Teeny, Tiny and Little

Last Friday, my friends Doug and Susan welcomed their son Raymond Paul into the world. The little guy was about 8 weeks early and tipped the scales at just 2 pounds 11 ounces. I guess one of the big worries with preemies is lung function. It turns out that Ray's lungs are stronger than they expected, thank goodness.

While everyone is delighted that Ray is doing so well, his early arrival totally threw a wrench in the works, knitting wise. I was supposed to have until the middle of January to make a gift for goodness sakes.

I hadn't decided what to make yet. I hadn't picked the yarn. To top things off, I was totally befuddled by size. Exactly how big is a 2 pound 11 ounce baby?

Fortunately, I had some time on my hands. I had just had my knee surgery and was going to be planted on the couch at home for a few days. I poked around my stash and found several small skeins of superwash fingering weight BFL that had been given to me by Aimee, the owner of a wonderful yarn and tea shop, L'Oisive The in Paris.

Once I had the yarn, it let me know that it wanted to be a series of hats. I surfed around a little on the internet and cobbled together a pattern of sorts. I decided to start with the blue. I cast on 80 stitches and did a K1P1 rib for a couple of inches and then moved on to stockinette. Once it looked about right, I started the decrease rounds and that was that. One down.

The first one looked pretty big to me so I only cast on 60 stitches for the next hat. I picked the green yarn this time around. Instead of K1P1, I did a roll edge. It turned out pretty darn small, but is as cute as the dickens.

Last up was the yellow hat. I split the difference between the other and cast on 72 stitches. This time I worked the first bit in K2P2 rib.

This turned into a perfect recovery project for me. Anything requiring any real brain power would have been a waste what with the pain meds and all. Figuring out how many stitches to cast on and deciding on three different edges was about all I had in me.

I know they aren't fancy and I usually don't pick pastels for babies but somehow these teeny, tiny little hats are making me extraordinarily happy.