Squishy's first hat

Last Wednesday, I made my first ever ebay purchase. Well, kind of. I did all the bidding and paying and all that, but I was using Graeme's username and paypal, because I don't have either of those things, and he was sitting next to me the whole time. I'm not really sure why, but I've always had a bit of an aversion to the whole thing (ebay and paypal), maybe it's all the horror stories I've read. Anyway, I ordered a bunch of bamboo circular knitting needles, for an absolute steal compared to going out and buying needles at the shop. I know bamboo isn't as slick as metal and therefore the needles are supposed to be slower to knit with, but I'm not a very fast knitter anyway, so I don't mind. I bought long ones, because I really want to knit my first pair of socks two-at-a-time using magic loop and this wool:

Well, when the package turned up on Friday, they'd sent me straight needles instead. I literally cried and told Graeme "this is why I've never used ebay", but a few emails between Graeme and the shop owner later and not only were they sending the ones I had actually ordered, but they said to keep the ones they'd sent by mistake - awesome! So, since the circulars arrived on Saturday, I now have 30 new sets of knitting needles for less than it'd cost to buy 5 from the craft store.

Having not knitted anything more complicated than a scarf for a while, I decided to do a little project before I dove into the socks, so I went through my knitting books, looking for something I could knit with the yarn I already have on hand (which isn't a lot at the moment). I settled on a hat for Squishy, knit using the leftovers from my Gryffindor scarf, using the Umbilical Cord Hat pattern from Stitch 'n Bitch.



I started on Saturday and finished on Sunday. I originally wanted to put stripes on the actual hat, but the gold I have is more a thread than a yarn and it's way too scratchy for a baby's head, so I put a couple stripes on the cord. Of course, Squishy is due right when the weather will should be warming up and I have no idea when this will actually fit him/her, but it's tiny and cute and makes me want to knit a whole heap of little things - I might stick to the 6 months sizes from now on though, so I know they might actually get some use.



oh, and in case you didn't notice, this post includes photos from the first 3 days of February