Scale

The adventure post-So Many Babies has involved knitting...for a baby. Our friends Fish and H had their second baby in June and I realized that I hadn't ever finished knitting him anything. Baby R is getting big, the little chunker, and he's been hand-knit nothing by that weird Friend/Aunt/Person Erin. Not to be allowed!
So I sat down and did some planning. Now, we live in Red Wings territory. It's a fairly large territory, I'll grant you. Fish grew up in Chicago and so is a Blackhawk fan. I once ruined his life by coming to help paint his bathroom on the night the Blackhawks played the Blues and informed him that I used to be a Blues fan when I lived in St. Louis and had even been to a game or two. The Blackhawks lost with dispatch and I was ordered from the house, never to return. Until the next game night.
In any event, he is a Blackhawks fan in enemy territory. I have no doubt he is raising his sons to be the same. So I started thinking about winter hats (a necessity in the northern Midwest) that would be so-called 'subtle' Blackhawk-themed. Perfectly acceptable hats to a Red Wings fan that were actually more in line with the Blackhawk themes and colors.
I even texted Fish to tell him of my plan and to ask for some design advice, being the graphics-person that he is. This is what we came up with:

Red for the main part of it and the turned-under sweatband, and then 3 equal stripes in black and white on the outside of the ribbed sweatband.
Now the problem was one of scale. I had three boys of varying ages and head sizes, but I wanted them all to look proportional. I needed a 1- year, 2-3 years, and adult size.
What I ended up doing was adding the requisite stitches to go up in circumference and added one rep to each line of striping each size up. The result:

The adult hat isn't sewn up yet.

I think they turned out rather well. Fish thought so too:

He even wore the right color shirt to coordinate.

Here's the one downside to color work:

It looks like a rubbish fringe.

One end each at the top and bottom, 3 stripes each with 2 ends, yarn held double for the black and white stripes, times 3 hats... More or less 48 ends to weave in. My thoughts about this:

Okay, that might be a bit melodramatic. And once I found my tapestry needle it wasn't so bad. But trying to weave in all those ends with a regular knitting needle was rubbish. 

The result was worth it though. 

Look how happy they all are!

Fish said he's going to buy Blackhawk patches to put on the hats, which will make them less subtle. Ah well. That's his problem now.