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:

While I’m at home, I’m mostly working on Swamp Thing, another franken-project I’m slapping together from various half-formed ideas. It’s a hooded sweater for Isaac, in the tradition of the Monster Hoodie. In fact, it’s the same pattern. I was given some Koigu yarn which reminded me of the Creature From the Black Lagoon or Godzilla or some other monster (in my world, that’s a good thing), so I’m working it double-stranded in the Welted Chevron pattern from Barbara Walker’s stitch book. The pattern is coming out very defined and scale-y. I’m planning to run some scales up the back after it’s all put together.

Meanwhile, waiting in the wings is a metric buttload of Malabrigo, to be turned into various things, and some other projects are whooshing around my brain as well.

What, you don’t see a jacket here? I finished a quickish project, a Baby Surprise Jacket for Isaac.

Shown here in raw form; this really is the whole jacket.

Yarn is hand-dyed/hand-spun by Franquemont-Fibers, worked on size 7 needles.

Pattern version by FoxyKnits, with help from Knit-Wiki.

Here it’s folded properly and the random yarn ends are tucked inside. Still need to sew seams, weave in ends, and buy buttons!

My latest quick knitting project: binary hat for Nathan.

His name is spelled out in binary all the way around the hat. I got the idea from the binary scarf in the new issue of Knitty, and then used the binary converter here to get the number sequence. It’s dorktastic!

Isaac’s Thanksgiving hat:

Really, Mama? Really?

I just used a basic hat pattern and added the stuffed turkey legs. I made up the leg pattern as I went along. It’s very silly.

One month old!  Five big pounds!

The cupcake hat is pretty silly, but I just couldn’t resist. It turned out a bit small for him, because his mighty head is growing along with the rest of him. It’s a scaled down version of this pattern, with an i-cord candle instead of a cherry.

I knit pumpkin hats for Isaac and Nathan (pattern link and details here):

There’s a bit of a size difference, obviously.

I made the stem longer and crocheted a leaf freehand.

I increased the size of Nathan’s hat (age 8 months) from the newborn size, to 72 stitches around, and 6.5″ before I started the decreases. I used 16″ circulars for his hat instead of dpns.

Body is Red Heart Soft (worsted), stem is Sugar & Cream to give it a rough texture.

Of course I had to dress Isaac up for Halloween. Here he is as a slightly cranky burrito (with extra sour cream, I guess):

The label has checkboxes for chicken burrito, carnitas burrito, steak burrito, and Isaac burrito.