Not Quite Stone Soup Hat

Not Quite Stone Soup Hat


I made a striped ribbed hat which looks more complicated than it was.
I knit this on my Passap, just so I would not have to mess with the comb and weights, but the hat can be made on a standard gauge Japanese machine like Brother, or Silver Reed.


I used basically stripes of three main yarns.
Color one was from a cone of Tamm 3 ply (black).
Color two was leftovers of self patterning sock yarn, various ends rewound onto a cone. I just tied the next leftover yarn to the one on the cone and kept winding. (I had a lot of leftover patterning sock yarn!) Don't worry about the yarn tails, they just knit in.
Color three was a leftover bit of red 2/24 yarn used doubled...when I ran out I substituted Tamm 3 ply (red).


Now for the knitting.
Orange strippers (ignore this on brother machines, use comb and weights instead)


Cast on with main color (black) 80-80 , set up for 1x1 rib. T 4/4.


Knit 1 row N/N, 2 rows CX/CX, 1 row N/N . (This is the brother basic cast on for 1x1 rib plus 1 row of rib. )

RC 000


Transfer stitches into 2x2 rib.


Knit 4 rows MC (black) gradually increasing tension to 6/6.


Knit whatever color I want....2 R color 1, 4 R color 2, 2 R color 3....change colors whenever the mood strikes me.....random stripes, but try for first cast on and the end rows before gather off to be same color.


Knit to RC 120 (close to 11 inches long).


For cast off I racked to match front and back bed needles of the 2x2 rib, transfer all front stitches to back needles which already have stitches. (Stitches are now only on back bed in 2 stitches, 2 blank needles, across the bed.) Make sure front bed needles are out of work (and set lock to GX just to be sure it does not knit).


Black strippers (brother knitters ignore this).


Knit 2 rows , transfer EON (which means there is one needle with 2 stitches on it, then 3 empty needles out of work) than knit 2 rows, gather off.


Sew back seam matching the black stripes to black stripes, the red stripes to red stripes.

I tried different lengths of hat before I settled on the pattern I have written here. I even did 1x1 rib and 200 rows long, but it was not my favorite.