How I Made A Knitted Baby Pixie Hat

Lacking any idea of where to start knitting a baby hat, I turned to my trusty friend Google and did a quick search on "how to knit a baby hat".

522,000 results returned ... Okay, this could be a little more complicated than I first thought.

It appears that there are many types of baby hats you can knit. Some of the many varieties include:

• Beanies


• Berets


• Bonnets


• Pixie Hats


• Pointy Hats


• Pumpkin Hats


• Reversible Hats


• Hats with Ears


• Hats with Points


• Hats with pom poms


• Fruit Hats


• Swirly Hats


• Cornered Hats


• ... and the list goes on

I was going to have to make a decision on what kind of hat I wanted to make.

A very useful tool I found here was switching to Google's Image Search view.

Using the same search text as before ("how to knit a baby hat") the search returns a tonne of photos showing the many different styles of baby hats. This made it very easy for me to select the specific style I wanted to make.

My decision wasn't a hard one to make. At first I picked a few different styles that I thought looked cute and then went and looked at some free patterns. It soon became obvious that there were going to be some constraints on this hat creation adventure.

The first, and most important, constraint was going to be my knitting skills. I'm not a bad knitter, but then again I'm not a particularly good one either and when it comes to reading a knitting pattern I am for the most part lost.

It was going to have to be a simple pattern.

The second constraint was going to be my attention span. I already have a craft cupboard full to overflowing with unfinished objects. A hat that took forever to knit was likely to never get finished.

It was going to have to be a quick pattern.

My final choice? A nice quick simple pattern for a super cute looking Pixie Hat :)

Now that I knew what I was creating I needed to gather the necessary equipment.

The Pattern

First things first, I needed a pattern. The pattern I followed is the Adorabubble Knits Basic Hat pattern. As the website states, it's "a great beginner's hat. All you need to know how to do is cast on, knit, and k2tog (knit 2 together)". Sounded good to me - a great looking hat and right within my knitting skill range! Even better, the pattern had details for sizes from newborn right up to large adult.

The Wool

A worsted weight wool. I managed to find a suitable large ball of dark green wool in the craft cupboard.

The Needles

The pattern calls for two pairs of circular 4.5mm knitting needles. This could be a problem, I had the correct size in a set of double pointed needles but not circular. Wanting to get started straight away, I decided to go with the double pointed needles.

Stitch Markers

Six stitch markers are required for when you get to the decreases in the crown. Another visit to the craft cupboard came up trumps - six bright red stitch markers ready to go.

I was all set and ready to cast on.

Over the next few nights I slogged away at the hat while watching telly. I'm not a fast knitter at all, but being just a straight knit stitch and some knit 2 togethers the pattern knitted up quite quickly. On the fourth night I was completely finished, a brand spanking new green pixie hat held in my hand.

It was gorgeous!
It was green.
It was made by me.
And it was by no means perfect.

One thing I had forgotten to take into account was my limited experience with knitting on double pointed needles. While I had no problems getting the hang of them I did end up with a hat with three "seam" lines running up it from where the stitches changed to the next needle.

Okay, so they're barely noticeable. I know that they're there though, so I'm marking this down as attempt number one - just a practice run.

Some things I've noticed about the hat though:

• The rolled brim is very soft and comfy feeling


• There's no seam to dig in to baby's head


• The hat is surprisingly stretchy. I made it in the newborn size and it appears that it would stretch to fit a wide range of baby head sizes.

Deciding that I'm not completely happy with this first attempt I have decided to knit another one, this time using the circular needles.

29 September 2008

At this point I haven't started on my second attempt as I still need to select some suitable wool. I was thinking of using a multi-coloured one this time, perhaps something in the Paton's Zhivago baby range.

I have picked myself up some circular knitting needles though - will see how much better I go with them.