Little Hats......Gum nut style........

I have been in the midst of a bit of a hat making frenzy for the past week or so. After posting my Berry Cute hat on facebook, it was requested that I make some baby hats in gum nut colours. For those of you who are not familiar with gum nuts. They are the basically the seed/flower pods of gum trees. And they look a bit like this......

They actually start off green and then they sprout flowers in all shades of yellow, orange and red. Then when the flowers fall off and the seeds dry out they turn brown or grey and go very hard on the branch before falling. They are rather harsh on ones bare feet if you don't see them.

(Both photos, borrowed from here. Go check out the other lovely pics :-))





Author,  May Gibbs wrote stories about little gum nut babies and as such, it is often an incentive in the land down under to create little gum nut looking hats among the yarn obsessed natives. Or at least among their non yarn obsessed friends and family who like to put in their orders for cute little baby things and even though they tend to mix up gum nuts and acorns (yes I take this very seriously people) I manage to come up with something to suit the individuals and have loads of FUN doing it!

So my friends, how does one make a gum nut baby hat with out a pattern? Well, it turns out I actually DO have a pattern but I am not at all fussed on the actual hat. After consulting google, I noted there is a May Gibbs knitting book floating about and I was all like....hey, I have that book somewhere (yes another little op-shop find that I am yet to actually use. Woops)......

I have to say though, that I was not terribly fussed on the hat. (Woops I said that already!) While it does look very much like a gumnut baby hat, the hat is designed for bigger children and was not quite what I had in mind. It is very cute though, and there are some other patterns in the book that I now have my eye on. Maybe I will make them soon. :-)  I do know how to make a short story long don't I? haha

So as I said before, I wanted my hats to look like gum nuts...real gum nuts.....so I started with a just brown version of the Berry Cute hat and went from there......

Stocki, do you like my improv baby heads? hehe!

While it does look kind of like a gum nut, I was, in my usual fashion, umming and ahhing and wondering if I could come up with something better.

And being on a bit of a roll, so to speak,  I decided to create a crochet version as well. And yes, I just made it up as I went along and I worked from the top down.....

.......with the assistance of my "sometimes" helpful little friend here....

We managed to come up with this......(Oh look!!! An almost baby!) 

I quite like the look of this one, but most of my friends so far have preferred the softer feel of the knitted version. I have orders for that one in green and brown. And I think I am going to have to make an acorn at some stage too. LOL

Meanwhile, in my travels this weekend, I played with some variegated wool and am thinking about whether to try felting it or not.....not sure yet as I quite like the stripy effect on this one. Not very gum nutty but cute all the same. I might add some tassels to the end. What do you think? Hmmmm

And of course, after all that, I remembered this little one that I made a couple of years ago. The flower version of the gum nut hat. I can see this one in authentic colours now, can you? I am going to have to make it for sure. (This is from the Patons book, Designer knits for tots).

I totally stole this picture from my ravelry page. Lazy much? And then I remembered that this little outfit had in fact been returned to me to keep for my daughter when little Miss Jazzy here grew out of it. She is nearly 5 and starting school this year! Yikes. So I took a quick picture just for you!

Not quite the same without the cute little head in it hey? Now I am away my friends. Its a beautiful sunny Sunday morning here and I am planning on spending it outdoors. Love and Light to you all.

Hugs and smoochies  xoxoxox