Ear Flap hats machine knitted

I have been asked several times how I did the ear flap hats that are doubled or where the pattern for them is. There no pattern I made them up during a practice session for hats, this hat below is the middle TD8, the TD5 and TD10 hats are in a post below this one.

So here is a little something that I put together. This does not teach you how to short row, and is only a short bit about how to work this hat. You do need to know how to short row before beginning this.

I am only discussing how to make the hat in general but at least one person has made a hat from this little discussion. Hopefully this will help others to develop a hat of their own. There probably is a pattern for a double layered ear flap hat somewhere, I just don't know where that is and why you would need it. If you short row, know how to make a hat this below should get you well on your way to making those hats.

Oh for you loom knitters guess what, you can do this also. You too just need to know how to short row the ear flaps and you can make a double layered ear flap hat the same way. You will just need to figure out the amount of pegs for your flaps and go for it and you don't have to seam if done in the round.



These are just ones I have been playing with on a bulky machine. There is no pattern as I make it up as I go. I can give you a basic idea of how they are done.

First I must say that each of the three hats were done with the same amount of needles, same brand of yarn, but different tension dial settings. This makes a great difference in the sizes of the hats. The solid blue one is the smallest hat being at TD5, the variegated dark blues one at TD8, the variegated Pink Camo one at TD10.

The middle one I think is the best, the TD8. The TD5 is extremely tight weaved and the TD10 one is huge. I like the huge one as it fits over my hair up with a clip holding it (my normal way of holding my hair, I like long hair but like it up most times off my neck).

So I used Red Heard Super Saver yarn. This is a worsted weight yarn 4/4. A brother bulky machine, mine is the KH230.

COR, RC000 (tension dial where you choose for sizes and weave tightness) Starting at the L41 pull every other needle out to needle R42. This is EON between 83 needles. Ewrap these needles. Knit across, COL, pull all the rest of the rest of the 83 needles into working position, knit across. Continuing knitting till reads RC46, COR

Your set up for the ear flaps are 7-27-15-27-7, so starting on the left pull that first 7-27-15 (49 needles) to hold, set carriage for holding, knit across, COL, pull the 7 needles at the beginning to hold, you now have 27 needles in work.

At this point you are going to short row down to 3 needles in work before doing the reverse short rowing. How you do this makes the look of the ear flap. You can do auto wrap pulling one needle into work each pass of the carriage, or you can pull two needles (one on each side) to hold, knit two rows but do not auto wrap on the return pass. This makes for the little holes along the edge of the ear flap, the look nice (at least I like them).

Reverse the short rows doing the same method as you started with, you will be ending with COL, remove hold (my carriage has a hold lever on both sides), knit one row to the right, remove the other hold, knit across to the left, COL, put hold levers back to holding

Now you are going to put the needles to hold on the other side to do the second ear flap, so put the center 15-27-7 to hold on the right side of the bed

Repeat for the second ear flap what you did for the first side. Ending with a COR after all the ear flap is finished.

Set RC000, knit till RC is at 46. Now transfer stitches off of EON over to the next one putting empty needle out of work. Now you are going to pick up the bottom EO wrap and place on the same needles. There will be three loops per each EON, this is best to pull out all needles before knitting to prevent dropped stitches,

Knit two rows, gather remove and seam. Take care to make sure your rows match up as you are seaming an outer edge to an outer edge, then turning the hat inside to continue this seam.

I have made several hats and you can vary what you want, more opening for the front, more for the back, smaller ear flaps by just changing the amounts of needle used for what. Example:
7-27-15-27-7 = 83
8-28-11-28-8 = 83
7-25-19-25-7 = 83

(note: in the case of winding up with even numbers of needles, as in the second one, you will be short rowing down to two needles instead of three or you could add an additional needle ) You can do this on any of the hat patterns you might have that you like. You can also put in a design on the longer sections as you go, change colors per each side. All sorts of things.

Ok I hope I got that all right. I take notes but they are over several sheets and jumbled. So I just picked up off those notes what I wrote here. You can play with this.

These hats are quite warm being doubled throughout the entire hat not just the ear flap.