My dear friend Joyce has a new grand-daughter, Gwendolyn — and, of course, that means knitting something sweet and special!  Sarah found a charming baby shawl called Heartwarmer by Bley Hack.  She is making one for Evelyn and I am making one for Gwendolyn.  I thought a matching hat would be adorable — and perhaps the name of the shawl prompted me, as I immediately thought of Elizabeth Zimmermann's Heart Hat.

It took me a little while to find — and when I finally located it in Knitting Workshop, I was astonished to discover that it had been designed for adults!  I tried to imagine the grown woman who would wear a heart bonnet.  A 1930s ice skater?  A hipster in Portland?  Anyhow, the number were for an adult-sized hat in worsted weight (4 sts/inch in garter).  I needed a baby-sized hat is light worsted (5 sts/inch).  The pithy directions say:

"Make hearts in any size you wish using a multiple of 10 stitches + 1.

The number of orphan stitches gradually deserted at the ends will be 10% + 1 of the number of cast-on stitches;  and the final un-cast-off stitches will be 20% + 1."

There are 23 rows of specific directions & numbers for a cast-on of 61 sts.  (Altho who are the orphans and why are they deserted is left to the knitter to dsicover)  For example:

"Row 1:  K29, sl 1, K2tog, psso, K26, K2tog, TURN

Row 2:  K54, K2tog, TURN"

And the numbers continue to change for each row in ways that are not immediately obvious.  It was quite a puzzle!  I tried adapting it to 31 stitches and got a point (and learned that the directions started at the bottom of the heart and that there were short rows involved! Ah ha!) and did not have enough stitches left to make the two bumps at the top of the heart.

Now, plenty of knitters have made this hat for babies — Ravely has lots of darling photos to prove it.  I think some people used lighter weight yarn with the 61 cast-on at a smaller gauge.  But I am committed to the yarn which I used to make the shawl.  So that would not work.  Other knitters must have figured it out for different cast-on numbers — so I reasoned that I could too (perhaps it is not so much about "reason" as about "challenge accepted!").  I confess that I did check out Nicky Epstein's Knitted Embellishments — which has a section on hearts — to see if EZ's heart had slipped in, but with no luck.

Anyhow, I decided to try a cast-on of 51 stitches — with my slightly smaller gauge, maybe it would shrink the heart enough for my purposes. So, I puzzled out all the numbers.  I have not had a chance to try it yet — wish me luck!  I will let you know how it goes. 

I continue to be impressed with EZ's inventiveness, tho!  That woman could knit 3-dimensionally in her head!  And she was modest enough to assume that the rest of us could too.

On to flamingos.  My latest commission — requested by my grand-daughter Gwen:

"Yzma, can you knit me a flamingo?!"  Why yes, yes I can.  Off to Ravelry where I located Feathers by Chris de Longpre.

And now to go stash-diving for some pink flamingo-y yarn!