There's a new baby boy in my husband's family, so I thought it would be nice to make him a knitted infant hat (considering there's a few more weeks of winter left) to welcome him into the world!
I used this pattern and even though it's technically a premie pattern (and a fruit hat), I used it for my daughter when she was born and it was big on her for a few months into life. It has 54 cast-on stitches, so that seems a substantial size to me. I used four size five double-pointed needles.
I would have preferred to use the bamboo needles, but I just can't find them in a size five. The metal ones tend to make this knitting project slippery and I think far too many stitches fall off and drop simply because of the smooth metal of the needles. If you can find bamboo needles, I would really go with those.
Because this is so small, the project is knitted from beginning to end of three of the four double-pointed needles.
The fourth needle is used to work the stitches on. As you continue to knit and build rows, you can see how height is achieved.
And you just keep knitting around these three needles until your piece measures four inches. At that point, you can begin your decrease rows to the end. At the end, instead of continuing on to complete the stem of the fruit, I just snipped my yarn, leaving a long tail and pulled the tail through the remaining stitches and then through the hole in the top. I then knotted it and weaved in the yarn using a tapestry knitting finishing needle. This is a very simple beginner project!
I created the fleece top the exact way I did with my knitted toddler hat. Simply:
- Cut out seven strips (6 x 1 inches) from fleece using sharp scissors. (I had purchased my fleece at the fabric store in the remnant section. I think it was around 3/8 of a yard for something like 63 cents.)
- Then, simply thread the fleece through the eye of a tapestry knitting finishing needle.
- Pull the fleece under each decrease line in the knitted hat (there should be six; if you look at the hat from the top, you'll see six distinct lines where you decreased the circumference of the top of the hat.) Pull the remaining one through the hole in the center.
- Tie each strip of fleece into a knot and then cut each strip vertically in half, so you now have double the amount of fleece strips. I went ahead and trimmed the length of each strip so it matched the tiny nature of the hat. That's it!
Because this was a gift, I decided to make a very easy card (no frills at all) to go along with it using scrap paper, a stamp and some colored pencils. You simply:
- Find an extra envelope and measure it. This was 5.75 x 4.25 inches. Cut a brown piece of paper (or whatever color of your choice) 5.5 x 8 inches and fold it half using a bone folder. (I seriously have no idea why it's called that!) This is your card.
- Cut out a blue (or whatever color you choose) scrap piece of paper 5 x 3.75 in. and adhere it to the brown piece of paper. This is your accent color piece of paper.
- Find a stamp (I used an elephant) and press it on a big black stamp pad and stamp it on a white piece of paper. Color in your image using colored pencils, trim the paper to about .5 inches to a .25 inches on all four sides and adhere it to the center of your card.
Cut a white piece of paper 5 x 3.75 inches and adhere it to the middle of the inside of the card. Write your message on the inside and voilà!
Your project is now complete and a brand new baby is welcomed comfortably into the world!
