Baby Love

I've been working on culling my stash of old projects. Either they are getting done or are getting out of line, you know?

Long ago I spotted this very cute baby t-shirt at the Target dollar spot. Cute gift idea with a little something else, I thought. The clearance price of $0.25 decided it for me.

Soon after, I picked up a ball of Patons Astra (A for 100% acrylic) that I thought almost exactly matched the stripes in the heart (and was also on clearance). Once I got home, I realized that all of the baby sock patterns that I had were sock weight and this was worsed. I didn't want to make a hat because I didn't think that a baby would wear a hat with a t-shirt. And frankly, I was too lazy to figure out a solution. So, it got pushed to the bottom of the bin.

Finally, I got hold of a pattern in the right gauge and out came the yarn. Desperate to avoid the fair isle mittens that are torturing me, I knocked out two little socks in no time. They were so fun to knit and I was so taken with the wrong side with all the fun stripes. So instead of returning to the mittens, I designed a fun hat that showed the wrong side and would use up more yarn. Here is Big Baby modeling the ensemble. She's a newborn size and I aas aiming for 3 mo. size, so I think I got pretty close.



For the hat, I cast on 68 sts and knit 1 inch of 2x2 rib. I then increased to 70 sts and knit for a total height of about 3 3/4 inches before decreasing. For the decreases, I repeated P8, p2tog for the first row, purled a row, repeated p7, p2tog, then purled a row, etc. until the p1, p2tog; and p2tog which were done without plain purl rows between to make a flatter top. Love how it came out.



When I was thinking of making the "wrong" side show I wasn't interested in purling all of it, so I made the hat inside out with knit rows, then did the decreases in purl. I like how the decreases show up a little more on the crown.



The socks are knit like a tube sock with pointed toes. Would probably look even better on a real baby.

Not a bad effort to preserve my 25 cent investment. Now, really, I'm heading back to the mittens.