Friday 13 November 2009

2 out of 3 hats...

I first taught myself to crochet after a blisteringly cold visit to a North-East beach at Christmas time two years ago. I had no hats at the time and decided that damnit, I couldn't be doing with knitting but surely crochet wasn't so hard? Since then I've made an enormous number of crocheted items - over 300 cakes at the last count, for example, umpteen kids' hats, cardigans, wraps, toys, over a dozen amigurumi and lots and lots of flowers. Very few of those things have been for me, everything's been sold or gifted. I did make a cloche hat early on, but I find it's quite heavy and only really suitable for snowy days.

Cloche hat from Crochet In No Time, plus matching scarf,
in Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Superchunky

I also made a boy beanie from The Happy Hooker - this one lives in the car as I have a bad habit of misjudging the weather from my warm house. Which is exactly what happened on Monday when I turned out to take K to preschool. Somehow the frosted rooftops didn't register in my brain at that time of the morning and by the time I got back I was absolutely freezing. K, luckily, had got new hats and gloves for her birthday at the weekend so she was ok, but it was too much for me. So it was time to pull up my Ravelry queue, dig through the books and see what I could whip up for myself. I found I'd queued this lovely Pretty Puffs Slouch Hat ages ago, and after much agonising and searching Yarndex and doing calculations of yarn weights and lengths (I HATE trying to convert US yarn weights to what's available here), I settled on some Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK in Navy Blue. And promptly ran out that same night - my calculations went awry somewhere and I needed one and a half balls. After a quick trawl of eBay I ordered some more and disappointedly resigned myself to a cold head until it arrived.

On Wednesday though, after classes, the weather was too bad to drive over the moorland route home and I found myself passing by Hobbycraft (honest, I didn't go that way deliberately). They *finally* seem to have a knitter on staff and there was a much better choice of yarns available. I nearly cheered out loud and spent a full half-hour having a really good yarn-fondle. I settled on some Sirdar Hug in Murmur, and some amazing Rowan Colourscape Chunky Kaffe Fassett in Storm. You don't want to know how much that is per skein.


Rowan Colourscape Chunky Kaffe Fassett in Storm

I had a visitor that evening so I didn't get started on another hat until K's gymnastics session the next day. I'd wanted to try something from Contemporary Crochet for ages and this cap worked up very nicely. It's hooked just in the back loop so you get a nice ridged effect.

Cap from Contemporary Crochet, Sirdar Hug in Murmur

I wasn't so keen on the last few rounds so I just sort of made it up a bit. It's crazy-hard to get decent pictures of yourself in a hat so please excuse the weird angles. It's a bit pixie-like, this one, so I think it'll be reserved for snow days as I'm not cutesy enough to get away with it otherwise! I do think it's worked up a bit small so I may add some length to it at a later date by crocheting some kind of border.

Pointy top of cap.

My extra Cashmerino arrived very quickly and I managed to get that finished last night as well, so I was spoilt for choice this morning! I opted for the puffy slouch hat, decreed last night by A as "something you would wear"...which I'm chosing to translate from Man-ese as "it suits you". Actually I think it does; I was half-hoping it'd be a nice Bad Hair Day Hat but it's too pretty for that. What do you think?

Side view with my world-famous Cousin It impression as a bonus.


Back view. The Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK was a joy to work with,
as always, and is very cosy.

I'm tempted to make several of these, although I don't have any other dark Cashmerino at the moment - I don't suit pale colours really. My mission for today is to find a pattern to suit the Storm yarn...but I may just use it for another one of these! If you have a favourite hat pattern please do feel free to link it in the comments, I'm always looking for ideas. Ditto for handwarmers/gloves - I have a ball and a half of the navy Cashmerino and a couple of balls of Hug so I think I need to make some to match. It has been really very nice to make something for myself for a change - I do have a lot of custom orders to work on, but I'm thinking I might make Thursday nights Just For Me nights. Then I can actually have something interesting to talk about in the Crafteroo Thursday Night Project threads!

K had a wonderful fourth birthday last weekend, and I will show you the last-minute dressing-up outfit she asked me to make for her in the next post!

3 comments:

Bigbluebed said...

Lovely hat.

I have many Cousin It moments myself.

Suzanne Vaughan said...

LOVE the blue one!

Claire said...

Ooh the blue hat is lovely! I kwym about converting American yarns to what we can get here, it drives me nuts! Just when I think I've worked it out something like my 1st Seija blanket happens! Did you find a good guide or something?