When writing a review of the book Itty-Bitty Hats: cute and cuddly caps to knit for babies and toddlers by Susan B. Anderson, I fell in love with the Baby Marley Hat pattern (see previous post for the full review). I knew that I needed to cast on immediately.
I knit the 0-6 month size hat with Shine Sport yarn on size 6 knitting needles. I used 7 different colors, but decided to do a different color progression that was in the pattern. I didn't preweigh each of my shine sport colors since I don't remember what many of them actually are. Plus, many of these colors are discontinued anyway! I will weigh the hat at the end to get total yardage. Before weaving in loose ends (and before embellishments) hat weighs 34 g. Before weaving together, the topper weighs 12g, so 46 g total consumed.
Notes from the pattern
- 14 rows before starting striping pattern. (the 2" brim)
- Before starting decreases, I completed the entire stripe and stitch pattern as written + 1 plain row (in orange.)
- After row 15 of decreases (P1, K2tog), I added 1 row of seed stitch. I did not switch colors between row 15.5 and 16 (even though with the 4 row stripes I should have.)
- The way the topper pattern is written, you end up with one end of the yarn at the point of a curl. This is going to be a pain to weave back through, and will be little help in securing the curls to the top of the hat. Therefore, Rather than making each of the 4 pieces separately and then coiling them together, I made all 24 pieces on one long strand.
- I also didn't turn and knit the last stitch left on the needles before each cast on of the topper. This kept the curls pointing in alternate directions (it looks a lot like seaweed) which I think will help keep things more "random" once I sew them down.
I selected the colors green, yellow, purple and teal for the topper. I would have loved to use the terracotta orange, but I ran out of that color on the body of the hat. I don't really know how to describe how I sewed the topper together, but here are some pictures I took of the different steps. Once I had threaded each little piece together, I pulled the yarn tight and tied the ends off... BAM there was a perfect little Marley topper.
My only complaint with the book is that I would have liked to see final measurements for each of the hats, or at least seen a section on sizing for babies. I know this hat will fit a baby no problem, but I am not sure how young of a baby it could work for.