No Baby Knitting

Many years ago, when my older sister was expecting her third child, I knitted a couple of baby layettes–hat, sweater, and matching blanket. I still have the pattern book somewhere. The next time I run across it, I’ll set it aside so I can post pictures of the patterns I made. I know yinz are just dying to see them. 🙂

One of the sets was in a lace pattern, but at the time I didn’t know it was “lace,” and I certainly didn’t know that knitting lace is “supposed” to be hard. (It isn’t, but that’s an argument for another day.) I just followed the directions. Anyway, the layettes turned out well, although to this day I don’t know whether my sister ever got any use out of them. I lived far away from her at the time and didn’t get to see her and the kiddos very often.

Since that time, I haven’t done any baby knitting to speak of. I didn’t knit anything for my son when he was a baby, although I’ve knitted quite a lot for him as an adult. I did start a baby sweater for him, but I never finished it because he grew at a pace that far outstripped my knitting speed. I’ve knitted a few baby afghans over the years, but otherwise, there’s been no baby knitting in my life since the mid-1970s.

Then in early June, my younger sister asked a favor of me. A co-worker of hers had just had his first child, a boy, and because she thinks very highly of him, she wanted to give him something special to commemorate the event. She asked me to knit a baby hat as a gift for her co-worker. OMG! What a compliment! She thought that one of my hats would be a really special gift! How could I refuse.

The first step was choosing the right color. Her co-worker lives in India and is Hindu, and we wanted to make certain that we were using an appropriate color. We settled on blue, which is associated with manliness and courage and thus is a good color for a boy. 🙂 I had a lot of blue sock yarn in my stash, so I dug through it until I found just the right shade, Gjestal Silja Sock Yarn in color 307.

I had the perfect pattern, too, a spiral pattern used in Cathi’s Coast Cap. But because it has been so many years since I knit anything baby-sized except blankets, I had no idea about how many stitches to cast on or how big or small to make the hat. Google to the rescue! I found a pattern for baby hats that included multiple sizes, picked an appropriate size, and went to work. I had the hat finished in no time and sent it on its way to my sister so that she could mail it to her co-worker.

I don’t know how useful a wool hat is in India, but I’m certain that my sister’s co-worker appreciates so unique a gift. And I appreciate my sister’s high opinion of my hand-knitted hat.