Simple and Sweet!

One of the very first items I sold as TracyKM Designs was a simple, sideways machine-knit hat with very large crocheted flower. 

It was a newborn size, but seemed small to me.  Jennifer used it a few times, also check out her Pinterest page!  One such time was with a tiny little girl with giant blue eyes.  The hat was barely visible as the shot was about those eyes!

The mother contacted me and wanted a dress and hat to celebrate that baby's first birthday/cake smash photo session.  She loved the yarn in the original hat  so we went with that.  I made a similar hat though it came out slightly too large.  To fix that (the design of it didn't really allow to be made "slightly" smaller), I did a couple rows of single crochet around the bottom.  This made it into a sort of slouchy, not-quite-a-tam hat.

 I made the hat with leftovers from the original hat.  Then I went shopping for yarn for the dress.  Well.  There were at least SEVEN different dye lots, several of those had only one ball, one lot had three balls, and three lots had two balls.  And the lots were all very different.  Some had definite colour differences (much more chocolate brown, a different shade of cream), and some had a different sheen, and some had a different texture--they felt wimpy and thin!  I couldn't decide if I wanted two or three balls, and I didn't really like the lot with three balls, but felt it was better to be safe with enough yarn, even if it wasn't exactly what I wanted.  If the hat isn't right next to it, you can't tell anyway.

I met the little imp for a trial fitting and decided to work the dress a smidge bigger so she could get more wear out of it in warmer weather.  I haven't seen the results of the photo shoot yet, but I'm sure she was adorable.  She'd be adorable in a paper sack!!

The yarn did a funny thing on the skirt portion.  At first, I tried to fight it...then gave in, LOL.  I figured she'd be on the move and it'll just be a blur :)

Yarn In:  16 153gr
Yarn Out:  46gr (hat) + 232gr (dress) + 15 311gr= 15 589gr
Balance:  564gr more brought IN than out
Cost:  $378.91/365 days = $1.04/day