There was a whole ball of green yarn left over when I knitted this dress for a one-year-old, plus some of the fuchsia pink too. That’s all I need by way of a reason to knit a matching Something. The Something is going to be a hat to keep the little one’s head warm as we go into the Autumn.
I want the hat to match the dress. Conveniently, the lace pattern around the neckline of this top-down, Fairy Leaves design widens from 6 stitches per leaf repeat to 22 stitches over the course of its 30 rows. Which should mean that I don’t have to do much else in the way of shaping if I knit the hat from the crown downwards.
Having the knitted dress to hand has helped the design process enormously, because I’ve been able to measure several repeats of the leafy lace and work out exactly what’s required for a matching hat. The baby’s head measures 41cm, and each leaf is about 9cm at its widest point, so I am working just 4 repeats around the hat – 5 would be far too big and a little negative ease is desirable in a hat to stop it falling off. If, when I get to the bottom of the lace, I find that the hat’s circumference is too tight to stretch to 41cm, I shall just keep increasing for a few rounds of stocking stitch before working a pink moss stitch band.
To get to the start of the lace – where I need to have 6 x 4 = 24 stitches – I’ve cast on four stitches and then increased at four places around the hat in four of the first seven rounds. By my reckoning, those seven rounds, plus the 30 lace rounds and the 6 rounds for the band, will give a hat that is the right height. But I’m prepared to pull it all out and start again if necessary, because it won’t take long to make such a small item in DK.
