Baobab baby pullover #3 - Trunk progress

Today will be very quick.  I don't have anything new to report on the design I talked about Friday and Saturday.  We went to the movies last night and saw Divergent.  I really liked it.

Today we watched the first Captain America so we can go see the new one next weekend.  While doing that, I made progress knitting the Baobab baby pullover I'm testing.  If you know nothing about this sweater, you can catch up here, here, and here.

I have a few more rounds before I start adding the tree's branches.  I'm looking forward to it, but I don't think I'll be able to watch TV while knitting.  There are a lot of different stitches, and I'll have to pay close attention.  Hopefully I'll be able to listen to music, but I'm prepared to knit in silence if necessary.

Here's what I have so far:

Really exciting, isn't it?  :)  It's just about 3" long, which means I have a long, long way to go, just like the triangle bangle I've been talking about.  A few of the testers are finished or almost finished, so I feel bad lagging behind.  I can't knit in marathon sessions, though, so I'll have to plod along as I've been doing.  The designer said it's fine, and that's all that matters.

Baobab baby pullover #2 - Procrastination pays off

Before I tell you how procrastination paid off for me today, I have sad news.  You know those ads in the sidebar that I said finally reached the threshold for payment?  Those ads I asked you to click but only if you saw something interesting?  Those ads that were going to help me continue to blog and would have paid for the challenge prize if there had been one?

Well, my account has been disapproved.  I was stunned, because I have been very careful to not click my own ads and to only ask folks to click things they were interested in.  I guess when I signed up I didn't read the rules carefully enough, or maybe it's been so long since I signed up that I forgot them.  My act of asking for clicks invalidated my account.  I just looked it up - I put my first ad on my blog in July, shortly after we got Frisco, our bush kitten.  I requested clicks then, and I have a few times since.  I guess they didn't really pay attention until it was time to pay out, over 8 months later.  Maybe it was the sudden jump over the last month that did it, or maybe it was my saying that the funds would help support the blog and the challenge prize.

In any case, I essentially had free advertising for God-knows-what crap products and websites on my blog, and I'm out $100.  I'm a bit mad at myself for not catching that policy, especially since I remember reading everything to make sure I didn't screw it up.  It's not a new policy because there's a thread in a forum from 2007 discussing it.  Based on what I've just read, they're so particular about everything to do with the ads - no buttons or menus or content heavily requiring the mouse can be near it so people can't accidentally click the ad.  It's almost as if they don't want the ads to be clicked.  I guess that makes sense.  If the ads are clicked, they have to pay.  I can understand them not wanting to pay out thousands of dollars a month per account due to automated or accidental clicking, but it took me over eight months to earn $100.  People like me are not a threat.

But policies are policies.  There's no way to appeal it or reopen my account, so you'll no longer be bothered by ads or my requesting a measly click every now and again.  So much for me making money from this blog.  If anyone has any ideas, please e-mail me at traci@creative-pursuits.biz.

Sorry for the rant - back to our regularly scheduled blog post...

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I was all set to cast on for the Baobab baby pullover (See my first post if you missed it.  Yes, I know the link spells "Baobab" incorrectly.  That's a hard word to type, even if you're looking right at the correct spelling.) but spent a fair amount of time going over the pattern - looking for things I didn't understand to ask the designer about (since I'm a test knitter), circling the numbers for the size I'm knitting, getting the feel for the basic construction, and stuff like that.

Part of that time was also dithering over the size of circular needle to use - the short one seemed too short for comfortable knitting, and the next longest size seemed too long for the size of sweater I would (eventually) be knitting.

This morning I threw the gauge swatch down the laundry chute so I could see how the yarn holds up in the wash.  While I was still going over the pattern, Steve walked up and said, "Don't decrease the needle size," and handed me the machine-washed-and-dried swatch.

Here's how it compares with the hand-washed, dried-flat swatch:

Before

After

I just looked at the care instructions on the Knit Picks website, and it says machine washing is okay, but it should be dried flat.  My guess is that the recipients of this pullover will not dry it flat.  I wouldn't for a baby pullover.  I decided to use the original size needles.

When I cast on, I always have a problem keeping track of the number of stitches I've put on.  I'm watching TV, listening to music, talking to Steve, or thinking about random things, and I lose track.  I count and count and count the stitches over and over again while I'm casting on, then I count another few times when I'm done.

