Another last-minute baby hat! When will I learn to get cracking on these projects before the mother is packing up her desk to go on mat leave and/or timing contractions?

Diana mentioned she was leaving in a week so I went into a baby hat tailspin and galloped into the spare room to raid the stash. The red wool isn’t particularly baby-ish but it’s cheerful and MACHINE WASHABLE and I think I got points for that.

I cast on 88 stitches to account for the fact that this is a summer baby who’ll be about 6 months old at the beginning of winter. Hopefully the rolled brim means that Diana can roll it up a bit more for the first winter and then roll it down to get another year’s wear from it. It’s a good theory ….

To make up for the boring monotone colour, I put in a purl row after every 5 knitted rows, beginning after about 12 rows. The purls continued till I had knitted about 14cm, then I did 5 more plain rows and decreased using the method from the Four to One beanie:link text.

As usual I had to take a rushed photo with my phone camera at work before running over to meet Diana, so the office fluorescent lights don’t do much for the colour. It’s a much nicer, richer red than it appears. Diana was very touched by the hat, so look out for them in the park once winter begins.