asked for knits!

I've mentioned before how the kids on my husband's side of the family shy away from the hand knits - they'd rather wear a cheaply made acrylic hat with the right "label" than a custom hand knit. Fine. It pains me, but I have given up trying to force feed the hand knits where they are not appreciated.

My brother's kids however, have come into the light. I made my niece a brown silk and mohair hat - nice and slouchy as requested, and brown. (She attends Brown University). She loved it. I seem to have brain-farted as far as getting a picture of it - too bad, because I have to say, it was really quite lovely! I hit all the parameters. Slouchy, but not a beret, no pompom, soft, and a milk chocolate, not dark chocolate colour. I love specifics, I really do.

The two boys were a different story - I hadn't had a chance to talk to them before Christmas, so I came prepared with a pile of patterns, and some wools. We spent a fantastic hour, looking at patterns, and wools, and comparing colours.

One was rather specific - tiger pattern. Could I knit a tiger pattern? So we hit the computer, and I did a quick Ravelry search, and found a tiger chart. He loved it, and then requested BRIGHT orange and black. Again, slightly slouchy, no pompom, not beanie like - a little longer than that, but snug enough to stay on his head.

The other nephew was also specific - blue and white stripes. (He plays hockey in the Toronto Marlies system - Minor Midget AAA) But, while he also wanted slouchy and longer, he definitely wanted a pompom.

So I left Christmas with all these instructions, and by the time we were headed to the cottage, I had materials in hand, (and the tiger hat partially started). The stripey hat was an easy car knit, and by a couple of days in, I had this:

Note - the stripe pattern was not determined until after a couple of rounds of texts back and forth between nephew and myself - I asked if he wanted skinny or wide stripes, he decided random, so I did Fibbonacci striping. We also narrowed down the pompom size via text - not too big or small, sort of medium...

Before we left the cottage, I had two hats, ready for blocking:

Once home, I used some balloons and blocked, and two more Christmas gifts are ready for delivery!

These kids can ask for anything, anytime...