It's a good thing I like wearing hats

... because I have created this weekend, a hat that would have to be titled one of two names:

The Biggest Ever Hat Intended for a Six-Month-Old

or

The Greatest Gauge Cock-Up the World May Ever Witness

I jest not. Our darling Little One is due to arrive in January, which I do admit is quite some time from now. Plenty of time for me to be knitting, calmly and in a planned manner, but 'planned' and 'knitting' are words that for me just don't really go together in the one sentence. I will 'plan to knit', so to speak, but I mean I will plan to knit... instead of doing the washing... while I supervise WonderBoy in the bath... on a trip to Sydney. I don't plan projects, projects tend to find me and demand to be placed at the top of my to-do list.

So, I grabbed a very colourful (not gender specific!), slubby single spun Adriafil 'Baba' from a yarn/tapestry/needlework place nearby, thinking if I knitted into a hat to fit a six-month old, but the time the weather had cooled to winter, Little One would be just the right size to gaze up at me adoringly from under its rolled woolly brim.

Ok, so far so good. I pulled out Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's "Knitting Rules" and had a geez at her recommendations for sizing. I even pulled WonderBoy's baby medical record book and checked to see roughly what size head he had at the age of six months. Now, I would like to make this clear from the very beginning - this is most certainly my fault. As much as I followed the Yarn Harlot's guidelines, I paid little to no attention to the enormously chunky gauge of the yarn I was working with. I mean, I did knit and measure the gauge, but I either didn't knit far enough before measuring or I cannot make a basic mathematical equation work.

I'd say 'a little from Column A, and a little from Column B'.

And here is what the mixture of stupidity, denial and stubbornness got me this afternoon:Part of me wants to rip it up and actually knit a hat for a six-month-old, but the larger part of me that is bored with the yarn and wants to knit something else is saying "Sod it, let's get a skein of Noro Silk Garden and have another crack at it later". You never know, I might end up with a hat for me made of Silk Garden.

Next up, my most recent pride and joy: my "Paris" scarf, knit from the most delicious skein of Hand Maiden wool and cashmere sock yarn...I was able to wear it up to Sydney, the way I'd planned, and I was so thrilled with the way it felt and draped. The colours have just striped and blended like a dream, and I really enjoyed the pattern as I worked it.

Oh, and as promised: another tale of hat woe... I knit this monstrosity for WonderBoy, thinking it would be good to whip up another winter hat for my huge-headed darling boy. Now, I really did research this one. I measured WonderBoy's head and worked on the largest size possible. All I can surmise is that I've knit it tighter than I should have, or possibly on needles slightly too small.

But here it is, on my darling WonderBoy, looking like one of those weird leather gridiron helmets that George Clooney wore in his film 'Leatherheads'...

And yet, he still looks so cute. The necklace-type business he has on there, for those who may be curious is the waistband from an old (clean) pair of my husband's boxers I had just cut up for cleaning cloths.

Maybe the hat isn't so weird after all.