Cablelicious set

After a lot of careful consideration, and one too many threats of redundancy, I quit. Yip, you read it right, I decided to take some time out and decide if Software Project Management is really what I want to do with my life. Sadly, the answer turned out to be no - but that could just be the fact that I was wearing so many different hats, and PM was not taking up the majority of my time. My biggest frustration was acting as technical lead, pre-sales consultant, account manager, web site designer, content manager, and first line support(and last resort when everyone else was on leave), all roles I was reluctantly dragged into out of a feeling of obligation. This year is the year I say NO MORE! No more people pleasing. Time to restore the joy in my life, time for me.

What this means for you: hopefully I get to post more. Probably. I might bounce ideas around of projects I want to do, or designs I'm working on. Most likely my posts will revolve around what I'm getting up to with my new Etsy shop. With Christmas fast approaching, I'm busy knitting up a storm for the family. I've decided to give the girls all a set of boot cuffs and matching hat. Two sets down, one to go. I may offer these on Etsy, once I've worked out exactly how long a set takes to knit. I keep forgetting to time it. I may even take my design notes and actually write up the pattern and put that up. Got to brush off my pattern writing skills first - nobody else will have a clue what my notes mean otherwise.

It's a boy!

A while back I shared my pattern adapting baby hat with ear flaps. It's been a favourite pattern of mine and all the moms who've received it. So far all the little recipients have been little girls. Well, would you know it a colleague is expecting and she knows it's a boy. How to adapt this wonderful pattern so a little man will be happy to wear it?

First things first. Colour makes a huge impact on perception of "girly" factor. The original pattern called for pink, yellow, white, and lilac - all pastels. Just not macho enough. Digging through my wool stash, I came up with some bold bright colours: orange, blue, yellow, and red.

 

The second hurdle to overcome - hearts. No self-respecting little boy would be caught dead in hearts no matter what colour they were. I didn't want to have to work out a replacement pattern as it was only six rows that needed changing. What better way to replace the pattern than using existing elements. I decided to pick out the middle five rows from the snowflake, and work in the additional row in the top band in order to keep the same number of rows before decreasing for the top of the hat.

Now there's no way this little chap will be mistaken for a girl!

Adapting a baby hat to add ear flaps

I often buy knitting magazines for inspiration. Most of them include 'free' items, such as wool or stich markers, in addition to the patterns. I like to use the wool for small projects like knitting baby hats for expectant colleagues. One of my favourite patterns comes from the January 2012 'Lets Knit' magazine available in the UK. It's a fair isle pattern called 'Faith', but I've found that in the chilly winter months here in the north of Scotland, baby hats should really have ear flaps.

Luckily the same pattern pull out included a pattern called 'Maisie' which did have ear flaps. That got me thinking about how I could combine the two patterns to add ear flaps to the pattern I wanted to knit.

Pattern adapting to the rescue!
You could apply this to any baby hat pattern designed to fit 0-6 months, knitting from the brim up, using yarn equivilant to Sidar Snuggly DK, and knitting stocking stitch at a tention of 19 sts x 26 rows on 10 mm needles. I include the pattern for knitting the ear flaps so you can adapt any pattern you already have.

Ear Flap (make two)

• Using 3.25mm needles, cast on two stitches
• Next row: kfb*, k1 [3 sts]
• Next row: k
• Next row: kfb, k to last st, kfb [5 sts]
• Next row: k
• Next row: Rep last two rows until you have 19 sts
• Break yarn, leave sts on spare needle

*kfb

Technicalities over, this is how I did it. With my ear flaps in hand and a total of 38 stitches, I subtracted this number from the total number of stitches I needed to cast on for my hat pattern which is knitted in the round (in this case it was 80 stitches in total). I then took this figure and halved it to give me the number of stitches I needed to cast on inbetween my ear flaps. That meant I cast on 21 stitches, then transfered over the 19 stitches from my first ear flap, cast on another 21 stitches, and transfered over the 19 stitches from my second ear flap, joined the round and jumped straight into the first row of my hat pattern.

If your pattern is not in the round, you would need to do the following. Halve the number of stitches you need to cast on between the ear flaps, which was 21 stitches, and cast on this number of stitches. Obviously, if the number is not a whole number, as is the case in my example, you need to round up to the next whole number and cast on that many stitches (in this case 11). Now transfer over the first ear flap, cast on the number of stitches between ear flaps (21 stitches), transfer over the second ear flap, and then cast on one less stitch than what you cast on first (this would be 10).

This is the finished project.