My oldest friend (that is, the friend I’ve had the longest) just welcomed her second child at the end of March. I started knitting for this baby late last summer.
First I decided to knit a blanket. I made up this log-cabin design as I went along, and managed to knit this entirely from stash. All of the yarn is pima/tencel DK weight; about half of it is left over from Sylvia’s Anouk pinafore (for which I was very cautious and aggressively over-ordered yarn), and the rest is left over from other projects.
I actually finished the blanket over Thanksgiving weekend and thought I was done. But about a month ago I came across some Wool-Ease in my stash, in a nice muted mauve/pink color, and decided the baby (which we now all knew would be a girl) needed a sweater, too. This is the Simple Boatneck by Debbie Bliss, my favorite go-to sweater for babies and toddles. And of course once the sweater was done I needed to make a hat to go with it, right?
Now that you’ve knit Elizabeth Zimmerman’s famous February baby sweater and the more recent February lady, complete your collection with this February baby-sweater-style beret.
There are lots of other free great beret patterns out there. Take a look at the Grace Lace Beret and this fairisle beret.
Mad for short rows? Then here’s a hat for you.
A few other hats of interest: a button-tab hat, the Love Nugget hat (you know you want to click on the link just to see what it is),
If you’re knitting for small heads, check these out: a watermelon hat; a slouchy toddler hat, using sock yarn (the pattern is in adult sizes, too); a clochette baby hat that looks a bit like a flower/fruit cap; a hat with adorable blue bunnies around it; and a tassled beanie.
Honestly, this bike helmet ear warmer looks pretty dorky. But I bet it does a good job keeping ears warm. And when it gets really, really cold outside, most people don’t care whether or not their bundling up makes them look dorky–they just want to stay warm.
The name of this pattern (and the blog on which it resides) alone makes me want to knit it. I give you the Brainmonster Hat!
After my last knitting-related post, I was still feeling pretty antsy to cast on for a non-sock knitting project. I started two and have already completed both of them.
First up: a bonnet based on the one Lyra wore in The Golden Compass. The story behind this yarn is a sad one. My friend Gina has a colleague whose mother died recently, and the colleague gave Gina her mother’s yarn. There were two balls of Lion Brand Jiffy Thick-and-Quick, and when Gina was at my house last week telling me the story, she asked if I wanted one. We both decided to knit charity hats with them (part of our admission to Knitters Day Out this fall), and I like to think that her friend’s mother would’ve have liked to see the yarn used this way. This was a very quick knit, done in maybe an hour and a half.
Next, I set out to knit something for Maggie, the daughter of one of my college friends. I’ve knit Maggie a few things already (a jester hat and a novelty-yarn scarf), both of which she’s appreciated. She just turned six in March, so I thought I’d make a foray into full-on garments this time. I started with the vest pattern in The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns: Basic Designs in Multiple Sizes & Gauges
(a very excellent book that belongs in every knitter’s library) and tweaked it here and there. I opted for a button-front style (rather than a pullover) and knit it in the round out of yarn I’d gotten in Vermont over the past few years. This was a lot of fun to knit!
The result? Apparently, it was a hit! It arrived on an 85-degree day, and Maggie insisted on wearing it anyway. As you can see, it mostly fits yet still has lots of growing room, so she should get to enjoy it for at least a couple of years!
Two friends of mine just had their first babies. One friend is someone I was close to in high school, saw a lot in early grad school (he lived in the same town where I was in school), and fell out of touch with for several years. We’ve recently resumed contact, and when I learned that he and his wife were expecting their first baby this month, I knew I just had to knit a hat for them. Their daughter arrived last week, and I knit the little red strawberry cap for her in one three-hour stretch; it will go out in the mail this week.
The other friend is someone I met in Oregon many years ago. A little over a year ago I made hats for her and her husband as wedding gifts (and apparently they still get a lot of wear—hooray!). Their first child, a little girl, was born just over a week ago. Not long before that, I sent them a sweater and hat for the baby: a simple boatneck and rolled-brim hat, both from Debbie Bliss and both done in Rowan All-Seasons Cotton left over from Sylvia’s first Wallaby—and both, unfortunately, unphotographed before I packed them up. As soon as I’d heard that little Orla had arrived, I just had to knit her another hat. The pink raspberry hat is for her, and I knit it in a not-newborn size, so she’ll have something to grow into.
Both hats were done in Lamb’s Pride worsted on the bottom, and Knit Picks Wool of the Andes worsted on the top. Lamb’s Pride is the very first yarn I ever knit with (and I did three garter-stitch scarves in a row with it), and I’d almost forgotten how much I love this yarn. Once I knit through my stash, I may just have to plan a project in Lamb’s Pride…
Jan attended a costume-required Halloween party last weekend. Once he decided on his costume earlier in the week, I knit this hat for him in two evenings.
Can any of you guess what it is?
(By the way, Gina and Katie aren’t allowed to answer this question, because they both saw me knitting the hat and we discussed it at length.)
Halloween is around the corner, so start knitting up some pumpkins with a pattern than works with any yarn, gauge, and needles you like.
After that, it’s time for Thanksgiving. And really, what is Thanksgiving without turkey finger puppets?
If you’re trimming a tree, don’t forget your own handknit-and-felted Flying Spaghetti Monster ornament. And if you’re not a tree decorator, well, I’m sure this little fellow can fit in just about anywhere.
Here’s another tree-trimming idea: knit mini-mittens. I bet they would look cute hanging from an I-cord across the top of a window, too.
The Jingles Bells hat comes in sizes to fit infants through adults, so you can torture delight everyone you know with the gift of festive headgear.
