when i was in 7th grade, waaaaaay back in the late 60s, there was a fad for stocking caps, the caps that have long points that hang down & usually end in a pompom or tassle. the one i had was exceptionally long (4'), so that the tail could be wrapped around my neck to act as a scarf. i think it was the one time in my life i had the coolest cool thing ever ;) anyway, i want to make one of similar dimension for Boo, but i don't know how to figure the decreases so it gradually & evenly comes to the point. mine was machine knit & i suspect that knitting at a fairly fine guage is the best bet for making a long cap that looks good. any ideas or pointers to patterns? thanks lee
Make a swatch. Once you know your row gauge the rest is arithmetic with a little logic on the side:
Let's say your row gauge is 9rpi (reasonable if you're planning to knit with sock yarn) and you want a 4 foot cap as measured from the cast-on at the brim.
4*12*9 gives 432 rounds from brim to tip. You can start decreasing at
4" or after 36 rounds, which gives you 398 rounds in which to accomplish the decreases. Round it up to 400. You don't know it yet but you're working with a multiple of 10 for your cast on and we want to keep things tidy.
If your stitch gauge is 7spi and you want a cap to fit a 22" head you'll knit a 20" cap: 20*7 or 140 for the cast on.
In a vertical rise of 400 rounds you need to decrease 130 stitches (those last 10 will be ciched closed and the pompom will hide the pucker!).
Because your rounds in which to work and your stitches to get rid of are both divisible by 10 this has the smell of something that might work out tidily.
So decrease 13 stitches every 40 rounds starting with round 40 . By the time you finish round 400 you should have...10 stitches left!
Of course, you'll have to substitute your gauges and your numbers, but that's the general idea.
For the record I also sat down with squared paper, figured the equation of the line that represents what is essentially the hypoteneuse of a triangle representing 1/4 of the above posited cap and then started calculating even decreases that would in fact produce that line.
Easier to do it Elizabeth's way - at least in the explaining. The logic is pretty straightforward too. This is a case of the math being applicable but not necessarily useful for something as mundane as a stocking cap :D
There's a lot of that going around. Some things keep getting reinvented, but when your exact pattern - typos and all - turns up under somebody else's chop it's a real pisser. There's a reason I don't even look at certain of the online knitting magazines :P
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