The Second Baby Hat

Some of you might remember that, early in the summer, I crossed a big threshold in my knitting skills: I learned how to knit with double pointed needles. I was very excited to make my first DPN project: a baby hat! I didn't really have a pattern and wound up making this disaster. Yikes!

As an aside, I've now realized just how lucky I am to have friends who are so supportive. One even referred to this train wreck as "cute" - seriously, I'm blessed to be so encouraged! I also received encouragement in the form of advice from another friend, Clover, who has much more knitting experience than I do. Clover first pointed out to me that my problem was using only 4 needles. This meant that, at any given time, there were stitches on three needles with one additional needle working. No surprise, then, that the top turned out somewhat triangular. Clover suggested that using 5 needles (requiring me to buy another set of four - those needle-making jerks!) would almost certainly help things. She also recommended I modify a pattern she'd used in the past. The pattern was to make a cute little hat with a stem top. I was looking for something simpler, but Clover suggested I could make a few changes and get just what I wanted, and she was definitely right! With a few simple adjustments, my pattern was ready to go. Here's the result!

 Ahhhh! It actually looks like a hat!

 Here's a view of it standing up by itself. Yep, this hat is so well constructed that it can stand up on its own!

 This is the inside. I know its not meant to be viewed from this angle, but I think it looks neat even from this angle. It's something that looks nice enough it could be given as a gift - which is, of course, the reason I want to make baby-sized hats in the first place!

And here's a view of the top! I made a little mistake in modifying the pattern to remove the stem that's supposed to come out of the center, so it's got a little more of a nipple top than I had intended. It's not super obvious, and I made this one just for practice anyways, so I'm thinking about how to eliminate that feature next time.

Overall, the only real surprise I encountered with this finished product is that it's bigger than I had expected. I used a different gauge yarn, which is probably to blame, though the gulf between what I planned and what I got is probably even bigger than the yarn alone can explain. It was my plan to make the hat the right size for a newborn. Instead, when I showed it to Ginny, she put it on 10 month old Miss M, for whom it was basically too big! She told me she thought it would probably be just the right size for 3 year old Mr. O. Wow! I've got to do more to investigate what size would be right for a newborn and then make adjustments accordingly. Either way, this one makes me proud!