Stripes!

So, as some of you might know, Ginny recently had a birthday. It was very exciting! I was able to get things together to host a party for her, which was a lot of fun. I knew back in November what kind of gift I wanted to make for her, but with everything going on, I got delayed.

A while ago, Ginny and I went shopping and I noticed her admiring a multicolored scarf that had a lot of pink in it. While I could have gone back to buy it, I decided I could make one just as easily. I found this yarn back in December, which I knew right away would be just perfect! I love that it has pink and green, but the shading is so dark it won't only be wearable on Easter. Gladly, winter here seems like it's starting to wind down, but hopefully she'll still get some use before it starts to warm up.

I spent some time figuring out exactly what kind of stitches I wanted to do and the appropriate size needles. In the end, I used 10" aluminum needles in size 6.

 I bought two skeins of the yarn because I really wanted to make sure I had enough to make a generously sized scarf without having to worry about going back for more. As I started making progress on it, I realized that I was going to have a TON extra.

So... I decided to take the only logical step and make a hat! If you've been hanging out around here for a while, you might recall that I've been trying hard to learn how to make hats for babies using double pointed needles ("DPNs"). Using a DPN allows the fabric to be knit together into a tube, rather than knitting one flat piece and stitching up a seam to make it round. Having done the "flat" method before, I decided I really wanted to find a pattern and use DPNs.

I did some research and found this pattern. I modified it only a tiny bit. I used a different yarn, though I figured the two were of about the same texture. The pattern also recommends making a total of 49 rounds, binding off in the 50th round. I wound up doing 51 rounds, binding off in the 52nd because I was a little bit nervous it would otherwise be too short. This pattern was a LOT different than the baby hat patterns I've used in the past because it started at the top (crown) of the hat, with several rows of increasing stitches. All the other patterns I've used start at the bottom and decrease stitches to shape the crown. It was definitely intimidating, but I'm pretty proud of how it turned out!

As you can see, it's not quite perfect.  The pattern suggested starting out with a total of 4 needles, carrying stitches on 3 and working with the final one. I was initially nervous about how that was going to work, since I've had trouble with triangularly shaped hats in the past. However, in this case, I think it worked well especially because there are 6 places (rather than 3) where stitches are increased in each round. Once I had the total number of 88 stitches on my three needles, I decided to add a fourth carrying needle because I was worried about dropping too many. Unfortunately, I still dropped some, and in the future, I might even add a fifth!

All along while I was working on the hat, I was pretty sure it was going to be too small. It might simply be the way its shaped with the four carrying needles, but I seriously thought I was going to wind up with a hat fit for a little kid. Imagine my surprise when I got it off the needles and decided to try it on!

 My hair's a bit of a mess, but the hat fits and that's what's important! Hooray!!!

Here we have the finished set of stripes - hope Ginny loves it!