If you’re feeling particularly sadistic, whip up a knitted baby Santa suit and stuff a defenseless infant in it before he or she is told enough to resist.
It’s never a bad time of year to knit hats. If it’s summer now where you live, you can start planning for ways to keep your head warm when the mercury drops in a few months. And if you’re in a cold spot right now, well, take comfort in the knowledge that hats knit up pretty fast and you can be sporting new headgear in no time at all.
Like a retro look? Not afraid to toss your wool knitting into a washing machine full of hot water? This felted cloche may be just the ticket for you.
If you eschew head-hugging hats and yearn for something long enough to trip over, then give this stocking cap a try. The pattern is available for both kids and adults. They’re both based on the hat worn by Schwartz in one of my favorite holiday movies, A Christmas Story.
And here’s a whole page of free hat patterns, if you’re looking for more options. One thing I love about this page is the use of thumbnails and not just design names. So when looking at the list it’s easy to tell at a glance if something appeals to you rather than have to navigate to another page to see the images.
One of Jan’s coworkers is a guy named Frank. He’s always very friendly whenever Sylvia and I stop by the office to meet Jan for lunch, and never takes it personally when Sylvia gets a case of the toddler “shies” and refuses to talk to or look at him.
He’s a hardcore Mac user and an amateur photographer, so when he learned about my own interest in photography, he started sending digital photography books home with Jan. For me to keep. What a nice guy.
I wanted to repay his kindness, so with Sylvia’s help (she chose the projects: “Frank needs mittens and a hat!”) I did some knitting for him. After verifying that he can wear wool and loves blue, I used Patons SWS in Natural Indigo, with some stripes in Natural Wood. (I should mention that I am forever in debt to Lynnette, my upstream SP9 partner, for introducing me to this fabulous yarn.)
The mittens and the hat are both straight out of Ann Budd’s Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns.
I knit the largest size in each pattern (making Jan try them on from time to time), and I think that worked out pretty well.
Sylvia and I went to Jan’s office last Friday, and she eagerly presented the box to Frank. I’d wrapped it in some white packing paper saved from IKEA, and she’d decorated the box with ink stamps, stickers, and crayon markings—including an S for Sylvia and an F for Frank. He seemed pretty pleased, so I think this is one knitted gift that will definitely be worn!
After the holidays, I was on a gift-knitting roll, so i just kept going. This tam is my first finished object of 2008. It’s a gift for my brother-in-law, for whom I knit mittens in the same yarn (Patons SWS) for Christmas. His Christmas gift to me was Ann Budd’s Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns. As I flipped through it, he mentioned that he really liked the tam. “If I knit one for you, would you wear it?” I asked. He assured me he would, so a few days later I picked up the yarn for it and cast on. This was a very fast knit and a lot of fun, too. I intended this as a birthday gift for him, but since his birthday is in March and he may be heading to Nigeria to shoot a film any day now, I should probably get this in the mail to him pronto. (By the way, I don’t have a photo of him wearing the mittens yet. But if you’d like to see what he’s done with other handknits I’ve given him, look here.)
My next project was a baby blanket for a neighbor whose second child was due in mid-January. I had some Bernat Cottontots yarn in a neutral color (light cream) and figured its machine-washability would make it a good candidate for baby gear. I’d always been sort of interested in the log cabin blankets in Mason-Dixon Knitting but really put off by the garish color combinations the book’s authors seem to favor. So I decided to give log cabining a try—in monochrome.
I really, really like how this turned out, even with a few mistakes here and there (which weren’t discovered until well after I’d turned the next corner). The next time I do this, i think I’ll try a “smoother” yarn (the Cottontots has a twist to it that makes it appear a little textured), and I’ll be more careful when picking up stitches at the corners—something I didn’t figure out how to do properly until the blanket was halfway finished. Even though this blanket consists of miles and miles of garter stitch, the fact that every eighteen rows I’d bind off a section and pick up stitches to start another kept the knitting interesting.
I had five skeins of the Cottontots yarn when I started, and when I was near the end of the last one I called it quits on the blanket. It wasn’t quite 30″ on each side, but it did have symmetry (each side had six blocks), and it seemed a good size already. And I was ready to be finished with it. I used the rest of the Cottontots (plus a little bit of green dishcloth cotton when the Cottontots ran out) to whip up this little hat from Baby Knits for Beginners, by Debbie Bliss. I really love this pattern—it’s one I’ve knit many times before.
(Sylvia was napping when I took these photos, so I had to find a different model. And no, the stuffed emperor penguin chick did not sign a release form.)
It took some thinking, but I finally found a good project for one of the skeins of yarn Sylvia gave me for Christmas: I made a hat for her. It’s more like a bonnet, actually (and that’s what we’ve been calling it), and it’s similar to one wore by the character Lyra in the recent film The Golden Compass.
I haven’t seen that movie yet (I’ll probably wait until the DVD is out for that one), but I’ve long loved Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Lyra is a fabulous personality—so full of fire and determination and cleverness. Sometimes Sylvia reminds me of her a bit. And of Arya Stark. Especially in the willfulness department. (Has anyone else realized that two-year-olds are master tautologists? “I don’t want to do X because I don’t want to!”)
Sylvia wore her new hat Friday morning to our weekly playgroup meeting, and when I was asked where I found the pattern, I honestly couldn’t remember anything beyond “online somewhere.” (Isn’t that where we find pretty much everything these days?) But I’ve now tracked it down. The pattern is available at Froggie Meanie, at Marmalade, and on the Lion Brand website. All of those patterns are free, and they include both child and adult sizing. I am thinking about making one for myself, too. After all, I’ve got another skein of thick yarn that Sylvia gave me…and what else am I going to do with size 19 needles, anyway?
