Some of you may remember the hat I made for Isaac last Thanksgiving. He was about six weeks old, and was still in the nicu. I may have been slightly unhinged at that point, because I knit him this ridiculous turkey hat.

This year, I have improved upon the turkey hat, and I’m sharing the pattern. turkey hat pattern pdf

Apologies for the lack of photos; I’ll get a photo session together in the next few days, but don’t want to miss getting the pattern out in time for Thanksgiving!

The pattern is sized for a 12 month old. You can size it up or down by changing the size of the hat; just use an even number of stitches and adjust the decreases after row 5 to match the number of stitches you have, adding or deleting rows to work down to 12 stitches. If you go smaller, I would still keep at least 16 stitches as the base for the legs, to maintain structural integrity, and maybe not do as many even rows at 36 stitches (rows 6-15). There are many natural variations in the turkey world, so whatever you come up with will be fabulous.

Last year’s hat was done in Red Heart Soft acrylic yarn (because the idea came to me at around 8:00 p.m., which meant Michaels); this year I used Cascade 220 wool, with Wool-Ease for the bones because I wanted a brighter white than you usually get with wool. I’m intrigued by the idea of doing a felted version of this; if anyone wants to give it a go, I’d love to see the results!

Last year’s hat:

I knit this for my friend’s baby this week. Dennis says it’s because I think of all children as mannequins for my knitting and sewing projects, and babies are the best because they don’t know when they’re wearing a totally ridiculous sweater.

The chart is provided; it’s 62 stitches across, and could also make a really nifty hat or adult sweater with some tweaking. You could just add some extra empty seats to Tom Servo’s left.I don’t make any promises about the quality of my charts, so if you feel like tweaking something, it’s probably an improvement.

Baby sweater in action:

Technically, he is wearing it backwards, and you know what? He does not care! Because he’s a rebel!

Say, is that Manos: the Hand of Fate behind him? Is it summoning dark forces, or just keeping him from rolling off the bed? No one can say.

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