Friday, January 22, 2016

Rainbow Chevron Baby Hat

When I purchased 6 rainbow colors for Boogaloo's Rainbow Unicorn Woobie, I knew that I wanted to make something fantastic with the leftover yarn.  Why not make a little matching rainbow beanie?  My free chevron baby hat kitting pattern is a great alternative to simple stripes and will look adorable as a rainbow.


I used shine sport in Serrano (red - 2 g, 4 yards), Clementine (orange - 4 g, 9 yards), Dandelion (Yellow - 5 g, 11 yards), Macaw (green - 5 g, 11 yards), French Blue (blue - 5 g, 11 yards), and Iris (purple - 6 g, 13 yards) and size 3 (3.25 mm) knitting needles.  (All weights are rounded to the nearest gram and yard).

Like the unicorn woobie, I'm going to start with purple and work my way up to red.  Depending on my striping calculations, I could even start with white.  The pattern hat has 20 stripes, with 40 rounds (the bind off might have an extra round or so, but that is negligible for our calculations.)  I could have two stripes of 6 rows and four rounds of 7 rows with six colors.  Alternatively, I could do 4 rounds white followed by 4 rounds each of PBGYOR that would be 28 rounds.  The last bit could then be white.  Decisions, decisions...

Enough musing.  Here is my plan.  The CO was not considered part of the stripes, just as the last round of decreases wasn't either.  I'm going to do 6 rounds of purple (not including CO), 7 each of Blue, Green, Yellow and Orange and then finish up with Red.


The crown decreases start after stripe 15 in the pattern, or 30 rows.  This means the decreases will start in the middle of the orange round.  At the end of the yellow stripe 27 rows will have been knit.

The orange is the only color I'm worried about running out of.  The first purple stripe used 6.1 g and I have 5.4 g of orange.  The second stripe (blue) used 5 g exactly, so I do have some hope.  Hopefully these decreases will conserve me some yarn or else I'll have to cut out a stripe there.  Cross your fingers!

Before the crown decreases start

Yay!  We made it through the orange stripe with 1.3 g to spare!!  

After the orange stripe has been completed - 7 rows!

Before bedtime I wove in the loose ends and then took a peak at the rainbow chevron knit hat.   When, oh when, will I start weaving in these ends as I work on the project instead of waiting for the end?  

Before blocking

I wet blocked the hat by soaking it for 20 min in cool water and then laid it flat on a blocking mat.  No pinning was required, I just positioned it into the shape I wanted.


When the hat finished blocking, I had to try it on my favorite newborn model, Dede (Lucky's toy dog.)  


If the hat is too long for your baby, you can flip up the edge and it still looks really cute!  


In a matter of weeks I'll meet my newest baby boy and will get to see him snuggle with his Unicorn Woobie and matching hat in person!