Down Cloverlaine: A Hat for Ruby

My brother has a new granddaughter, Ruby, and although she was born this past August, I couldn't decide what to make for her. I have lots and lots of patterns for little girls, but I never have an opportunity to actually make any of them. Usually, I'm pretty prompt with gifts too, but for some reason, I kept putting this one off. Now that I'm going to see my brother for Thanksgiving , I really had to come up with something fast! I decided on this sweet little hat. It's a free pattern that you can get here. I went back and forth trying to decide on the color and then decided to go with a bright red, or a "ruby" red, if you will. I used the Cascade 220 Superwash and U.S. Size 8 needles. It looks just like a little tomato.

It was so much fun to knit and fast. I did the whole thing in about two hours. The pattern calls for k2tog, but I read that someone said the leaves twirl better if you slip one, knit one and then pass the slipped stitch over, so that's what I did. I don't know if this is actually better than the written pattern, because the original is pretty darn cute too, but it worked beautifully, so I can recommend it.

Since the hat was so quick, I decided to do a pair of socks to go with it. I had the idea to try and incorporate the leaves in the toe of the sock, so after a couple of false starts I ended up with these:

I cast on 32 stitches on a U.S. 5. They are really tight and I think they'll be pretty cosy. I'm not so sure that the leaves really work, but they do look cute together. My first version had the colors reversed, but I decided that it looked too much like an olive!