Don't keep this under your hat!

Hat candy! I finished these some time ago, but just took the time right before my water aerobics class to snap a few photos. Then off to exercise my butt off, I hope.

As you can see there are so many ways to finish off a sweet little baby hat, with no adornment like the purple one or as simple as a single outstanding button, or use old shirt buttons spaced evenly along the single ribs as in the blue one.


Next up is the little sweater and hat that is going up for auction at the Southern California OES Rescue Parade and fund raiser that will be this weekend at the Burbank Kennel Club Show. The URL for the OES Rescue that Taggart came from is: http://oesrescue.com/

As time was of the essence, I knit this on the Brother 260. This is a two button cut away baby cardigan of my own design. Yes I am working on writing up the pattern, but gosh that is slow going. The edging is done with a cotton yarn in a contrasting deep lavender crocheted in a simple picot stitch.

I just love this hat pattern, the way I designed it, the crown looks like a star when you look down on it. Is that not the sweetest top of a hat.

When I have nothing going, I will just cast on a baby hat and have it while I'm watching TV. They knit up so fast and take so little room. I have the beta of the baby hat ready for anyone who is interested in trying it for me. I would like to get at least a couple of different people work on the hat and tell me what I can do to improve the pattern.

Thanks for looking and the comments.

I have a couple of Finished Objects to share

Take a look. I have been working on the patterns most of the summer. I will post some photos here and if you are interested in doing a beta knit of my patterns, let me know via a comment and I will send you a copy to knit. You must let me know how the knitting went and any comments for the writing of the pattern.

Here is the baby hat with a mock baby cable.

This hat is hand knit in worsted weight acrylic yarn with a crochet flower as adornment. I taught myself how to crochet recently. The hat is hand knit on double points. Sweet right?

Below is the 3 button baby kimono I have designed. It has an asymetric opening and is knit using a Brother 260 knitting machine. In case you wonder, I knit using both machine and hand knitting.

My first love of knitting is hand knitting, but I wanted to get into knitting design and the knitting machine is the tool that will enable you to go a little faster with some basic designs. I choose to do what I refer to as "Fusion Knitting" where you use both machine and hand skills to complete your garment. In the above garment you will see that I did a little hand knitting for the bottom edge.

Above is a close up of both the flower and the increases at the under arm that make the short cap sleeve. I tested this pattern for hand knitting myself so the next views are what I knit from this pattern by hand.

Here is a funny fact about the differences between hand and machine knitting. When you hand knit you knit it on the "right" side and when you machine knit, you knit from the "wrong" side or the purl side. So you will see that the difference between the two sweaters are the opening are on different sides and on a asymetrical front you will notice this, where as on a normal front you would not notice it at all.

This is a close up of the neck detail with the decreases that make the neck. You can see that I used the green yarn as a contrast, I crochet the edge using a picot stitch. I loved how this came out. This is my beta of hand knitting it from the machine pattern. So this cream colored version was knit by hand. You will notice that I did a contrast picot edge to keep the look really simple. I love how they came out, what do you think?

Please leave comments and let me know what you think. I