FO: Modern Baby Bonnet
I've a Finished Object (FO) to share with you! Here's my Modern Baby Bonnet by Hadley Fierlinger, as published in Vintage Knits for Modern Babies in 2009, which I believe I received as a birthday gift from my aunts a few years ago? I've been busily knitting for my impending second child. For my own children, I consider the bare minimum to be a sweater and hat to wear home from the hospital and a blanket to wrap up in. (There will be more, of course - but these are the must-haves.) My first child came home from the hospital in the Puerperium Cardigan. It fit very nicely and was on his birth announcement, too, but be warned: babies grow out of it in about a heartbeat. Anyway, I think my second child needs the same sweater, just in different colors. Maybe gray background with similar colorful striping? The blanket is an original design that is almost done and that will eventually be published, and the hat is this one!
Coming soon to a baby's head near you!
Well, not near you. Near me.
The hat knit up very quickly in just two days. I used size 6 straight needles and Knitpicks Bare Superwash Merino DK that was left over from a project about a year ago - I had most of the skein left after making the tusks and eyes for Vanessa Mooncie's Elephant Hat for my son's Halloween 2013 costume.I loved the way the Modern Baby Bonnet came together - mostly. There were a few issues with the way the pattern was written, in my opinion. For example, it called for a Sl2k, which really meant the much more common SSK, according to the other confused people I found on the internet. (Sl2k? Seriously? Why?!!) The code was in the front of the book, apparently, but I didn't travel with the whole book - I just photocopied the pattern to travel lighter. This is one time it came back to bite me... so thanks, other confused people of Ravelry for posting about it!The button band was knit separately, and I modified it a bit to make both edges into chain selvedge. This is something I almost always do with my knitting, even when the pattern doesn't call for it. I find I like how a chain selvedge looks when on view, and I like it to seam when it won't be on view. Maybe later I'll do a post called "CHAIN SELVEDGE ALL THE THINGS!" and then edit this one to link to it - it'll be like I'm leaping forward in time here. :)Next, the finishing instructions were very brief and vague.Again, I'm not the only one to complain about this on Ravelry. I cannot for the life of me find my photocopied pattern at the moment, but I believe it said something to the extent of "sew the seam and sew on the button band." It didn't bother to explain *what* seam, so I had to look at the pictures to figure it out. I managed, but the pictures, while beautiful were cropped so they didn't show the exact part I wanted.If you look on Ravelry, lots of people have made this, and the most common modification seems to be replacing the button band with ties to go under the chin in a bow. While perfectly adorable, I figured I might not want to be constantly fussing under a wee baby's chin and constantly retying the things, so I went with the original concept and sewed on a green button from Looped Yarn Works in Washington, DC.Overall, I'm very pleased with the finished product. I cannot *wait* to bring my small child home from the hospital in this - the hat is a really sweet shape, and I like how it turned out. I think it's a simple enough pattern for a beginner, or would be, IF some of the hairy bits I've described had been better explained. As it is, I think those leaps might require some more experienced guidance to pull this off. But hey - this is where Ravelry is a viking, so learn from other people's confusion... and if all else fails, take it to the experts at your local yarn shop. Or write me. :)
