Saturday Craft Blogging: First Knitted Hat

For those of you that know me in real life, you'd know that I recently started to re-teach myself knitting. I tried to learn once when I was in middle school, once again in college, and finally picked it up again about a year ago. I knitted several scarfs, but this was the first time I'd tried knitting something that wasn't just a rectangular piece of fabric.

I used a fairly simple pattern that my sister and I found in the yarn store called Bella Lana in Northeast Minneapolis the last time I was home. Today I'm bringing it to my cousins' baby shower in New York. (I made the hat a light blue color even though they're having a girl because, quite frankly, I like blue better than pink!)

When I finished with the hat, it felt like it needed something, so I added a small pom pom to the top of the hat, which I found instructions for in my Stitch 'N Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook that I keep on hand for knitting troubleshooting.

I think it turned out all right, but I'd love to know how any other knitting experts out there deal with the diminishing amount of stitches as you get toward the top of the hat. I really struggled to keep the stitches from stretching out too much. Maybe the kind of circular needles I bought were too long?