A scarf and a hat for a one year old

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Over the summer I’ve worked on a few different projects. One that I thought was going to be quick and easy saw its final touch only last week …

For a friend I made a scarf and a beanie. They come a bit late as a birth gift, so I’ve aimed at size one year right away. One year olds aren’t running around our house, so I’ve asked the internet to tell me what size I should knit – let’s hope it turns out well.

The scarf was supposed to be about 90 cm long and even though I was aiming at 15 cm large it turned out to be only 14 cm. The beanie has a circumference of almost 50 cm (that might prove to be a bit large) and it’s 18 cm high which leaves room for a fold – or not, when it’s really cold.

For inspiration I searched for a nicely structured pattern in Cecelia Campochiaro’s unmatched Sequence Knitting. Simple Methods for Creating Complex Fabrics. and chose for the Andrus scarf. It’s based on a sequence of 3 knit 6 purl 3 knit stitches, repeated over a multiple of 12 stitches + 2 and using the serpentine method. I’m not going to spill the beans on what this exactly means – that’s all in the book. I cast on 38 stitches with Rosy Green Wool’s Cheeky Merino Joy in the colour Wild Mallow and kept knitting until I had a scarf of 90 cm. That required a little over 1 skein.

Mind you, as there was quite some poolside knitting involved I didn’t always pay proper attention to my pattern, so I missed and had to undo half a scarf twice!

With the leftovers of the second skein I made a beanie using the same sequence. That required some thinking at the start of every round, because this sequence doesn’t work out the same when knitting in the round! I succeeded in sticking to the structure though, and you have to look really hard to find the few extra stitches I smuggled in to keep the pattern even.

I cast on 110 stitches, that is (9 * 12) + 2, but 98 stitches (8 * 12) + 2 would probably have been a better option. To get the right height I had to knit the motif (= 6 rounds) 17 times.

From the first row of the 10th motif I shortened the sequences from 12 to 10 stitches by working together two times two stitches (two purl and two knit). Likewise, from the first row of the 13th motif, I shortened the sequence from 10 to 8 stitches and then I did this again in motif 15 (from 8 to 6 stitches), 16 (from 6 to 4) and 17 (from 4 to 2). This changes the outlook of the motif of course, but I think it made the top of the hat look really nice!

Then last week I made a big pompom to finish it all of. Aren’t they gorgeous?