I love using hat looms too. I would stronly recommend that if anyone wants to but just one loom then they go for the teen/small adult one (usually the second largest one available). It is big enough fror me and small enough for my 4 year old as it makes such a soft stretchy hat and makes life easy for those in SA who are trying to distribute to a variety of heads.
If you are good with a knitting needle or a crochet hook you will have no trouble with the loom. In fact you might recognize it from your childhood days as a variation of a spool type device with 4 nails at the top that we used to make a long "knitted" tail that you could coil into a rug. I taught myself to use it by watching a YouTube video of which there are many. Just search knitting loom.
There are several sizes. The smallest one which is generically blue (in the US) is for newborns. The red one which has 31 pegs is the one used for 1-5 year old hats. There is a green one which is larger for the next size up-adult and then an even larger one (I forget the color) for really big heads. Of course there are also wooden ones but the peg numbers are usually consistent from company to company. Jeanne is right about not wrapping the pegs to tightly. Have fun.
Ladies a knitting loom is very easy to use. The problem is that some instructions are needlessly complicated. Find instructions you can live with...online or in print. There's some loom instructions I won't touch, very confusing. All you are doing is wrapping the yarn end around the little peg on the side (to hold it) then looping the yarn around each peg in turn. You are literally wrapping each peg. You do it so the yarn crosses itself on the inside of the peg and you've got a single line of yarn across the outside of the peg facing you. You just go round the loom twice so there's two lines of yarn on each peg. Then you take the loom "hook", it comes with it-or a crochet hook but I prefer the hook) and lift the lower of the two threads over the top of the higher thread and over the top of the peg and "off" the peg so it falls to the inside. Voila, one stitch made. You go round and round the loom like this, the work falling to the inside, remembering when there's only one wrap of yarn facing you that it's time to wrap a second "row' of yarn around the loom again, so you've got something to lift over. I know there's videos online too. :) Do not wrap the pegs tightly or you will never get the lower thread over the upper thread and off the peg. I know I've done it! :P Wrap gently, loosely. It looks much harder than it is, believe me. :)
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I love using hat looms too. I would stronly recommend that if anyone wants to but just one loom then they go for the teen/small adult one (usually the second largest one available). It is big enough fror me and small enough for my 4 year old as it makes such a soft stretchy hat and makes life easy for those in SA who are trying to distribute to a variety of heads.
Jeni
If you are good with a knitting needle or a crochet hook you will have no trouble with the loom. In fact you might recognize it from your childhood days as a variation of a spool type device with 4 nails at the top that we used to make a long "knitted" tail that you could coil into a rug. I taught myself to use it by watching a YouTube video of which there are many. Just search knitting loom.
There are several sizes. The smallest one which is generically blue (in the US) is for newborns. The red one which has 31 pegs is the one used for 1-5 year old hats. There is a green one which is larger for the next size up-adult and then an even larger one (I forget the color) for really big heads. Of course there are also wooden ones but the peg numbers are usually consistent from company to company. Jeanne is right about not wrapping the pegs to tightly. Have fun.
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