Christmas Tree Hats for Preemies and Newborns

Say Merry Christmas to a tiny one by knitting this hat. It's fast and easy to do.

Pattern: Christmas Tree Hat and Elfin Sox
Click here for link. Pattern is designed by Patti Pierce Stone and is for personal or charitable use.

I am knitting these for the local hospital nursery to welcome our Christmas Season newborns.

Another easy hat for Christmas is shown in the next photo. I used the short-row baby hat pattern explained in the Oct. 16, 2007 post. Since the yarn was worsted instead of sport weight, I only used 9 repeats of the pattern and reduced the cast on by 1 stitch. I simply used white, red, and green for the different sections. Since the yarn was worsted weight I used a US #8 Crystal Palace Bamboo straight needles (9" length) .

Slip Stitch Switch Baby Hat

Be sure to knit a practice swatch before you start, because the gauge is given "in pattern". The hat I knit stretched, but was not as "stretchy" as a regular knit hat. However, that could be due to the fact that the gauge I actually had was much tighter than the pattern called for (I didn't do the swatch first!).

Also, use your own judgement on the height of the hat.

This was an easy knit (only 3 rows to really be concerned with in the pattern). I plan to try it in a bigger size next time, and also try to adapt to an adult size for our chemotherapy patients.

Yarn: Caron Simply Soft

Needle: US # 5 (should have used a little larger one)


Pattern: http://www.p2designs.com/pdfs/SlipStSwitchHat.pdf