The Return of the Knitter: Baby hat adventures!

It's been months and months since I've posted here, which I suppose is appropriate, since it was a good few years between that first scarf and the next thing I finished knitting.

For several years now, my mother's been making baby blankets for her new nieces and nephews and the children of friends. When I was home for Christmas in my second year of graduate school, all that knitting looked so cozy and soothing. When I got back to Maryland, I decided to give knitting another try.


This photo is from January 2006. This browny-red Wool-Ease sock was the first thing I ever knit WITHOUT LADDERS on double-pointed needles. Unfortunately, I had no idea what to do when I got to the heel; trying to wing it, in a new color, in the middle of a department seminar, was not the answer. I had cut the original working yarn, too, and wasn't all that sure how to re-join it, so this sock disappeared back into ball-of-yarn form. Still, I was completely hooked -- knitting in class, while reading or watching TV, any time I could squeeze it in.

I had a better success with a preemie-hat pattern my mother gave me. The yarn -- Sugar & Cream Fiesta Ombre -- was left over from a vain attempt, almost ten years earlier, at finishing a baby sweater. The hat was knit flat, with the top decreases cleverly concealed in garter stitch. I had no idea that seams in knitting were any different from regular sewn seams, but the hat came out looking nice anyway. The pompom was such fun to make!

Unfortunately, preemies' heads are SMALL, my knitting was tight, and my cast-on edge was tighter. This inelastic little hat fit just perfectly on my fist. It was definitely not going to fit the full-term baby it was intended for.

That baby's mother was headed off to Japan, so I knit furiously to finish the corrected version in time for her going-away party. This time, I cast on more stitches, more loosely, in soft, dusty blue acrylic yarn (Caron Simply Soft). I knit this hat in the round, I think, and ribbed it all the way up -- the spiraling caused by the decreases was a fun surprise.


Just as its cousin was tiny, this hat was far, far too big; I could wear it pretty comfortably myself. But Mama K was going away, and the baby might grow into it.


Suddenly, everyone I knew seemed to be having babies! I knit two more baby hats that spring, both in Bernat Baby Cotton. I followed a pattern from About.com to make the yellow tam. When I made the other one, I was trying to design a puffy tam shape from memory, partly inspired by Knitty's berry tart hat. It didn't resemble my imagined hat a bit, but I grew to like the shape I got, and really enjoyed the process of designing and re-designing it.