finishing details...

Attach the band to hood: bring out the needles, same number as the ribbed band (100 stitches). The hood edge has 120 sts so decrease 20 sts (100 divided by 20 is 5) which means you want to double up on every 5th needle as you are hanging. What I do to make it easy is go across the needle bed and bring every 5th needle slightly forward (start this on the 3rd needle from the right edge so you don’t have doubled sts at either end) and then using the 3-prong tool, hang 3 sts.

Pick up the next 3 sts and double up on the needle at right that already has one stitch. Pick up next 3 sts and hang on new needles. Continue across the row, doubling on every second pick up and it will work out perfectly! Remove the waste yarn, take the ribbed band, turn it and hang it stitch for stitch. Pull the band sts through the hood edge, manually knit loose row and chain off. Graft the back seam and try it on. Should be good to go.
Seam all the rest of the poncho and then pin the hood in place and try it on again just to be sure – the hood has to be deep enough from the top of the head to the neckline so it doesn’t hold the garment up off the shoulders and the front opening should be big enough for your face and most

important, the neck opening has to be large enough for the head to fit through! If any of these are compromised, you need to make another hood, fixing the issues but I’m good to go!  
You could stitch this in by hand but who’s kidding who? I’m doing it on the LK! Because it is a circle, start at one end and do it in sections.  There are no open stitches, it’s all closed edge on both pieces. I want the seam to be on the inside, so am putting right sides together, hanging the body first, right side facing me and then the hood piece, wrong facing. I leave it all pinned together from the try-on and just un-pin the section I’m working on.
To keep track that each side will be the same, start off figuring out how many needles for the entire neckline, so hold the centre back at 0, pull the centre front to the right – I got 55 needles for half the neckline. It’s my experience that the back-neck area of any garment should be pulled in slightly and the width of the back neck was 20 sts half plus the 3 cm/1 inch drop and I want to reduce that width slightly,

so I hang it over 20-0-20 needles. Put the shoulder seam at #21 right and then stretch out the front neck to the centre of the garment and hang the edge, half the outside edge stitch. This will likely be a bit less than the original 55, mine was at #50. Now, hang the hood section, from the centre front to the first shoulder.

Manually knit fairly loose sts – not quite all the way back to ‘B’ but close (just doing a single row to join and cast-off all in one – no need for the extra bulk of a joining row and casting off!) - to the shoulder and then chain those off except the last one. Hang the back neck, over to the opposite shoulder (#20 left), and then the hood. On this section, for the 16-0-16 section, the loose stitch for the chain cast-off is a little smaller to further draw in the back neck. Finish off the other side. Throw it over your head to make sure all is still good and breathe a huge sigh of relief!
Got ‘er done with still plenty of wearing days left for this season!
Hope this all makes sense!