Knit Headbands! (with crochet flowers!)

Sometimes you just don’t want a hat. If you’re like me and wear your hair up all the time, hats just aren’t practical, and besides, they give you hat-hair. But I hate having cold ears in the winter, and earmuffs, well, I don’t know about earmuffs—they seem suspicious. (And they’re uncomfortable.) So the logical alternative is.... a knit headband!

First I knit one for my mom because... have I mentioned how many hats I’ve made for my mom that don’t fit her head? We’ve got large heads in this family, but it’s not because we’re arrogant, it’s because we’re smart. (Or at least that’s what I like to tell myself.) Anyway, I have this goal to make my mom the perfect winter headwear, and I almost always fail. Oh well.

So I made a knit headband for my mom. I used a soy-blend yarn that she got for me—very fancy. It was super easy; I just knit in stockinette from the button end to the buttonhole end with a couple stitches of garter stitch on each side. Oh yeah, and throw in some increases and decreases in there too. And here are pictures, cute right?

Nice slouch!

A headband for my mom!

 The only thing really worth mentioning is the pattern for the buttonhole. I used the Bestest Buttonhole (truly!) pattern from Stitch ‘N Bitch: Superstar Knitting. It’s the only buttonhole I have ever knit that doesn’t totally suck. I recommend looking at the book because it’s got pictures, but here’s basically what you do:

1. Work to where you want the buttonhole.

2. Slip the next stitch knitwise. (This means act like you are about to knit the stitch, but then just pass it to the needle without pulling a loop through.)

3. Bring the yarn to the front.

4. Slip the next stitch knitwise.

5. Pass first slipped stitch over second stitch and drop off needle. You’ve bound off your first stitch!

Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you’ve bound off enough stitches.

6. Slip the last stitch from the right hand needle to the left hand needle. Turn work around.

7. Cast on (purlwise) one more stitch than you bound off. Turn work around.

Now marvel at that fancy buttonhole!

Well, I liked the one I made for my mom so much that I made one for myself with some alpaca yarn I had been hoarding. (Alpaca yarn is so wonderful... sigh.) And aren’t those wooden buttons cute? Kelly got them for me, and I honestly want to use them on everything.

Wooden button <3

Oh and the flowers? Well... I just sort of made them up. It’s crocheted... you can figure it out or look at a book or something.

Pattern: mine (with the Bestest Buttonhole!)