Today we cover the “somewhere in between” ear flap method. Some of you may remember my little green hat. It has earflaps that can be pulled up and tied at the top when they are not needed, with a little trick, they tuck up nice and neat behind the fold up brim of the hat. Never fear my fellow loom knitters, today you get your own nifty tuck-up-able earflap hats!

It’s quite easy!

First make your 3 stitch I cord.

Then increase this to however wide you want your earflap (in my case I only made it 5 stitches wide as I am working on a 24 peg loom)

Now since you will be seeing both sides of this earflap I recommend you make it in garter stitch pattern.

Once you have your earflap looking the way you want it cut your yarn leaving a nice tail to weave in, and place it on a stitch  holder or some waste yarn.  And of course you will want to make another one.. unless you only have one ear.

Then cast on all stitches of the loom and work in circular. This will be a fold up brim, you can make it anyway you want, k2p2 ribbing, plain old stockinet, garter stitch, seed stitch you choose! (I chose garter) Knit until you have the length desired for the brim. then.. no mater what stitch pattern you were using you will knit 1 row (I don’t care from flat stitch or e-wrap you choose!)

Here is where it gets tricky.. yep that 4 letter word MATH!!

T= total number of stitches (in my case 24)

E= total number of stitches in BOTH earflaps.  (in my case 10)

So here is the fancy formula:  T – E = X   Take X and divide it by 2. this will = S   S is the magic number!

In my case 24-10= 14   14/2 =7 

I will need to leave 7 stitches between my earflaps so that they are spaced directly across from each other on the loom, and therefore on the head!

You may need to fudge it and have them 1 peg closer to each other in some cases.

So on the next row I will knit S amount of stitches Then you will bind off the number of stitches to match how wide one earflap is. Then knit S  amount of stitches again and then again bind off the number of stitches for one earflap.

You should end on the first stitch of the next row.  And it will look like this:

Take the earflaps and put the end of the I-cord down through the center of the loom. Place the live loops for each earflap on the corresponding empty pegs on either side of the loom, like so:

Then continue on incorporating those stitches into the next round. Continue with your hat as normal using whatever stitch you choose and finish it off!

Clever!

Enjoy! And next time remind me not to write tutorials late at night

Sleep well,  I’ll most likely edit it in the morning….