Can't knit too many hats on the southside

I've been away from knitting for a while, but my boss is expecting and a baby hat seemed like a great way to get back into it. I also spent nearly all of February dealing with shingles and knitting seemed like a great sedentary activity. Traditionally, my baby hat of choice has been the umbilical cord hat from Stitch 'n Bitch, but I thought I might try something different this time. I didn't find any particularly inspiring patterns in my other knitting books, but HEB was here with Natural Knits for Babies and Moms in tow, and I found in it a baby hat and blanket set that I liked. Since the gender of the baby is unknown, I had to opt for gender neutral yarn and wound up with one skein of orange and one skein of green.

The pattern calls for size 7 & 8 needles, but since I didn't have any size 8 dpn and opted not to purchase any, I used size 6 & 7 instead. I finished that hat while HEB was still here, and it seemed pretty small. I couldn't tell if it seemed appropriately small because newborn heads are really tiny and that was the pattern's intended result or if it seemed inappropriately small (possibly because of the change in needle size?). When HEB pointed out that the hat would fit well as long as the baby's head was no larger than the remainder of the skein over which it fit quite well, I decided I had to tear it out and start over. I figure it's always better to knit a little too big than too small (unless, of course, I ever make socks for kz in which case I will shoot small).

HEB suggested that I modify the pattern based off of the umbilical cord hat pattern, since we knew that was a reasonably sized baby hat. Instead of a co of 57 stitches advised in the actual pattern, I co 64 and repeated the pattern until the hat measured 5 " from the co row. I knit the crown as advised in the original pattern, with a few modifications to account for the added stitches, and in the end, success! I suppose now I should knit the matching blanket, but...

I have been wanting to knit myself the droplet hat from Knitting Nature for a very long time and I think I shall! I have green yarn (thanks, EW!) that is perfect for it. I actually wanted to start knitting it last summer after I got the yarn for my birthday, but soon realized that my knitting boxes were all in storage and well, I'm not entirely sure that I have a great excuse for why it's now March and I didn't start it between when I got all of my belongings out of storage and now.

I assumed the hat was to be knit in the round (reasonable assumption for a hat, no?), but discovered while HEB is here that is not true. Apparently it is to be knit flat and then stitched up. It will be first adventure on that front. It will also be first adventure with bobbles, although I took advantage of HEB's presence to get a bobble tutorial because they appeared so intimidating. What I learned is that the bobble, like a cable, appears difficult but in fact is not. So here's to the droplet hat and if anybody want to kal, please do! This is all I have so far, but something is better than nothing, right?: