Hat Not Hate goes to FIT

On Thursday, September 27th, I had the opportunity to bring our Hat Not Hate initiative to Fashion Institute of Technology as part of their Civility Week preparations. With some blue yarn and knitting needles in hand, I taught a dozen students to hand knit so they can make blue hats. It was wonderful to get such a big and enthusiastic group taking time our of their busy days to do this. Of course, this is a much slower process than they are used to since most of their knitting is done on machines, but they took to it really quickly. 

Starting the Hat

Since they were just learning to hand knit, we didn’t start out to make a hat, but began working on smaller swatches so they could make mistakes without worrying about it being a project. Several students struggled with the pitfall of working too close to the tip of the needle, ending up with super tight stitches. A few others tended to hold the needles toward the base, so they struggled to get control of the yarn and everything was too loose.

Eventually, the close-to-the-tip knitters learned to use the whole needle and get better control of their gauge. The hang back at the base knitters got closer to the action and were able to take control of their yarn. Since they all understand the math of gauge, I advised them to use their class swatches to determine how many stitches to cast on for a hat knit side to side, so they can knit until it’s big enough to go around someone’s head and then seam it.

I can’t wait to see what they come up with!