I seem to be slowly working my way through all of the patterns in Ann Budd’s ‘Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns’. I’ve been under the weather the past few days, which always prompts me to knit with acrylic, and I made this tam.
This is the adult medium sized tam, knit on size 6US needles out of Lions Brand Wool-Ease (80% acrylic, 20% wool) worsted weight. I like the colors, but it doesn’t fit me very well. I used a k2,p2 ribbing for the brim, and the spiral option for the top. I forgot that the acrylic would pull in less then a pure wool – I should have used a k1,p1 ribbing, I think.
Knit-Write 
I’m up to making hats in the handy book of patterns. Pg 27 has a chart showing how many stitches to decrease: “work 1 rnd, dec (evenly spaced)”.
Can anyone suggest a method for “decreasing evenly”? For example, if I start with CO 44 and need to decrease 12 stitches evenly, is there a method for calculating this? Am I missing something obvious? I feel like I’ve failed an IQ test!