Dressing Up Loom-Knitted Hats

I was given a round loom set about seven years ago. I promptly packed it away thinking it was too hard to figure out since the instructions were missing from the set. 

When I saw my three nephews (ages 7-17) knitting up caps over a weekend on their mom's loom, I realized I needed to figure out where I had stashed mine and get knittin'.

I consider myself pretty awesome at knitting flat things, but have always struggled when it comes to knitting things with shape. Circular and double pointed needles continue to elude me. Using a loom was like opening a door to a whole new world; a world decorated with hats, socks, and oh god- could that be a knitted tube-top in my future? So many possibilities with a loom! I’ll never close the door to the world of knitted scarves and blankets, but I never again want to see an infinity symbol* made of yarn. So much snuggly soft fail, so little use.

I turned to YouTube for video-help casting on and casting off the loom. That was all the instruction I needed. Once I started on my loom, I couldn’t stop. I was knitting hat after hat: one or two per day. It almost felt like I was cheating because I was FINALLY knitting hats with the speed and ease I had heard about from so many traditional knitters. You know how people will tell you something is SO EASY, but your brain can’t seem to make it work and you end up secretly hating that person for a day or two? Yea. My brain totally understood this round plastic passport to “shape knitting”! And since I made three hats in two days, I decided to fancy them up and send them away to a couple of kids I adore.

I selected some fabric I'd picked up from Ikea for one of the hats, 

pulled out some soft corduroy scrap for a set of ears,
and started to braid some yarn pig-tails for the third.


These kids are dear to me, and needed hats that had some extra sparkle. 

The results were a woolen cap with kitty ears for Gloria,

a mouse zooming around an Alpaca Silk beanie for Stella,

and a green woolly hat with Swiss Miss braids that I couldn’t part with. 

The Trio of Loom-Knitted Hats!

I really enjoyed making these hats. It also gave me more knitting confidence and I may just try the circular and double pointed needles again some day. For fast cap-knitting at the holidays though, I'm totally sticking with my round loom set! Amazon.com sells the very loom set I was given, in case you would like to crank out some cozy hats this season.

Happy holiday crafting!!


*The result of several attempts at knitting a hat on circular needles.