Annie's Knitting Blog: Why I have 2 kids

And why it is advantageous for my knitting! :)

I started with this beautiful Zen String - Parfait colorway on Bliss bulky. I wanted to make a hat for Olivia - she hasn't gotten one yet, and she needed a second hat. I wanted it to have earflaps, be very warm, and have a crazy cute top to it.

Yarn:

So, I begin searching on Ravelry for a pattern. I can't really find any one pattern that I like, but I decide to try my hand at combining 2. For the earflap part, I use the same Ky Baby Knits pattern I used for Aubrie's little pink hat. For the top, I wanted to do the "jester" top from this baby hat. All I needed was a multiple of 6 in order to do the top.

It all worked out quite nicely - I had a gauge of 3 sts/inch on size 8 needles (a nice thick fabric) and measured Olivia's head at an amazing 22" circumference, I could follow the "newborn" sizing on the hat and use 60 sts. Perfect! No need to fudge where the earflaps should go and such. The pattern calls for the strings to be a 4-stitch I-cord but I found that too bulky so I went with 3. I also made the earflaps 12 stitches instead of 10.

I didn't really have a clue on how tall to make the hat - I settled on about 5-5.5 inches. With bulky yarn you get there quickly! I divided the top, kitchener stitch to make the jester top, and some creative "sewing" to close the hole in the top. Voila! Hat done. Took me just about a day.

Hmm. The hat was very cute, but awfully short. The kitchener jester top took up a lot of the hat's height, and I hadn't thought of that. It didn't look like it would even come close to fitting over Olivia's head and actually covering her ears.

But, lucky for me, I have a slightly smaller child too! The hat fits Evelyn nicely - it could use a bit more height, too, but I really don't feel like frogging the whole thing and redoing it.

So, I CO hat #2 and make the top ridiculously tall. Probably close to 7". It looks huge as I'm knitting it, like it would fit Brad. But the end result is...