I read somewhere a tip about putting stitch markers every so often to make counting easier, so I did that.  I am confident in my ability to count to ten (most days :D ), so that's the number I chose.  I still recounted stitches, but it was only to ten, then I counted the stitch markers.

That made it so much easier, and I didn't feel like I was losing my mind.  I'm going to do that every time I have a large number of stitches to cast on.

The stitch markers came from Knit Picks, and I like them very much.  Each package comes with two sizes and two colors of purple (not the reason I bought them, but it was nice bonus).  They're thin, lightweight, and as unobtrusive as stitch markers can be.  The best part is that that there are 30 markers total with a nice storage pouch for only $1.99.  If you're buying yarn from Knit Picks anyway, you might want to pick up a pack.

You know who should be paying me for advertising - Knit Picks.  :)

After casting on, I had to make the "circular needle" decision.  There's a technique called Magic Loop, where a very long (40" or longer) circular needle is used and things are curved around to do the actual knitting.  I don't know how to do that.  I could learn, but I don't have a very long circular needle I could use.  I'm trying really hard to not buy new needles for every project.  I have that interchangeable knitting needle set I've talked about before, so I shouldn't need to buy any more needles.  However, like I said above, the shortest one is too short to knit comfortably - I feel like I'm wrestling two cats into the same carrier at the same time with every stitch.  The next longest one is so much longer that it won't work for this sweater.

I really wanted to use a circular needle, so I agonized and calculated and rearranged and agonized some more.  Here's how both of the circular needles look next to each other (the short one has size 5 needles on it so I could tell the full length):

The stitches are stretched just about as far as they can go.  I decided that even the short, cat-wrestling circular needle is probably a touch too long, so without buying a new, very long circular needle, I was left with one option:

AAHH!  The medieval torture device (otherwise known as double pointed needles - DPNs)!  At this point I'd like to thank my mother and stepfather again for the DPN set they gave me for Christmas, which allowed me to start knitting today instead of going to the store tomorrow.

As I started working on the ribbing to start the sweater, I made a startling discovery:  I no longer have problems working with DPNs and, in fact, am comfortable using them.  GASP!  I still don't like that I have to "see through" the points of unused needles from time to time to get to the stitches at the end of the needle I'm working from, but it's practically effortless now.  That's good, because now that I'm done with the ribbing:

all of my concentration will be needed for the cables that make up the beautiful Baobab tree.

My grown-up looking hat

Happy Wednesday!

My giveaway for the baby hat pattern, Owl and The Pussy Cat Hat, is still going on.  E-mail traci@creative-pursuits.biz to enter!  I'll choose a winner on Friday.

Today will be a short post to show you my grown-up looking hat to go with my grown-up looking coat.  Unfortunately, I'm frogging the grown-up looking scarf because of rolling.  I'll talk about that more when the scarf is done.

Since I'm not good with figuring out sizing and all that for hats, I wanted a pattern for a very simple, straightforward, no nonsense hat.  I found just what I wanted on Ravelry (no surprise there - they have everything).  It's called Basic Knitted Hat.  It's perfect.  It has ribbing for a brim, then stockinette stitch for the main part of the hat and basic decreasing.  It's perfect, and it was free.  Yay!

It gives instructions on how long to make it for a regular hat and for a slouchy hat.  I don't think I'm cut out for slouchy hats, so when I was about halfway through the suggested number of rows, I tried it on:

It was at the perfect spot to start the decreases!  You can see that I used DPNs.  It was just a bit too small for circular needles.  I'm getting a lot of use out of the DPN set Mom gave me for Christmas!

The rest of the hat went very quickly, and here it is:

I used Vanna's Choice Charcoal Print.  The striping is nice, but look what happened at the top of the hat:

I love the spiral!  The scarf had some nice zigzag patterns going, and I hope those come back when I remake it.

I'll model the hat when the scarf is done. 

Owl and the Pussy Cat baby hat

I'd like to thank the two additional people who have answered my survey.  :)  I really am grateful, and I will no longer beg.  In case anyone else would like to weigh in, you can find it here.

In the unlikely event that you're the wife of my husband's coworker who had a baby in November, please read no further.  The gift is at the office and will be sent home when your husband comes back to work.

