Train hat becomes simple stripe hat. My 4-year-old loves trains, so I set out to design a hat for him that would match his winter coat and also have a picture of a locomotive on it. I brought his coat to the Knitter's Cottage, and after looking around unsuccessfully, the shop owner brought out the Dale of Norway Falk color card, and the colors were perfect. I ordered the colors that were not in stock, and went home to design the train for the hat. Using a chart made in Pages, I used x's to draw a locomotive. By the time the yarn arrived, I had the chart ready, I had swatched with the Falk, and knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. Well, the best laid plans....

I based the structure of the hat on the Luggy Bonnet from Weekend Knitting. Somehow, even though my gauge was smack on for the swatch, the hat grew immensely during the knitting process, and ended up being way too large for my 4-year-old, and large enough for my husband's huge head. Unfortunately he is past the age of someone who would desire a train hat. If it were made of non-superwash wool, I would probably try to felt it and see what happened, but it will most likely be frogged and made into a mitten. I may reuse the train design for a sweater, so not all is lost.

Here it is.
Since that didn't work, and I needed to finish a number of projects for Christmas, the hat ended up being put on hold. Now that Christmas is over, I have a little more time, but the weather is suddenly freezing, so I figured it would be better to make him a simple hat so he has something to keep his head warm. This one was based on the Fish Hat from
Animal Knits, except I made earflaps for the largest size and the body of the hat in the smallest size, so I didn't end up with gargantuan hat again.

Here it is on the silly recipient.