Monday, January 21, 2008

Further Research

Previously on craftfetish, we explored the scientific properties of baby hat cuteness as it relates to the addition of gratuitous ears.

Holding true to the scientific method, we initiated a series of experiments to identify the ideal mathematical ratio between baby hat size and gratuitous ears.


We posit that cuteness will be maximized at extreme values of the gratuitous ear ratio - basically that very small and very large ears are friggin' hilarious.


(we further posit that if I inject enough scientific jargon into this posting, no one will notice that it has taken me two weeks to knit a simple baby hat)


Experiment One: A hat for Baby Christopher employed an ear to baby hat ratio of 1:3.


Next, we would need to determine how variations in the ear:hat ratio would impact the overall cuteness quotient for the hat. Which brings us to the current phase of our research.



Experiment Two: A hat for Baby Eleanor


(I have previously knit a tiny orange hat for my niece Eleanor using the same Cascade Fixation yarn that I used to make a pair of socks for her birthmom. That was back when we thought she was going to be a boy, hence the gender neutral orange.


Now she can have a pink hat too. Okay, back to science...)


For our baseline cuteness quotient, let us consider the hat sans ears:



And now to experimentally manipulate the ear:hat ratio...


For consistency, we employed the same baby hat ear technology as in Experiment One:
Cast on 20 stitches. Decrease one stitch at each end of every knit row until 10 or 12 stitches remain (whenever they seem tall enough) and bind off. This gives you a little trapezoid. Allow the cast on edge to curl in on itself and stitch the top and sides of the trapezoid to the hat in a c-shape.


Because my gauge for the Cascade Fixation was smaller, I needed to cast on 84 stitches for this baby hat.


Ergo, our new ear to baby hat ratio is 20:84, or about 1:4.


We'll employ a survey instrument to determine the relative impact of this new, smaller ear to hat ratio on the underlying cuteness quotient. (Translation: leave us a comment as to which you prefer)


Stay tuned for future experiments.

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2 Comments:

At 4:43 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

i like the blue one better. but they're both really really cute!

 
At 9:44 AM, Blogger Avrienne said...

I'm going with bigger. Oversized body parts on baby animals are the best--ever notice that the cubs of all the big cat families have huuuuge paws in relation to their body size? It's just adorable.

 

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