For everyone else, I'll now show you the hat I made for the aforementioned baby.  It's the Owl and The Pussy Cat Hat that I found on Ravelry.  Apart from having cats on it, I really liked the way the owls were made using cables.  I hadn't done cables before, so in keeping with my tradition of trying something new on a gift project, I thought this hat was perfect.

Cables weren't as hard to understand as I thought they would be.  They were a little tricky to do because not only did I have my medieval torture device (Double Pointed Needles), but I also had an extra needle hanging there holding stitches.  At one point I cried out, "Can ANY more needles be poking me right now?"  Steve looked around, and I said, "They're ALL in use!  ALL OF THEM!"  He then poked me with a pencil.

Here's the hat after all the actual knitting was done:

It's really clever how the owls show up just by using cables.

There were two options for the top of the hat - knitting a cord and tying it in a knot, or stopping when there were four stitches left.  I did the latter, and it made an odd little point in the hat.  I wasn't very happy with that, so Steve suggested I make a pom pom.

There are many different pom pom instructions out there.  Many use cardboard circles or squares, but I found a few that don't require any props.  I like techniques that don't require me to go looking for or crafting something new.  Besides, it was cold in the house, and I didn't want to get out of my warm cocoon.  So, following these directions, I wrapped yarn around my fingers, and I got a very cute pom pom:

I sewed it on the top of the hat, and it was a perfect solution to the pointy problem.  I made eyes on the owls using French knots (if you'd like to see French knots closer up on a scrapbook page I made, click here), and I stitched the cats on using duplicate stitch.  I am not going to rant about duplicate stitch right now.  Suffice it to say that I know I'm doing it right, but the background color is still showing through.  That's frustrating.

Here's the final hat:

It's so cute!

If you're interested in seeing more about the pattern, it's here.  It costs $3.50, and it's well worth it.  The instructions are very clear, not to mention nicely formatted and even pretty.  She includes the poem "The Owl and the Pussy Cat", which I printed, cut out, and tucked inside the hat.

Now I need to go back to making my grown-up looking hat.  Have a good, safe, and warm Saturday!

Tool review - Bamboo knitting double pointed needle set and case

Ever since I figured out how to knit, I love looking at new yarns and patterns.  I think that choosing what I'm going to make is the best part.  Yeah, I love having finished knitwear, and I do like the process of knitting (most of the time), but there's nothing like poring through books, magazines, and patterns on Ravelry (if you missed my explanation of how to search for patterns on Ravelry, you can check it out here).

The one thing that's always challenging is having the right thickness of yarn and the right size needles for a pattern I love.  When I started knitting I had a few different sizes of straight and circular needles.  However, every time I wanted to start a new project, it seemed I had to buy a new set of needles.  My mother bought me a great Boye interchangeable set for straight and circular knitting so I wouldn't have that problem anymore:

In a perfect world, that would have been all I needed, but then I started making socks and baby hats.  You can't use circular needles for such small circular projects, so I had to buy double pointed needles (DPNs).  I have referred to them before as medieval torture devices.

They get the job done, though, so when my stepfather asked me to update my Amazon wish list for Christmas, I thought I'd look into what DPN multi-size sets were available.  My goodness, there are a quite a number of options.  You have your choice of needle size and how many different sizes are in the set, material (wood, bamboo, metal), and length of the needles (4", 5", 6", 7", 8"...).  Prices range from $7.88 (6 different sizes) to $179.33 (15 different sizes).  Interestingly enough, both the low and high end sets are made with bamboo.  After looking at a number of different lower mid-range options, I found this set from Stanwood Needlecraft:


There are fourteen sizes (1-15) and five 7" needles per size.  The sizes are etched onto the needles, which is great, because I have to try to remember the sizes on the metal DPNs I have.  Yes, there are needle sizing tools out there, but it's much more convenient to have the sizes on the needles themselves.  The reviews are mostly very good for the set, but what really tipped me over to add it to my wish list was what was in the "Frequently Bought Together" section:


I had been wondering how I'd keep 70 needles corralled and organized by size.  This case is made specifically for the above set of needles by the same vendor.  This got added to the wish list, too.

And on Christmas day, I was thrilled Mom and John gave me both items!  (Thanks, Mom and John!)  Yes, it takes very little to make me happy.

Each size was individually wrapped in clear plastic bags that are recloseable, so if you choose to get the DPNs without the case, there's no worries about getting the sizes mixed up.

