a little Christmas blessing.

A very close and dear friend of mine welcomed their first child into the world last week after a harrowing few hours. Thankfully, baby and Mom are doing wonderfully. The family will be spending Christmas at home with their family in a town in South-Eastern BC called Cranbrook. It’s a gorgeous town that thrives on resource-based industry nestled in the Rocky Mountain trench. So it is cold. Very cold. Beautiful. But cold.

I couldn’t send little Kate home with her dear parents without a new winter toque to brave the snow and ice! What kind of a friend would I be?!

Pattern: Alfalfa Baby Hat by Kate Gagnon-Osborn

Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Rios, colourway 139 Pocion

Needles: 4.00mm

I just love this toque. I still think it looks like a gnome hat – it is just so adorable. TinyTuna’s head has grown since I made his but the toque still fits (although snuggly). It will be a little big on Kate but she’ll grow into it very quickly – she is the same size Tiny was when he was born (and the same length, weird, huh?).

The Rios is perfect for this pattern as it is interesting enough too highlight, rather than detract from, the pattern of increases and decreases. You can see in the two photos below, if you read the pattern and study the photos carefully, that I changed the decreases slightly and worked them as follows:

Knit to 3 stitches prior to marker, ssk, K1, sm, K1, k2tog.

I did this because if you look at my original toque, the ssk and k2tog pull apart when they are stretched over the baby’s head. It is not terrible but now that he has grown, they pull apart really profoundly. I do not like the look of them so I thought adding the 2 stitches between them would help with ease.

As you can see in the photos, it worked perfectly:

I will mention, though, it made working the decreases in the crown a little tricky as I had to move things around a little bit but I will definitely work this the same way next time. I have one more half-skein on Rios in my stash that will become a second slightly bigger alfalfa for Tiny. I am thinking about knitting it on 4.5mm for the extra room he now needs.