Baby Sizing

It's that time again, time to put the pedal to the metal and crank out some baby things for a shower. How do these things creep up on me? My friend Mary made a special request for purple booties and I am happy to oblige, but of course I can't just make booties, I need to make a hat too! I've known about this since sometime in the fall, and Mary is due in April, so I had plenty of time. I made a winter hat for myself, the Cabled Chapeau (which you will see a finished picture of soon), worked on some other unfinished projects, and started but didn't finish a scarf for my sister's birthday in December. I wanted to finish the scarf before starting the baby things, but now I'm getting down to the wire.

Mary's baby shower is March 5th so I need to mail the gift by March 1st. That's two weeks from today! Now if I could just get knitting...though that hasn't been the problem. The problem is size.

I picked out the patterns months ago, bought the yarn a few weeks ago, but didn't sit down and read through everything until I was ready to start. Common mistake. I bought Plymouth Encore in worsted, but the Etanapipa snail hat calls for bulky, and Saartje's Bootees call for fingering weight. Ugh!


-Snail Hat-
1st cast on - size 10 needles, yarn doubled. Too confusing, can't figure out if the hat is the right size, pulling from both ends of one skein. Frogged.
2nd cast one - size 9 needles. Cast on 64 stitches. Slightly stretched it's 16-17" - too big for a baby, more like a toddler size. And I had added a stitch somewhere. Frogged.
3rd cast on - size 9 needles. Cast on 48 stitches. Stretched it's 12" - way too small. Frogged.
4th cast on - size 9 needles. Cast on 56 stitches. Stretched it's 14-15". Sticking with this one.

Never mind that bebecita probably doesn't need a woolly knitted hat in April. It's upstate NY. It still snows in April and May sometimes.

I've been referencing this size chart to figure out how big to make the hat.

-Saartje's Bootees-
1st cast on - size 7 needles. Seemed to crowded. Frogged.
Waiting until I'm finished with the hat to cast on again, probably with size 8 needles.