More baby knits and a grown-up hat

I'm finally clicking 'publish' on a handful of posts that I wrote ages ago and failed to put live.

This one is to share a flurry of hat and scarf knits...  (I realise I may have a slight hat problem).

First up - I made this teeny little robin hat.

This was inspired by a lovely lady called Ange Smith on Ravelry, who won a Coats competition to design a Christmas jumper. Her gorgeous robins in the snow design was turned into a free pattern that you can see and download here.


Given that the chances of me knitting a whole jumper anytime soon are close to zero, I asked Ange's permission to make a baby hat inspired by her design - and she told me to go right ahead. So I recreated a down-scaled version of the chart in Excel, with decreases for the crown.

My hat is made from Drops Baby Merino, a sport-weight yarn that's lovely and soft. Knitted on 3mm needles it turned out very cute but - alas - a bit too small for my 5 mth old, so it found its way instead to a newborn who arrived in December.

Lots of people have subsequently asked for a copy of my amended chart, so I contacted Coats and they gave me permission to share it freely, on the condition that I make it clear that this is not a Coats design, but my own adapted work. If anyone wants a copy, you can download it here. (Just bear in mind that it was created for my own use and has not been through a team of pattern testers).


Next up is a little angora baby hat made from a gorgeous, floofy hand-spun angora that's been languishing in my stash for years. 

I held the yarn double to get DK weight and case on 64 stitches and knit in the round. 

The result is lovely and soft, like a fluffy cloud, but not too sneezy.

The ribbing is P2, K2 and the cable pattern is a very simple 6-row repeat of:
 -  Row 1: P2, K6 repeat to end
 -  Rows 2-5: repeat Row 1
 -  Row 6: P2, C6F repeat to end

You could easily upsize the hat by casting on additional stitches in multiples of 8 and knitting until it is as tall as you want.

Finish using 3-needle bind off and add pom poms.

Next up is this stripey baby scarf. 

Another weeny little knit that I couldn't resist making after I discovered a rainbow-hued multi-pack of tiny 10g yarn balls in Tiger.

It’s a fairly naff acrylic but what the hell. I just cast on 20 stitches and striped the colours in a K1, P1 pattern, striping every second row. 

I ended up doing 18 stripes of each colour and used the leftovers to make tiny pom-poms.

It’s being modelled here by my 8 month old but I doubt she’ll use it much until next winter, by which time she’ll be walking (and hopefully less likely to suck it to death or get tangled up in it). I might try to make a little hat to go with it - it would be so cheering on a grey, winter day.

Last, but not least, is this fair isle hat that I made for myself!

I used Drops Merino Extra Fine, which is lovely and not at all itchy (hooray!). The pattern is also based on a Drops one called Fideli, but I took a few liberties with it and amended the fair isle every now and then to show off my colours better.

I am very pleased with it and so far it's had loads of wear through the cold months.