Reading northern hemisphere knitting blogs during the Australian summer prompts some odd behaviour. I recently spied the garter ear flap hat pattern on the gorgeous Purl Bee.

How could I resist?

Elena is the most frequent recipient of my knitted goods so I decided that the first of these little hats should be for Hugo. I knitted him the toddler size. The yarn is Bendigo Woollen Mills Luxury 10 ply in Lake. I had some left from some of last year’s projects – you can’t argue with stash busting. My Ravelry notes are here.

I had very few problems with this pattern – my only real difficulty was with the sskp in the decreases for the crown. Somehow I read the pattern to mean I should mark the stitch by putting a marker on my needle, rather than using a removable marker to mark the actual stitch itself. I ended up with the decorative lines of stitching going every which way and had to rip it back.

As luck would have it, the next day I found a great tip reblogged over at not your average crochet on how to insert a lifeline into your knitting – a thread pulled through your row of stitches every now and again which protects you from disaster should you make a mistake or drop a stitch. Definitely check it out if you’re a knitter. Definitely.

Needless to say, I made myself a lifeline before attempting my decreases again.

I blocked the hat gently by spraying it with water and stretching it over a balloon inflated to the same diameter as Hugo’s head. I find Luxury 10 ply grows a lot with a firm blocking and I didn’t want to make it too big. I’ll save that for when Hugo grows and I want to stretch the hat out a bit.

I think, because I blocked it over a round balloon instead of flat, it’s not as pointy as it could be. I don’t mind. It suits him.

I was really happy with how this little hat for Hugo turned out. It must be pretty comfortable – he happily wore it for me despite our warm afternoon.

And, of course, Elena wanted to join in the photo fun. She wanted to know why the hat was for Hugo, not her. I guess I’ll be casting on another soon enough!

Have a restful weekend. We’ll just be hanging out, doing more chicken preparation, probably some knitting…and lots and lots of washing.