Here's a look at three of the different sizes:

(not actual size)

Here's a closer look at the etching:

For the most part, the needles look completely straight.  The thinnest ones have a very slight bend to them, but I don't think that's going to interfere with knitting.

When I decided that this would be today's review, I started thinking of what I could start knitting to test the needles.  Could I start my new winter hat?  No, the hat pattern I've chosen starts with the brim, and I don't have time to knit the whole thing to get to where I'd use the DPNs.  Maybe I could start a pair of socks?  Duh!  I'm in the middle of a baby hat using size 3 DPNs.

That was a good test because I could easily compare the metal needles against the bamboo ones.  I worked off of the metal and onto the bamboo.  When I was done with one round and all the needles were replaced, I realized that I needed to take a picture with the needles in the case, and I couldn't very well show an incomplete set.  Argh.  Since the next round was a cabling round, which would take me a while to do (I'm not comfortable with it yet), I just moved the stitches back onto the metal needles.

While the bamboo needles do feel smooth, the yarn doesn't move as nicely as on metal needles.  I also think it's a little rough where the etching is.  It's going to take a bit of getting used to, but I've worked with bamboo needles before, and they were just fine.

The one benefit of the needles not being as slippery is that they won't easily fall out.  I have that problem all the time with the metal needles.  When I picked my project up today for testing, I dropped four stitches because the needle moved around too much.  Also, I can't count the number of times that the needle fell out when I was on the last two or three stitches.  That won't happen with the bamboo needles, which makes them well worth any loss of slickness in my book.

Now, on to the case:

I wish there were different color or fabric choices (you know I'm partial to purple), but the blue flowers are pretty.  I'm more concerned about how the case works.  The pocket sizes are perfect for the different sizes.  They're loose without being too loose.  I like that there's a lining and that it's a solid color so the inside isn't so busy.

When you're ready to close things up, you fold the flap down to protect the points of the needles:

The case could probably work with DPNs up to 8" long.  Longer if you don't mind having the middles of the needles not covered with fabric.

The case rolls up from end with the thinnest needles, and there's a strap to hold the case together.  There's Velcro in the middle of the strap that attaches to Velcro on the case:

Based on reviews on Amazon, I think that the ability to Velcro the strap to the case is relatively new.  People were complaining that there was nothing to keep the strap attached to the case.  I think this will work just fine.

Here's how the case looks all rolled and strapped up:

 

You can tell in this last picture that the inner flap peeks out.  It does wrinkle a bit when you're rolling the case up, but I don't know any way around that.

All in all, I'm very pleased with this DPN set and needle case (the links go to the Amazon listings).  The quality of the DPN set is great for the price.  At the time of this writing, it works out to $2.05 per size - you can't beat that!  I no longer have to choose the pattern based on the needles I have available because I either don't want to buy another set or just want to start knitting right away.

The train hat (finally)

Tomorrow is shaping up to be a busy day, so I'm posting A DAY EARLY!  Woo hoo!  If all goes will with tomorrow's stuff, next week I'll fill you in.  Suffice it to say for the moment that it's soft and sharp all at the same time.

Last week I discussed my knitting adventures and finished up talking about a Sockie which is knit in the round with DPNs (Double Pointed Needles).

I've been teasing you for a while now about this train hat, and now it's departure time.  Take your seats and have your tickets ready.  If you're in a sleeper car, keep your clothes on until after your tickets have been punched, thankyouverymuch.  We don't want a repeat of last month's incident.

I mentioned last week that Steve's coworkers keep getting their wives pregnant.  No, I don't think they've taken a bunch of train rides in sleeper cars, but those folks at Model Railroader are all big train buffs, so you never know.  That could be what happened.

Every year they go to a bunch of houses of Model Railroader employees and friends to see their layouts.  They make a day of it with breakfast and lunch out in area restaurants, and there's lots of driving from house to house because they're all scattered.  I usually don't go to any of the other houses, but I'd been to lunch before because it's relatively close.  Milwaukee folks: they go to Saz's.  If you haven't been, go - it's good food!  This year our stop was one stop away from lunch.  I stayed home and baked cookies and set out drinks and snacks and stuff (because I like being a hostess that way), and after our stop was over I rode with Steve to the next stop then to lunch.  After lunch I went to the remaining stop, but after a big, tasty Saz's lunch I kinda wish I'd gone back home to take a nap.  It was a very long drive there and back.

