handmades for a newborn

My cousin is having a little boy in a few weeks - her first - and I knew some special handmades were in order. (When are they not?) Being an Autumn baby, he'll be wearing plenty of hats to keep him warm. If you're going to wear hats, I say, why not make them the cutest hats ever? And these are. I should call them Finn's hits.

Because really, friends, if you want to have strangers come up and compliment you on something you've made by hand and tell you how cute your baby is, dress your baby in a Stella Pixie hat. I never ever get oohed and aahed over when I wear a scarf I knitted or even a sweater - they just look like piles of organized yarn plopped on my not-as-cute-as-a-baby body. But the Stella Pixie on a baby? My my.

Sigh. So tiny he was (yet so chubby) just nine months ago.

I made the Stella Pixie out of the yarn I had leftover from making Finn's version. This one, however, is sized down. Finn's will still fit him this winter, and he has a rather large noggin. Take a peek at other people's ravelry notes for their suggestions on how to size it down - I'm not going to recommend anything until I know how it fits on a newborn's head. All I have here is a gargantuan toddler head with which to measure. And Finn's doll - neither of which did the trick.

The blue striped hat is a Sweet Pea Pilot Cap - a free tutorial for you in my side bar. It's the newborn size. My hope is that it fits the little fellow for his trip home from the hospital.

We wrapped it up in some pretty paper and added a very clever elephants-made-from-leaves card, which we found at our local fair trade store.

Notice my choice of pronouns for the previous sentence? I did not wrap alone. I had a very industrious little helper, who apparently prefers to work in silence.

Nothing like scotch tape to keep a toddler busy, and a mama laughing!