Knitting for babies is an entire cottage industry, but I often find myself bored with the options, and yearning for projects that don’t involve pastels and super soft acrylics. Meanwhile, the hip young urbanite knitting scene is filled with what often are essentially baby projects (albeit really hip and cute) worn by adults: butterfly scarves, fuzzy booties, newsboy caps (no matter what you say, Britney did NOT successfully bring this style from paperboys to adults), and yes, honeycomb-bumblebee-buttoned hats. There are so many cute projects in the stitch and bitch series that I would not personally wear, but would be perfect for a child. But wait–the pattern is for an adult head! Much like transposing in band camp, it does take a bit of ‘da maths skillz to rework adult patterns into baby patterns, but it’s so worth it.
If you keep in mind that baby hats are roughly 14” in circumference and 5.5” high, then pattern modification should be no problem as long as you know your yarn and needle gauge.
I recently completed my first baby hat for my nephew. It’s modified from the pattern “Bzzz Hat for Queen Bees” on page 45 of the “Stitch and Bitch Nation”. I used a worsted weight blue cotton yarn and size 8 double pointed needles (DPN) and did the following:
Cast on 70 stitches (dividing the stitches between 3 DPN)
Knit one round
Purl (reverse stockinette stitch) for 4 rounds.
Knit for 2 rounds
Repeat 3 times, then
Purl for 4 rounds
Now you’re going to decrease the circumference for the top of the hat:
Knit 8, knit 2 together for one round
Knit 1 round
Purl 4 rounds
Knit 7, knit 2 together for 1 round
Knit 1 round
Purl 4 rounds
Knit 6, knit 2 together for 1 round
Knit 1 round
Purl 4 rounds
Knit 5, knit 2 together for 1 round
Knit 1 round
Purl 4 rounds
There should be somewhere near 40 stitches on your needles that you can now bind off by pulling the tail through all the remaining stitches with a yarn needle. Pull tail tight and weave through inside stitching and tie off.
Adorn with bee buttons found at most craft stores.
It’s delightfully cute, even on cats:
2 Comments
I’d be interested to hear what Ms. Knitting Corner things of this:
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/006526.php
My first instinct was to inform you of my birthday next year (June 16). Upon thinking about it a bit more, I’m not sure how it would work if you say, messed up and had to undo some stiches. The redone stitches would then be counted twice? Or what if you simply couldn’t get your needle under the yarn and had to stab your needles together twice for one stich instead of just once. It seems to be made for the error-free knitter, which I am certianly not. Most importantly though, they don’t seem to come in uber-hip bamboo needles. And we all know that if you can’t knit in style, then your project won’t be as pretty.
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