This past weekend I discovered that all of the baby hats in my hat basket were either too small or too thin to do their job of keeping little bald heads warm. This discovery motivated me to end my 4-month knitting hiatus and to answer a question that had been niggling around in the back of my mind for a while: Is it really possible to knit while nursing?
The answer is a qualified yes. I can knit and nurse, provided that I'm only feeding one baby, the pattern doesn't require me to repeatedly count beyond 32, and no cats get involved. I can also knit while pumping -- but that's harder and gave me a stiff neck. And cat involvement was nearly disastrous.
All this is preamble to saying that I needed a really simple fast hat pattern, so I made one up. Here it is if you need to warm up a 3-month old fast:
Materials: DK weight superwash merino, < 1 ball, 1, 2 or more colors. I used forest and asparagus. Size 6 circular or double point needles, or whatever gives you the right gauge.
Gauge: 1"=5 stitches, 8 rows
Pattern for circular needles:
Cast on 90 stitches, DON'T join ends.
Knit two inches (16 rows) in stockinette. (Knit odd rows, purl evens)
Change yarn, knit 1/2 inch (4 rows) in stockinette.
Change yarn again, knit one row (rs); purl next row (ws).
Begin decrease:
Row 1: knit 1; ssk; knit 18, knit 2 together, ssk (three times); knit 18, knit 2 together, knit 1
Row 2: purl across
Row 3: knit 1; ssk; knit 16, knit 2 together, ssk (three times); knit 16, knit 2 together, knit 1
Row 4: purl across
Continue decreasing in pattern until 10 stitches remain. Pull yarn through loops; sew seam and ta-da! A little hat.
I didn't have time to go digging for my double points, but the hat would have been nicer without the seam. If you want to go the DP route, just cast on 88 stitches, join the ends, and ignore the first and last stitches in the above instructions.
Dane calls the green hat I made Duncan his Irish hat and calls him Paddy when he wears it. Fun!
Stay tuned for Tristan's hat and happy knitting!
3 comments:
cat involvement was nearly disastrous
Was the problem, "OoH! STRING!" or "OoH! MILK!"?
Hanna and Dane:
Your boys are so cute. I'm glad to see them all plump and smiling! I love the pics of them along side the laptop. Very good reference object that happens to be around all the time. :-)
Way to go. I never was coordinated enough to do more than one thing while nursing, and that was, well, nursing. The recent photos are awesome!
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