Yesterday I cast on my first knitting project of the year. Yes, you read that correctly. On September 18th, I started my first knitting project of 2015. Crazy, and a little sad, but true. Although I have a great excuse….
Last November we welcomed another daughter to our family! She was adorable and (mostly) good-natured, but sheesh! was she needy: feed me, burp me, change my diaper, bathe me, rock me, put me to sleep. Given her demands (and trying to keep up with my older daughter and the rest of things in life), I haven’t had the time, energy, or interest for much else for quite some time. But now my daughter is 10 months old and she is a lot of fun.1 And having regular sleep once again, I am inspired to get back to some things that I have missed, like knitting.
My childhood best friend just had a baby a few days ago–a beautiful little boy–and I immediately wanted to start knitting him something as soon as I saw his photograph. With fall and winter on their ways, I thought a hat would be a nice gift. And I had some of my favorite hand-dyed yarn in my stash in lovely shades of blue2 that would be perfect for a hat for my friend’s new son.
I used this same yarn, Malabrigo Arroyo, for a hat I knit for my daughter when I was still pregnant with her last year. Like the first newborn hat I designed, this hat is just a simple Stockinette stitch hat with rolled brim, but I recalculated the pattern for the DK-weight Arroyo yarn (my original pattern used worsted weight yarn). For my daughter, I chose the colorway 872 Purpuras, which I already had in my stash (because I wasn’t kidding when I said this was one of my favorite yarns).3
George modeling my daughter’s hat; he was so easy to work with last time that I enlisted his help again. 🙂
I love a rolled brim for a child’s hat because it’s so practical—it can be rolled up or unrolled as much as necessary to fit the child’s head. I am also particularly partial to using beautiful, hand-dyed superwash merino wool. Malabrigo’s Arroyo is especially scrumptious, both in its variation of hues and its softness. And because it is superwash wool, it’s machine-washable, which is something every new parent will appreciate.
I named this pattern “Newborn Hat, the Second” because it is my second newborn hat design and because it is for my second daughter. 🙂
To make your own newborn hat using a DK-weight yarn, download my pattern here:
MakerKnit Newborn Hat, the Second (1786 downloads )