The pattern says to start out with a 16″ circular needle. Of course I didn’t have a 16″ needle so I attempted to use a 40″ and reduce the circumference using the magic loop method. With 160 stitches to manage, I twisted the stitches to form a moebius. Now I sympathize with Rob who recently mentioned unwittingly doing this while knitting the hem of a tunic. As you can see from the photo, I switched to a 16″ needle.

After the brim, stripes are next. Since knitting in the round creates a spiral, stripes will jog where one stripe ends and the next one starts. The book mentions hiding the jog when sewing the ends of each stripe. Well I don’t intend to leave any ends between stripes; I’d rather avoid sewing so I’ll carry the unused color up the “side” by twisting the yarns together at the beginning of each round. So to avoid the jog I’m going to use the Danish method described in Simple Socks by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts.

On this hat I’m knitting white and blue stripes that are three rows in height. When I transition from a white stripe to a blue one, I knit the first stitch of the first blue row with both colors and continue knitting the first row of the blue stripe until I come across the blue/white stitch that started the round. I knit these stitches together with the blue running yarn and then pull on the end of the white yarn until the jog gets hidden. I’ll repeat these stepswith the next stripe, reversing the colors and hopefully end up with jogless stripes.