see the twist here in the blue and the white is much easier to see.
And thatís what weíre doing.
Twist these together clockwise.
Grab the other two from the same earflap and twist them together in a clockwise way.
And you want to twist those together so that the twists are about evenly tight.
Now, Iíve twisted down ñ Iíve twisted down to the last couple of inches of these strands.
Iím holding them together, I was twisting clockwise, and now Iím going to twist these
two together counterclockwise, which is going to keep them from unraveling.
The two twists balance each other out.
Okay.
And you can see here that its ñ well itís twisting up on itself.
Iím going to go ahead and tie a knot in the bottom of this, and itíll even itself out
a little bit, but you can see that the twist is holding.
And itís twisted together and it looks really cool.
Now, usually what I will do is Iíll actually try on the cap to see how long I want to make
these strands, and then tie another knot, wherever that is, and then cut this to leave
a nice end.
On this blue cap, it looks like Iíve left these about a foot long.
And then about an inch of tassel at the bottom of that. You can leave these however long
you like.
But then you do the same thing over on the other side with the strands that you have
hanging.
Twist the two colors of strands together in one way, and the other one, and then you twist
all of that together in the opposite way, and it will keep it from unraveling.
And thatís all written out in your pattern as well.
Anyway, thatís everything.
Thatís all the steps to make this earflap snowboarding cap.
[music]