the crafty room

sizing from afar

I’m struggling right now with a hat I’m making for my nephew. I have the pattern for the Lil’ Devil Baby Hat. The pattern gives no indication of size – just the word “baby” in the title. My nephew is two years old, so he’s not really a baby anymore.

Complicating matters a bit, the yarn I got is pretty chunky. I thought this would make it a bit bigger so I could just knit up the baby version, but when I knit a swatch I was getting almost exactly the 4 stitches per inch called for in the pattern, if not almost 5. I do not have the right needles to move a size up and and would really hate to have to go out and buy them.

So, I also have the pattern for the adult version of this hat. The adult pattern calls for a casting on of 84 stitches, vs. the baby 70. I thought I would split the difference, casting on 77 (this makes for easy division for when I get to the decreases at the crown of the hat).

Well, it’s hard to measure for sure while it’s still on the needles, but the circumference appears to be about 19 1/2 inches, which according to this reference chart is maybe 1/2-1 inch too big for a toddler sized hat. Said nephew lives pretty far away so I can’t really measure his head, either. I’m not even around 2 year olds enough to have an idea of their head size, really. If I get a hold of my sister I may ask her to measure for me, but that may be days/weeks from now.

I can’t decide if I should just plow through and finish this or frog it and start over.