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V's Pompom Beanie

My wee sister, who I love and who therefore gets away with asking for very specific handmade Christmas presents at Thanksgiving, told me this year she really wanted a beanie with a pompom on it. She gave me a few reference pictures to work from, I picked some stash yarn (yes!! I know!! I did not buy any more yarn for this! It's a Thanksgivingmas miracle), and found a cute pattern with interesting-but-not-mind-bending textures.

A photo from above of a purple cabled beanie with a white crocheted edge, arranged flat on a green tablecloth next to a small matching ball of yarn and four thin wooden needles. A branch of bittersweet with orange-red and yellow berries and capsules leans over the right side of the beanie.
Aka Why Blocking Is Important.
(We also featured it in an Instagram post at work, so that was cool.)

A wide loop of purple knitted ribbing on a circular knitting needle, next to a ball of matching yarn on a pale desk.
Maybe if I ignore how wrong it is, it'll fix itself?
Unfortunately, I blindly followed instructions even as I realized that I was going to both run out of yarn and create a hat far too big for V, until I had three inches of ribbing and two repeats of the main pattern. Then I admitted defeat, and ripped everything out (sigh).

A close-up of about two inches of textured purple knitting, with alternate columns of thick cables and nubbly seed stitch, on striated wooden needles. The bottom edge of the knitting is anchored with a white chain stitch, and a small stitch marker with a silver roller skate suspended from a round rainbow-striped bead sits a few stitches in on the right needle.
Cutest stitch marker ever, though.
Because I was at work, and the ribbing needed to be worked on smaller needles than the main pattern, I restarted with a crochet chain provisional cast-on, removing two repeats of the main pattern to get a smaller hat (and save some yarn).

A purple knitted beanie, laid flat, with a deep border of ribbing below the textured crown, and a number of yarn ends sticking out. A silver yarn needle is threaded with one yarn end emerging from the bottom edge of the ribbing.
There are not quite enough objects in this photo to play I Spy.
The rest of the knitting was pretty uneventful, but I thought I'd take photos of how I weave in ends on stretchy projects all knitting is stretchy, Sabine, come on projects with ribbing at the edges. Step One: Get a metal needle of some kind. It feels nicer in the hand, and the point is much less prone to getting stuck and pulling your stitches.

A close-up of the edge of a section of purple knitted ribbing, with a silver yarn needle threaded with the free end of yarn and inserted under two stitches.
Stabby stabby.
Step Two: Weave the first end from the edge up to the base of the ribbing, following the path of the existing strands as much as possible. (Bonus points: this hat is designed to be worn with the brim folded or not as you please, so it needed to look nice on both sides.)

A close-up of the edge of a section of purple knitted ribbing, with a silver yarn needle threaded with the free end of yarn and inserted under one stitch, about an inche from the edge..
Stitchy stitchy.
Step Three: Spiral up one side of a column of knit stitches, matching the spiral of stitching to the direction and angle of the existing knitting, so it vanishes into the fabric.

A close-up of the intersection between the ribbing and the textured crown of a purple knitted beanie, showing three free yarn ends, one of which is threaded through a silver needle.
There are double ends everywhere because I was imitating worsted-weight with sock yarn.
Step Four: Tie a firm square knot with one of the handy ends you've just lined up with. Or take a few stitches sideways and tie the tail off around a knit stitch (if you're looking at the back of the work. That way, even if there's some distortion, it'll be less noticeable on the right side, where it'll be a slightly distorted purl stitch).

A close-up of purple knitted ribbing and textures, showing no free ends of yarn.
See?
Step Five: Trim the ends nice and short, and stretch the piece a few times each direction to settle the stitches.

Two circles of cheap saltine cracker box, each with a tiny circle cut from the center and a small wedge flaring from the inner circle to the outer edge. The top piece shows plain cardboard, while the bottom shows the bright yellow and blue package design of the cracker box.
If you don't have a cracker box, that's fine, cereal boxes work, too.
V also requested a big pompom on her hat, so I made a little template out of the conveniently-empty cracker box in my cabinet. (I also ended up making a splatter shield out of the box leftovers so I could more effectively pulverize chickpeas with my hand mixer without spraying them all over the kitchen, and it worked a treat.) The two pieces are so I could wiggle a needle between them before cutting all the threads, to tie everyone together neatly, and it's shaped like Pac-man so I don't have to stuff my bundle of yarn through the center to make each wrap.

Thick layers of purple yarn wrapped around the cardboard circles until they're almost completely obscured, with about an inch of the outer circumference at the right side cut. Some of the cut strands are fluffing up away from the card.
I have no idea if this is correct, but it's what I did.
Wrap wrap wrap wrap until bored (or until you run out of yarn, like I did). Make sure the tail(s) end up at the outer edge of the template—that's where you cut the wraps to transform the whole thing into a pompom. If you end at the center, you'll have strands that work themselves free, because they're only barely tied in place.

I snipped about a third of the wraps, then worked a curved needle threaded with the very last of the yarn between my two templates and tied it as tight as I dared. I snipped the rest of the way around, fluffed up the resulting pompom, and trimmed a few of the longest wraps so it wouldn't look like it was having a bad hair day.

A close-up of the very top of the purple knitted beanie, turned inside out over the pompom, with four ends of yarn laid out in a rough ex.
Can you tell I turned the overhead light on?
And then I cleverly didn't take a picture so you'd have to read this whole post! Aren't I sneaky? (It was too blurry to use, but of course I didn't realize until long after the fact.) I also nearly attached it to the inside of the hat, but luckily I noticed before I'd trimmed any threads.

I anchored the tails from tying the pompom the same way I'd anchored the other ends, by weaving them down a line of knit stitches and tying them off.

A purple knitted beanie with deep ribbing at the brim and alternate columns of thick cables and pebbled seed stitch on the crown, and a large yarn pompom on top. The hat is laid flat on an open copy of Kinuko Craft's Sleeping Beauty, with a small notebook and a teal zippered pouch with gold sequins.
Featuring one of the most beautiful picture books I own.
Et voila! Finished beanie, with a pompom that is satisfyingly the right size and fullness without any fudging (good thing, because all the yarn is gone). It's nice and warm, too.

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