Earflaps!

Good morning everyone!  I finished my earflaps last night, and I am ready to cast on for the hat.  Before I do so, however, I wanted to show you a couple of pictures of what your flaps might look like.  Here's one looking at the right side of both flaps:

These flaps look really large for baby ears to me, but I guess it's better to have their ears covered well!  The edges farthest away from the needles are my cast on edges, and you might be able to see the tails there.  I cast on 7 stitches using the long tail cast on, per the pattern.  Then, you need to turn your needle and start going right to left again, on the wrong side of the piece.  You are going to knit the first stitch, purl to the last stitch, and then knit the last stitch.  Turn your work again, and knit the first stitch, knit the front and back of the second stitch (video here), knit to the last 2 stitches, knit the front and back of the second to last stitch, and knit the last stitch.  Every time you knit into the front and back of a stitch, you are adding a stitch.  This means for every right side row that you do, you should be adding two stitches total.  I try to make sure I am counting every once in a while so I don't miss an increase.  Once you have 15 stitches on the needles, you'll be on a wrong side row.  You can then purl every stitch in this row.  Turn your work so you're on a right side row, and knit every stitch.  Continue this until your earflap is the length that you want it.  Mine are 3.25" long.  Once I knit my first earflap, I set that needle aside after cutting the yarn and used another needle to knit the second earflap.  You can either keep track of the rows that you knit straight on the first earflap, and then keep track on the second one so they are the same, or you can just hold them one on top of the other to make sure they're roughly the same size. :)

Here is a picture of the right side of one earflap, and the wrong side of the other:

You'll notice that the earflap on the left is showing the purl bumps on the wrong side, and the earflap on the right is showing the knit v's on the right side.  I tried to make sure that my last row on the earflaps was a wrong side, or purl, row, but it doesn't really matter for our purposes.  You might also be able to see that the sides of the earflaps are curling in a bit.  That's okay, because each earflap is small enough that it will resist curling too much.  In the pattern, I specified to leave a tail when you cut the yarn from the ball at the end of each earflap, and said that 12 inches would be long enough.  That will definitely be long enough, but I made my tails between 5 and 6 inches.  You want to have enough of a tail that you can securely weave in the ends, but the earflaps are getting knit right into the cast on edge, so it doesn't need to be too long.

Alternatively, if you don't want to do the earflaps, you don't have to.  You can just cast on for the hat and start knitting, and once you get to the end you will have a hat with a brim that rolls, so you may want to make the body a bit longer.  If you are interested in this, you can wait until I cast on for my hat and just pick up with me there.

That's about it for the earflaps.  Take your time when making these, because it's possible that you're learning a couple of new things while knitting these.  Let me know in the comments how you are doing, or if you have any questions.  Also, like I mentioned before, I am available to help in person if you are around the Presque Isle area, so just let me know if you would like that.  If you want to send me some pictures (and I would love to see any!), you can email them to me at alexandyj(at)gmail(dot)com, and let me know if you're okay with me putting them on the blog or not.  Thanks for knitting with me!