I swear there are Borrowers living in our house. They have possibly shacked up in our entryway, but I’m pretty sure they have borrowed four pacifiers, two house keys, some rubber stamps and the new hat I just knit for baby Jack.

So here I am at home on a Monday because Jack is sick. I’ve succeeded in making breakfast and putting him down for a nap. I have failed in getting dressed.

Other success — new hat!

Here’s how you can make your very own baby hat with stripes.

Materials:

Leftover worsted weight yarn. You really don’t need much. Up to six colors.

Size 9 circular and double pointed needles

darning needle

large fork for pom-pom

Abbreviations:

k1, p1 = knit 1, purl 1 ribbing

k2tog = knit two stitches together

Directions:

With your circular, cast on 64 stitches and knit last stitch to first stitch without twisting the stitches. K1, P1 for five rounds with main color. Knit two rounds regularly. Cut yarn leaving a four-inch tail. Start knitting with new color. After a few stitches, loosely tie the ends of the two colors together. You’ll tighten this up later, but it’ll help to do this along the way. Knit 2 rounds of each color until you have knit 20 rounds, not counting the ribbing. Switch back to the main color and knit 7 rounds.

Decrease as follows:

Place a marker if you need to, but I can tell where the beginning of the round is based on the stripes.

K2tog, K6, repeat till end of round

Knit one round

K2tog, K5, repeat till end of round

K one round

K2tog, K4, repeat till end

K one round while transferring to double pointed needles. Or knit the round and transfer stitches — whatever’s easier for you.

K2tog, K3, repeat till end

Knit one round

K2tog, K2, repeat till end

Knit one round

K2tog, K1, repeat till end

K2tog, repeat till end.

Cut yarn leaving a long tail. With darning needle, weave in the tail from the beginning and end.

The inside of your hat should look pretty cool, with all sorts of colorful ends. Tighten all the knots you made and then double tie them. Don’t pull too tightly as you want the stitches on the outside to look uniform. Just play with the tension of the knots before double knotting. I then knot the yarn ends vertically to one anther, if that makes sense, and trim them. I don’t bother to weave these all in since I’m totally lazy about it.

For the pom pom:

Take all the colors of your stripes and wind them around a large serving fork. With a doubled piece of yarn about one foot long, tie the yarn around the middle tine and remove from the fork. Cut the loops and trim pom pom to your liking. Using a darning needle, attach to top of hat. To better secure pom pom, run the yarn back up through the pom pom and back down into the inside of the hat.