To add to the little Giraffe gift, I wanted to make an animal themed hat. It needed to be a safari animal and my Ravelry searches unearthed a zebra version. Baby Zebra by Marji LaFreniere, a cute little hat in black and white with a mane down the back. I didn’t want to make it too complicated so I knit the body of the hat on the knitting machine. Since the yarn was very thick, I cast on my 74 stitches (72 + 2 for seaming down the back) by putting 2 needles in work and skipping the next one. Once I reached the length, I pulled the knitting off the machine and onto 4 mm needles.
Since a hat needs to be smaller on top, I did the decreases by hand. Once it was done, I sewed the back seam, leaving space for the tufts of the mane. I made the ears mostly according to the pattern (either the maker can’t count or I can’t because the row numbers didn’t match up) and attached those to the hat. I then cut lengths of yarn and knotted those in the seam of the back for the mane.
I have No Idea whether or not this hat is actually baby sized. I’m notoriously bad at this, generally making baby hats sized for like 1 to 2 year old kiddos. We’ll see on which end of the spectrum this one ends up. The bottom of the hat rolls a bit, but I think it still like it. You can also still see the skipped needles in the body of the hat, it almost looks like ribbing. However, I still think this thing is stinking cute!