making own pattern

[jberry16]

Does anyone know of a website or software to help me create my own pattern for baby booties, sweaters, hats etc. Like my husband has a 23" head and my son (2) has a 21" head, but most patterns are for 20" heads...any ideas?
I'm also new to knitting, less than a year and am enjoying this website tremendiously! Just ordered my rainbow needles, cant wait to see them and get busy! :XX: Thanks to Amy and everyone elses help I taught myself to knit.

[Ingrid]

http://www.mielkesfarm.com/bsic_hat.htm

This site lets you determine how many to cast on based on your yarn, needles, and head size.

Welcome!

There are all kinds of software packages available to help you design sweaters, if you're willing to pay for them.

With hats and socks, however, it's easy to adapt a pattern to your needs. Since you know you need hats, say, 3 inches bigger in circumfrence than the pattern makes, just do a bit of math to figure out how many more cast-on stitches you need. Do this by figuring out how many stitches per inch you get with the yarn you're using, then multiply it by the number of inches you need.

Ex: if you knit 5 stitches to the inch and need a 23 inch hat, then you need to cast on 115 stitches. Sometimes you have to take into consideration the decreases on a hat; oftentimes they're in multiples of 6 or 8, so you'd want to make sure whatever number you're casting on is a multiple of 6 (or eight). You can always reduce/increase the cast-on stitches to arrive at the number you need.

ETA: I'd forgotten about mielkesfarm.com!