Knitting Project - Hooter Hat!!!

So, after finishing my last knitting project, I announced that I would next be taking on a boob hat for the baby.  So, I got to Googlin' to find a pattern for such a lovely head piece and I found this pattern:

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Perfect, right?  Wrong.

This is my first time knitting in the round.  This can be accomplished with double ended needles or with circular needles.  I was using circular needles.  This pattern starts at the nipple, and for whatever reason it was basically impossible for me to successfully use my circular needles with that few stitches.

Side note - if you're knitting in the round for the first time, for some reason this diagram really helped me understand what was happening and in turn actually be able to knit in the round.  The instructions on the source page aren't half bad either...

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So anyways...I obviously wasn't going to give up on making my own boob hat that easily!  So I figured I could just make a hat, do a color change towards the crown of the hat, and figure out the nipple later!  Once again, I got to Googlin' and I found this pattern for the "Grow With Me Baby Hat" which I really like (I plan on making a bunch more hats, but I'm waiting until I find out the sex of the baby, and I'll use that pattern).  It has a nice cuff that can be folded thicker or thinner as the baby grows and I found the instructions for the decrease at the crown of the head to be very helpful.  Not only that, but I think the crown of the hat looks really cool!

So I followed the instructions almost exactly, but I changed from my primary color (the skin tone {aka white}) to the accent color (the nipple color {aka pink}) when I had 42 stitches left on my needles, or about halfway through decreasing the stitches on the top of the hat. Et voila - a completed hat, but not a true boob hat yet since there's no actual nipple:

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Where's the nip?


Not too bad, if I do say so myself!

Now, I just had to figure out how the hell I was going to make a nipple.  I tried knitting a chord with my circular needles (this is called an I-chord) but that wasn't working.  Then I remembered this toy/knitting loom that I had as a child that basically just created long ass chords that we would then make into things - or not, lol, in which case you then had a really long chord and nothing to do with it.  Mine looked like a mushroom, like this one:

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Oh the memories

I figured even if I couldn't find an awesome mushroom shaped one, they had to still make mini-looms like this, so I went to Wal-mart.  I ended up finding a double ended one (made by Boye) that could make to different size chords - sweet!  I can't find it online anywhere right now, but if you go to Wal-mart I'm sure you'll find it with all the other knitting stuff'; it was like 5 bucks and change.

Making a really short chord was harder than I expected, so my hat has a pretty long nipple.  Don't judge - that hat is supposed to represent a boob that's constantly being chewed on by an infant!  But yeah, so I made a chord as short as I could without it looking like total crap and then I just stitched it on with some of the pink yarn.  And check it out - hooter hat, nipple and all!

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Since I'm kinda obsessed with the blog where I originally saw a baby boob hat, MODG, and she took a picture of her cat wearing her boob hat, I kinda did the same thing.  No, it isn't creepy - it's totally normal to mimic bloggers you like.  Plus, Fatman is a way better baby hat model than my knee is...

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Needless to say, he did not appreciate having a ta-ta put on his head and then have photos taken that would later be posted on the Internet.  He may be pretty pissed at me right now, but I totally think it was worth it, haha.

So - what do you think of my boob hat?  Do you think the whole concept is completely inappropriate or are you like me and think it's perfect??

Until next time...

PS - fun fact about my boobs - I'm now a 36E.  Yes - E - as in Elephant.  I think once you've gone up that many cup sizes, regardless of how big or small your baby bump is, your body is officially completely different than it was pre-pregnancy.  I'm contemplating chopping them off, cuz they're obnoxious.