First of all, I just need to point somewhat frantically at the countdown ticker on the left. 100 days to go! When I say the baby is due in October, it seems like ages away, but it’s less than 15 weeks (assuming she arrives on the due date, ha ha ha). *knits faster* I should have got a bit of a clue from the sudden explosion of bump that has appeared:

I’ve given in and bought maternity jeans after wearing my old, big girl trousers for the past few months and ironically I feel slimmer because they’re not flapping around my legs. And the comfort of a huge stretchy cotton tummy panel cannot be underestimated.

So, to the knitting. I really do not need to make any more hats, but when they have ears on, it’s hard to resist! Plus I had suitable yarn in my stash. The pattern I’m making is from the Dale of Norway #135 I bought last week; picture of hat here top right, page 7. I wonder how many other animals I can make this poor child look like?

It’s an interesting knit. Partly because there’s no real symmetry to the cow print pattern, which means paying attention on every row. And though the directions for the hat itself are clear, the total stitch count for the hat doesn’t match the stitch count for the pattern chart and there’s no indication of where to start on the chart. So I just winged it! The randomness helps as it’s impossible to tell that it *isn’t* supposed to look a certain way.

The worst part really was having to knit the ribbing on 1.5mm needles. I needed to go down to 2mm needles to get the correct pattern tension, so following the convention of going down two needle sizes for the ribbing, that’s what I ended up with. Though it was over quickly enough, it’ll be a different story when/if I choose to knit a cardigan from the book and have to cast on around 200 stitches on 1.5mm needles. I’ve prepared for this by buying a 1.5mm circular needle, which is really just two toothpicks held together with dental floss and frankly gives me the willies. I may go and dig out some aran weight yarn instead.