Anyway.  At lunch I got wind of the imminent pregnancy.  She had about three months left, and this was February, I think.  Three months really isn't a lot of time to determine a gift and to knit it, especially with someone who is as slow as I am.  Everything lately takes me a long time to do.  I blame Fibromyalgia and insomnia.  So that night (after the nap that we both just had to take), I went onto Ravelry's website to look for patterns.  That's easier than combing through my books, and there are a LOT more there.  Ravelry has thousands upon thousands of patterns that are either references to items in magazines or books or are downloadable for free or for a fee.

To give you an idea on what this is like, I just typed "baby" into the pattern search bar.  There are 21,400 crochet patterns and 38,892 knit patterns.  That's pretty overwhelming, right?  Fortunately for any search there are refinements:

• With or without photo.  This is big - why would you try a pattern you haven't seen before unless you're having fun?
   
• Craft - Crochet, knit, machine knitting, or loom knitting
   
• Availability - Free, purchase online, purchase in print, Ravelry download, or in my library (what you've already downloaded).  So if you only want to see free patterns - one click turns over 60,000 patterns down to just over 17,000.  Nice feature!
   
• Category - Clothing, accessories, and stuff like that.  Also very helpful.  If I want to knit a garment, I don't want to look through a bunch of afghans.
   
• Attributes - Colorwork, construction, crochet techniques, and stuff like th...wait... "Mature content" has 28 for a search for "baby".  Must investigate.  brb.  Okay - a few baby blue risque items (lingerie and a flogger of all things) and baby doll nighties, but most of the rest of them are breast baby hats that promote breastfeeding.  So when the baby is wearing the hat and breastfeeding, you see a boob.  That's brilliant!  Not appropriate for a coworker's wife you barely know, though.
   
• Gender/Age/Size/Fit.  There's also an "Ease" option in this box.
   
• Weight of yarn.  This is good if you're looking for a project to do with a particular yarn in your stash.
   
• Yardage.  Also good for that stash yarn.  You'd hate to be in the middle of a breast cancer awareness pillow and find out you don't have enough pink.  You'd never find the exact same shade (dye lots are a pain), and then one boob would be a different color than another, and everyone looking at the pillow would suggest you go get a mammogram.
   
• Meterage.  I'm American.  We don't use the stinkin' metric system.  (Actually, I do when it comes to beads, but not with yarn.)
   
• My notebook.  That's a personalized thing for patterns you've saved to your notebook.
   
• Pattern source type - Book, magazine, website, etc.
   
• Hook size for crochet.  I guess this would be if you only had one or two hooks or had a favorite you're itching to use.
   
• Fiber - Acrylic, alpaca, bamboo, wool... Well, now we're just getting picky.  There's not a lot populated in this box for my search, so I don't think many patterns have this labeled.
   
• Needle size for knitting.  Same as for the hook size, I guess.
   
• Rating - What other Ravelry people have rated.  Only a few patterns in this search are rated, and I find that surprising.
   
• Difficulty.  What fun is that?  :)
   
• Ravelry designer - Yes/No are your only options.
   
• Language.  This is great if you don't speak other languages, but again, this field must not be entered much, as there's one Danish pattern and 25 English patterns out of over 60,000.
   
• Other search options I'm not going to list.  They're all in one box.

Wow.  I never looked down that far before.  If I had known that before I started typing them all out, I would have reconsidered my approach.  Once I got to "Yardage", I felt I was committed.  Look before you leap, my friends.

So you can get that list of patterns whittled down to a manageable size in no time.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to knit, so I looked around for a while.  I found some very cute animal hats, but Steve wasn't too keen on them.  He said, "Is there anything with a train on it?"  I was able to find a few things that weren't too cutesy or Thomas the Tank Engine, but I didn't want to do a full sweater or an afghan, since there were multiple colors used in the cutest ones.  I hadn't done colorwork yet, and I was pretty afraid of it.  In the book "Sweater Quest" by Adrienne Martini that I still want to review, she talked about working with color and holding one color in each hand, and I was nervous that I wouldn't be able to figure it out.

