Friday, March 21, 2014

The perfect winter for hats

Polar vortex, you are no match for my warm crocheted hats!  I ended up making A LOT of hats this winter.  Here are a few that slipped through the blog cracks.

Sonia's godfather, Gonzo, wondered if I might be able to make him a Texas-themed hat.  That gave me the perfect excuse to try the Texas flag graph for The Graph Beanie pattern by Liz McQueen.  You might remember that I used that pattern plus a Spider-Man graph for Cameron's hat.  I think it turned out great!  I used a mix of Red Heart Super Saver (the red & white) and Caron One Pound (the blue).  Sonia modeled it first....



....then Andrew modeled it....


....and finally, Gonzo sent me a picture of him looking super-swank in his hat.  I think it looks really nice on him!


I didn't want to leave Sonia's fabulous godmother, Emily, out of the hat fun, so I had her search the internet for a crocheted hat pattern she might like.  She chose this cool Gumdrop Slouchy Hat by Julie King, and I think it turned out really nice!  Here's a cute selfie that Emily sent of herself wearing my creation.


I had Sonia take some pictures of me in the hat before I sent it off to Emily.  This hat was fun because it was the first time I tried out using elastic thread....  I held the elastic thread along with the yarn to make sure that if the stitches stretched, they would pop back into place and not get all stretched out.  That's a problem with crocheted clothing....  Crochet stitches just aren't as naturally stretchy as knit stitches are.


I ended up using Loops & Threads Impeccable Solids worsted weight yarn.  It feels so nice when you're working with it!  I would definitely buy it again.  It's only a touch more expensive than Red Heart and works better for clothing.


My one regret is that I haven't yet taught myself to do a better beginning DC stitch at the start of each round....  You wouldn't be able to see the seam as well if I took a bit of time to learn that new skill.  Most of my projects are done in unjoined rounds, so I haven't bothered to educate myself, but looking at the seam in this hat makes me cringe a tiny bit.


When I first tried to make the Gumdrop Slouchy Hat, I couldn't find the yarn recommended by the pattern (Bernat Softee Chunky) in gray, so I tried it in white.  I ran into 2 problems:

1) This is a slightly older pattern, and in the time since Julie wrote the pattern and when I crocheted it, Bernat thickened that type of yarn.  It is now too chunky for this pattern, so the hat turned out too stiff.

2) The white I chose PLUS the stiffness of the yarn made the resulting hat look too much like a chef's hat!!!!  For these pictures, I tried to "slouch" the hat as much as possible, but I still think I look like a wannabe chef.



Ugh, that seam is even more visible in the Bernat Softee Chunky.


Oh well, the hat is still warm, so I kept the white version. It looks ok enough to wear around the neighborhood, I guess.

Ok, enough hats.  Bring on SPRING!!!!!!!

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