For the most part, hand knitting and crocheting is portable and a designated craft area or room although not necessary for a beginning knitter certainly becomes more useful and essential as a knitter’s skill levels, projects, and yarn inventory increases. We try to keep our clothes, our mail, the cooking utensils etc. in designated areas so why not our yarn and knitting supplies?

With a designated craft area or room –

• All the yarn is in one place so we know how much and what type of yarn we have.
• Less time is wasted looking for a particular yarn stored in a different place.
• The frequency of additional yarn purchase may decrease.
• There is motivation to try more challenging knitting projects and to keep better project details and notes.
• The non – knitters in the household will be thankful they don’t have to see yarn stored in different places.

There are several craft area/room tours by both professional and hobby knitters on YouTube that give some helpful tips on how to create a designated craft area or room. I’m still working on creating a designated craft area where I can keep all my yarn and knitting supplies.

My first top down hat

Finished Hat with pom pom

Yarn used: Lion Brand Heartland® in Isle Royale
Project details can be found on my Ravelry project page

All the hat patterns I’ve knitted so far (some earlier posts here and here) have been bottom up and seamless. The brim of the hat is knitted first, then the body and lastly the crown shaping. With top down hats the crown shaping is knitted first, then the body and lastly the brim.

After reading and watching several online tutorials on how to knit a top down seamless hat, I cast on 8 stitches and began knitting the hat using the magic loop method (tutorial by Tin Can knits).  I increased 8 stitches every other round till I had the number of stitches I needed. I knit the body of the hat in stockinette stitch pattern for several rounds and then knitted the brim using 2 x 2 ribbing pattern.

Once I got used to the magic loop method, knitting the hat with using a top down construction was not hard. I started and finished knitting this hat in December 2017 but found it a bit short without the brim rolled up.

Hat without pom pom

With a short brim

I frogged a few rounds of the brim and knitted till the length of the brim was twice as much as before. Now the hat fits much better.

Finished hat with longer brim

Hat with rolled up brim

It seems that enough brim length when rolled up makes the hat fit better even if the body of the hat is a bit short or a bit long. Because of the direction of the knitting, it is faster and easier to increase the brim length if needed in a top down hat than it is in a bottom up hat.

Knit-along by Hannah Wallace in Knit Simple Magazine, Holiday 2017 issue.
February 2018 square: Project details on my Ravelry project page

April 2018 square