I settled on the Choo Choo Child hat by Deborah Tomasello.  I ordered the yarn online because I couldn't find Fingering weight yarn in enough solid colors at Michaels.  I figured it'd be easier and probably cheaper to order online.  The recommended yarn is wool, but I didn't want to use that just in case the baby had allergies.  I've had some wool allergies in the past, and I was concerned about my own itchiness as well.  I found a good alternative, but there was no sky blue.  Seafoam looked pretty close, but when it was delivered I was a bit dubious.  We decided to try anyway, as I wanted all the yarn to be the same brand to make sure that if something went wrong it'd be me, not the yarn.

Then it was time to actually knit.  This made me very nervous.  Apart from cuffs and neckline of the sweater I showed you last week, I hadn't worked with different colors in knitting.  That sweater actually doesn't count because the whole row was done in the same color, and this hat has different colors in the same round!

A while ago I bought the Knitting Answer Book: Solutions to Every Problem You'll Ever Face, Answers to Every Question You'll Ever Ask for the Kindle.  I downloaded it onto my iPad, and it's been very useful.  I'm rarely far away from my Pad.  I did a lot of reading on colorwork and weaving the unused color in while knitting, and I knit a small test piece with larger yarn and bigger needles.

However, I couldn't put it off forever, so I finally got started.  The bottom of the hat is ribbing (K2P2)  with the knits in one color and the purls in another.  I didn't have to worry about weaving the unused yarn in for these rows, and it went surprisingly well.  The yarn kept twisting, so I turned to the Knitting Answer Book.  Unfortunately the solution was to NOT twist the yarn.  Ha ha ha.  Well, I tried it, keeping one yarn to the left and one to the right and paid attention to where I put things down, and it actually worked.  Color me surprised.

The next few rounds were just one color.  Yay!  I flew through those.  I was a bit surprised that I didn't have many problems with the thinner yarn and the smaller needles.  There are only 4 needles for smaller in-the-round projects, and I guess I was elated that there was less to juggle.  I did have to be careful of leaving the loops in the middle of the needles, though, instead of near the edge.  I had a few drop off.  Fortunately I was able to scoop them back up.

The actual colorwork started with the train wheels.  As I suspected, I had a bit of trouble weaving the unused yarn in as I worked.  You need to do this so there are no big loops on the inside of your piece that can pull during wear.  I guess that can mess things up.  The difficult part is "catching" the unused yarn in the working yarn so it's trapped between two stitches.  It can show through a little, and if you pull too tightly on the unused yarn it can cause misshaping in the piece.  I think I didn't pull TOO tightly, but I should have been a little looser because the hat doesn't stretch much.

Unfortunately the "don't twist the yarn" advice doesn't work with weaving unused yarn in.  You have to twist it to get it to catch.  Eventually I realized that I needed to untwist it manually at the end of each needle or I would go crazy.

I had a bit of a problem figuring out the decreasing at the top of the hat, but fortunately the designer, Deborah Tomasello, was just a Ravelry message away and provided help.  She's very nice!  The top looked very cute.

One final thing was needed - filling in some of the details with the duplicate stitch.  I could have done three or more colors while knitting the top part of the train, but the pattern suggested not doing that because it would make that part too bulky.  So I grabbed the iPad and looked through the Knitting Answer Book and learned how to do duplicate stitch!  It was a little tricky because the light blue (seafoam) showed through the black, but I improvised and did long stitches down the length of the smoke stacks where necessary.

You're either on the edge of your seat waiting for the pictures, or you've wandered off by now.  Hopefully you're still with me.  One of these days I'll be able to explain things concisely, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Before I show you the pictures, I do want to say that I changed the colors of the train a little.  We wanted it to have colors more realistic to "prototype" trains (that's what they call the full-sized ones).  Also, the green was a bit close to the seafoam for comfort.  At the top it looks nice, but the cab was just thin lines that might not work with colors that are too similar.

Taaaaa daaaah:

All done up the seafoam doesn't look too green.  Yay!

I sure hope that was worth the wait and that it will fit this child's head.  :)  It's supposed to be for 6-month-olds.  I asked my cousin Dawn how big her baby's head is since she was about the same age (or a bit older) than 6 months, and it seems like it would fit.

So now that I've done the "reveal", here's a link to Deborah's pattern so you can knit your own Choo Choo Child Hat:  http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/choo-choo-child-hat.  It's only $3, and (once you know what you're doing), it's not that hard.