Spiral Hats and Some Booties

Craig, who made some of the cutest little socks for our little guy, gave me the rest of the yarn from the socks to do with as I pleased. I think brown and blue are the "in" colors for boys now, since we've got lots of clothing in variations of brown, tan, blue, and navy. The good news is that these are colors that look good on fair skinned, blue-eyed, pink-cheeked babies and on the olive-skinned, brunette babies, and The Creature is going to be one or the other. I'm hoping for a red-head, but since my red hair comes from a bottle, and John's hair is so dark that the one time we dyed it, you could only tell because his scalp was purple underneath (sorry, sweetie), I'm unlikely to get my carrot top.

Nonetheless, Craig left me 3/4 of a skein of Elsebeth Lavold's Cotton Patine in oak and misty, and instructed me to have some fun with it. I'd used it before in a weaving project, but had not knit with it. It's very soft for 100% cotton, and there was very little splitting, so I'd definitely use it again for a knitting project.

I made the hat with the blue brim below for our little guy, and the hat with the brown brim and the booties for a colleague's little boy, born March 15. I had 2 feet of blue left when the knitting and seaming were done.




The booties were done on US4 straight needles, and the pattern is another from Natural Knits for Babies and Moms. The hats are my usual hat pattern, done on two US5 circulars (because I don't have US5 dpns), though I did the spiral knitting technique explained by Grumperina here. It's a cool technique for jogless, 1-row stripes. Since I had two colors, I had a little easier than she does with her 4-color socks. After knitting the ribbing, I knit half a row (one circular) in blue, then knit the second half of the row on the second circular needle in brown, and continued to knit in brown until I made it to the end of circular needle #1. Then I picked up the blue and knit one full round, then a round of brown, and so on. There are no jogs, and the only place you can really tell that anything strange is going on is in the first little row, which is half blue and half brown.

I don't think the baby is going to mind.