Knitting a Bulky Hat

Even though it's technically spring, the weather here has been decidedly chilly (and rainy) the past few weeks. So when I saw yarn on sale at the local Michael's, it seemed like a great time to make a hat. I should probably mention that hats are one of my favorite knitting projects, and although I haven't been knitting long, I'm already running out of people to give hats to.
When I got to the store, I realized that not only was my current favorite yarn on sale, several other brands were as well, including bulky yarn.
Ah, bulky yarn. The mysterious, thick yarn that I'd often checked out in the store, but had never tried knitting with. Somehow it looked rather awkward to tension, and my needle collection didn't include anything close to the size required. But since Christmas, I have several larger needles, so I decided to try it. I picked up a couple of balls of size 5 yarn. Nothing too crazy for a first attempt, not like the size 6+ yarns.
Since it was an experiment, and the yarn was heathered, I decided to pick a simple pattern. Julie Laffoon's Manly Man Hat pattern was perfect. But when I started the hat, I started having problems with the cast on. It was just not stretchy enough, despite being my go-to cast on for 2x2 ribbing.
A quick search for stretchy cast ons provided several other options, but after some tests, none of these worked. The ribbing was stretchy, but the cast on. . . just wasn't. It was starting to look like this might be an issue with the yarn, so I started searching whether there were different cast ons for thicker yarn. Nothing relevant turned up.
Now I should probably mention that I'm a tight knitter. But that on its own didn't seem like enough to be causing the lack of stretch, since other hats didn't have issue. Eventually, I found this cast on video tutorial by Dolly Quinn.

 

Her demonstration of how stretchy it was caught my attention, and I decided to try one more test before returning the unused ball of yarn. I did change it slightly; weaving in ends has never been my favorite part of knitting, so instead of using the knot method I estimated the amount of yarn I'd need for a regular long-tail cast on, added a little extra to be safe, and just put the needle under the yarn and held it there (just like a regular long-tail cast on). I also went up one needle size to 10.5 US for the cast on before switching back to the size 10s the pattern called for.

It worked!! The cast on edge was stretchy, neat, and looked the same on both sides. The rest of the pattern worked up very quickly, although I still had to weave in some ends when I joined in the 2nd ball of yarn.

Despite the initial problems with casting on, the hat came out very nice.

 

 

You can see the cast on edge looks very neat, and the pattern worked out well. Dolly Quinn's extra stretchy cast on, combined with casting on to needles one size larger, saved the bulky yarn hat experiment from doom. Ok, it saved the bulky yarn from sitting in a drawer while I tried to think of something else to do with it, but close enough. Knitting with bulky yarn was fun, and the thicker yarn definitely made for a very plush, soft, warm hat! 😊 Check back soon for part one of a sewing machine cover tutorial. Until then, happy knitting!