more hats

I sent this cute little pair of hats off to North Carolina today:



Have you ever been to the post office at 4:00 in the afternoon the Friday before Christmas with a 2yo who hasn't napped and her bored older brother? I don't recommend it. At all. Actually, they did pretty well once it was our turn at the machine. I love the machine at the post office where you can mail packages. Lots of buttons for Daniel to push, the mailing labels come spitting out the bottom for Anya to retrieve, and the line is much, much shorter than for the service windows.

These hats are Christmas presents for our niece and nephew in Winston-Salem, which, incidentally, is getting hit with a winter storm Wisconsin-style. My BIL tells us their city is pretty much shut down. I can imagine. A foot of snow slows things down significantly up here, and we're kind of used to it!

The white hat is for Claire. I based it on a pattern from Melanie Falick's book Knitting for Baby (my favorite baby knits book ever, I think). It's just a 2x2 rib with false cables, though, so you almost don't need a pattern. The original design is a long hat that kind of flops over, and it's very cute. It calls for sport weight yarn, though, and I was using Cascade 220 Superwash, so my long hat looked like a giant knitted condom - even my mom thought so - and that did not seem at all appropriate for a darling little girl who just turned 1, so I ripped back to make a more traditional shape.

The blue hat is for Charlie. It's just a stocking cap, but I actually used a pattern for it. I think it's called Marten's cap, and it's from 99 Yarns and Counting, the new book from Green Mountain Spinnery. I left off ear flaps because I kind of ran out of steam with all the st st and anyway, they live in North Carolina. He probably won't even need the ear flaps. I used Dale of Norway Falk, which is the superwash equivalent to Heilo. Now, I love Heilo. It's a great, basic wool yarn in lots of lovely colors and it doesn't itch (in my opinion) and holds up outstandingly...and the Falk? It's okay. It's a good sub for Heilo if you want a machine-washable item, but I won't be running out to buy more.

You know, the longer I write, the harder I try to make this post more interesting, and it's just not. Here's the short version: cute hats for cute kids for Christmas. (How many times did I use the word "cute" in this post? At least four. Sheesh. It's Friday, y'all. I'm checking out and drinking a beer.)

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