…Mondays in my house are for knitting baby hats.

Last Sunday night I decided that I wanted to knit something girly.  We still don’t know the sex of the baby, and everything I’ve knit so far has been unisex, on purpose.  But what if we have a little girl?  I was really struck with the idea of having something frilly and feminine that I made for her.  I knew just the project- a lacy little bonnet from a book I already owned.

As soon as I’d grafted the toe on my father-in-law’s first sock I ran upstairs to my office to find the book, because I knew there was no way I was doing anything else the next day but knitting a girly hat.  Only- I couldn’t find the book.  I’ll spare you the recap of my repeated mad dashes through the house, but suffice it to say that after searching my office 10 times, the basement 6 times, and various other rooms in the house 5 times each, I finally found the book, 2 minutes before I collapsed into bed, in the office of all places.

My original yarn choice was a vintage ball from my grandmother’s stash.  I liked the idea of my grandmother’s yarn adorning my (possible) daughter.  I wound and measured a few options but single, unmatched ball only had 120-140 yards, and the pattern called for about 240 yards.  I had to give up on a wool blend and dove into my cotton bin.  That’s where I found this Tahki Cotton Classic yarn that I’d won in a blog contest a few years ago.  I had 2 full skeins, each had about 108 yards.  I also had a few other colors, so I knew that if I ran short at the very end, I could bind off with another color of the same yarn.  Perfect!

I didn’t want to use ribbon ties like the original pattern, so I went through Ravelry looking for cute knitted flowers.  I chose these flowers from a free online pattern and deliberately left enough yarn lengths for the tails so that I could work a twisted cord from them without having to reattach yarn (and have a possible weak point).  I made the twisted cords about 7″ long so they would be long enough to tie under baby’s chin but still be shorter than the 12″ safety standards for cords and babies.

Strangely enough, even with working the flowers and ties with the main yarn, I only used 3/4 of 1 skein.  I have no idea how that happened.

I didn’t block it because it’s 100% cotton and is going to adapt to the baby’s head anyways, so why bother.  I’ll wash it with the other handknits shortly before the baby’s birth, and if we have a boy then this will go in the gift pile.  Someone will have a girl, someday.

I love the flower on the back of the bonnet- too cute!

Pattern:  Lacy Bonnet by Erika Knight (Ravelry link), from Knitting for Two.  I used Flowers in Bloom by Alison Reilly (Ravelry link) for the flowers.

Size:  one size.  My guess is about 6 months, which will put this at a perfect cotton summer bonnet (if we have a girl)

Yarn:  Tahki Cotton Classic, 100% mercerized cotton, about 3/4 of a ball.

Needles: 3.75mm and 3.5mm

Dates:  November 10 2008 – this took under 4 hours including finishing

Modifications:  I added the twisted cord ties with the flowers on the ends, instead of using a ribbon.

As usual you can find my finished (and unfinished!) projects in my “projects” page by clicking the tab up at the top of every page on my blog, and I also have this project in my Ravelry notebook here for the hat, and here for the flowers.