Aw, fer cute!
(That's a touch of local dialect ... and a very cute baby.)
This Whirligig Shrug is so cute. If you make it, you can very easily use the basics of the pattern to improvise a little matching hat.
I made the shrug using Merino 5 Superwash by Crystal Palace Yarns. I bought three 50-gram skeins (110 yds/skein) and had most of one left over so I was able to just use that. I used the same size needles I used for the shrug. And I chose to approach it as a top-down construction so the U-cable for the hatband wouldn’t be upside-down compared to the waistband of the shrug.
I started by casting on 7 stitches in a circle. (Tip: After a round or two you’ll want to place stitch markers to divide the piece into 7 sections. Then make your increases in the stitch before (or after) each stitch marker. Just be consistent in where you add them.) Working in stockinette stitch, I added 7 stitches per round until I had 28 stitches. Then I added 7 stitches every other round until I had 77 stitches. I worked those 77 in stockinette stitch to the length I wanted (about 3-1/2 to 4"). (I cook that way, too: "Oh, I don't know ... you just wanna add 'some'.")
Just before starting the U-cable section, I added 3 additional stitches to bring the count to 80. You bring the stitch count to 80 because you need multiples of 8 to duplicate in the hatband the U-cable stitch pattern of the shrug.
After finishing the U-cable “band”, I made a ruffly brim by adding stitches in the same manner as they were added to form the ruffle of the shrug. The brim is maybe 8 rows of seed stitch.
Voila! That’s all there is to it.
