La Bebita! Thank God You Are Here! You Must Leave Immediately!

So I've had a somewhat unusual request from a friend. A knitting request, people. Sheesh.

She wants me to mask her baby: not because her baby is hideously deformed (she's adorable!) and she wants to save her from a life on the carnie circuit (save her? Sign me up!); not because she has dreams of raising a luchadora (more's the pity).

No, the baby, at the tender age of 6 months as already decided that she is NOT TIRED thank you very much, even when her floppy, still-mostly-cartilaginous little limbs are drooping with weariness. Fortunately, her growing brain is still squishy, meaning she is easily tricked. When she's rubbing her eyes and fussing up a storm, but refuses to conk out, she's sure to fall for the old "blanket over the head" routine. But, blah blah blah suffocation, choking, DCFS, blah blah blah.

The blanket, in short, leads to rest for la bebita and anxiety for the parents. Initially, my pal had thought of sewing a sleep mask, but even with a velcro closure that the baby could easily pull open or push off, anything circumferential, in the mind of the new parent, has other unpleasant potentials.

So she came up with the idea of a "sleep hat" (this is the rare 1 in 1 billion baby that already consents to have things strapped on to its head pretty regularly). The sleep hat will, ideally, be a kind of demi-inverse-balaclava (so almost entirely, but not quite unlike a balaclava . . .). It'll have a snug-fitting back and sort of a dual-swag front, arching up in the middle to leave the tiny wee nosie free, but covering the eyes.

Really, I screw things up so regularly that I could probably just try earnestly to knit a cotton balaclava and end up with something about right, but I'll try putting a bit more thought into it at the outset. Stay tuned as Matilda attempts to make up a pattern, in all probability, bringing the world to an end in the process!