How to Knit a Basic Beanie Hat for Beginners

Hi, it's Shandi from expressionfiberarts.com, and today you're going to learn how to make a beginner's knitted beanie. Four ounces of DK weight yarn, 16 inch circular needles, and a tape measure. Pull up a couple yards of tail yarn, and work a slip knot. Insert that onto your needle, and work 88 total stitches using the long tail cast on method. If you're an absolute beginner, I have a video for you where I break this down into slow motion. You can go watch that if you need to first, and then pop back over here. So we're going to join for working in the round, but you want to make sure not to twist your stitches, or you're not going to end up with a tube. So make sure they're all lined up, and not twisted around. Grab a stitch marker, or a safety pin, or a scrap loop of yarn, and pop that onto your needle to mark the beginning of your rounds. Round one. So we have our stitches on our needle. They are not twisted, which is what we want, and we have our stitch marker, and we're ready to start round one. Go ahead and tension your working yarn, which is the yarn attached to the ball, and we're going to work knit two, purl two. Alright, so knit one, knit two, now we're going to purl two. Bring the yarn to the front, and purl one, and purl two. And repeat that all the way around. So yarn in the back, knit one, knit two, bring the yarn to the front, purl one, and purl two. If I'm going too fast for you, and you're an absolute beginner, go ahead and check out my video called How to Knit for Absolute Beginners, and I slow it down for you. You can go see all that there. So repeat knit two, purl two, all the way around. And as you go along, you're going to want to scrunch your stitches, and just keep scooting them around. Knit one, two, purl one, purl two. I also have a video on how to knit ribbing, if you're unfamiliar with it, so you can go watch that video as well, to help you out even more. About halfway done. Round one is done. You want to make sure your stitches are not twisted, that they're all lined up. And then switch your stitch marker to the other needle. And we're going to work every round just like that round. Knit two, purl two, knit two, purl two. Here's a version I'm nearly finished with. You can see it has a nice stretch, and it's going to fit a lot of different heads. So, you'll want to knit until your hat is about eight and a half inches from the cast-on edge. Now to finish off our hat, if you're comfortable with the magic loop method, and you have a 32-inch circular needle, you can do that, or you can switch to double-pointed needles and do that. In either case, you're going to decrease your number of stitches for the next three rounds. So, the next three rounds will be knit two together, all the way around, knit two together, all the way around, knit two together, all the way around. And you'll just have a few stitches left. Then take a darning needle, cut your end, thread it onto the needle, run it through all the live stitches and cinch it up and weave in your tail on the inside of the hat. For this method, though, all you need is a darning needle, which you can get at virtually any craft store, and we're going to run it through all our stitches, and I'll show you how to do that. Cut your end, leaving about a yard. Thread the yarn onto your darning needle. We're going to now scoop up each stitch with our darning needle while taking it off the knitting needle. And you want to absolutely make sure that you do capture each stitch. Otherwise, it will unravel all the way down your hat. And we don't want that. So, do every stitch all the way around. When your darning needle fills up, go ahead and just pull the yarn through and keep on trucking. Cinch up your yarn to pull up that hole, and then poke your needle back through to the inside, flip it inside out, make sure it's nice and tight, and then weave your tail into the underside of your hat. And you are finished. If you want to put a pom-pom or something on it, you can, too. That's another option. Go ahead and give that a cut, too. And here's the finished hat. If you wanted to have a brim, just make it longer, and you'll be able to fold it up and you'll have a brim. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you like this video. If you would like a kit and the pattern for this hat, I do have that available on my website, expressionfiberarts.com. And while you're there, please sign up to my email newsletter. That's the best way to keep in touch with me. I will tell you about our big monthly yarn giveaways. I send out free knit and crochet patterns often, and I'll send you coupon codes to my yarn shop. Also, if you did like this video, please subscribe to my channel so you don't miss out on future episodes. And go ahead and comment below with any ideas you have for future episodes, and I'll do my best to make them happen. All right. Have a great day, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.