Q&A for How to Knit a Beanie

It does help to have some knitting under your belt before you take on a project like knitting a hat. For most of the hat, you'll use a circular needle, but then when you get to the top, you need to switch over to double pointed needles. That looks daunting, but the extra needles are really just holding the stitches.

You would have to use a pattern that is not in the round, and stitch it together afterwards.

I'm very sorry to disappoint you, but that's impossible. Maybe you could give the hat to a child you know-a nephew or cousin. Then you can make a new hat for yourself.

Even/odd refers to the row numbers. Rows 2, 4 and 6 are even rows because they are even numbers. Rows 1, 3 and 5 are odd rows because they are odd numbers.

Either would work. K2P2 would look better, but wouldn't work smoothly, as the number of stitches would decrease. Knitting plain is best if you want a smooth transition. Depending on the number of decrease rows, it is not too noticeably different.

See the article, How to Knit a Baby Hat for info.

wikiHow's article on making a slip knot would be helpful for you.

Cut the working yarn from the skein or ball and thread your yarn needle. Next, start at the opposite end of the row by inserting your yarn needle under a few of the stitches on the knitting needle and pulling it through. Continue doing this until you get back to the beginning of the row, then do the same thing again, slipping the stitches off the knitting needle as you go. When all the stitches have been slipped off the knitting needle, pull the yarn tight so the hole closes. Fasten the hole closed by making a knot in some of the stitches at the top edge of the hat.

You can use double pointed needles to work in the round. While you can make a hat on straight needles, it won't be a beanie.

Check to make sure you can carefully untwist the beanie. If it seems loosely "twisted" and can be undone, this simply means the yarn is bunched of because of working on double pointed needles, which is perfectly normal. However, if your work looks like a mess no matter how hard you try to "untwist" it, you may have made a mistake such as skipping one of the needles in the round at some point. If this is the case, carefully remove your work from the needles (if it untwists now, you're safe and can put it right back on!). If it is still twisted, gently pull on the working yarn to undo stitches until the "twisted" part is gone. You will have to redo some of your knitting, but it'll be worth it!