Posts Tagged ‘hat’

And the lake is damp

I know this won’t come as a surprise to everyone reading this blog, but Bell sucks. I’ve had the misfortune of being a telephone customer of theirs, as well as a customer of Bell Sympatico. For anyone who pays attention to this sort of thing, my opinion is: don’t use Bell unless under threat of death.

Why? In short:

- they have stolen money out of my bank account (by doing something they *specifically* claimed was impossible) then wouldn’t give it back until I involved my bank

- they’ve cut off my phone service for not paying *someone else’s* bill, and even after it was proven that was the case they still wouldn’t reconnect it, and still wouldn’t even after we proved that it was, in fact, their fault that it was possible at all

- they’ve sold me a service that didn’t exist (which lead to me having to pay the cable company an extra hookup charge since they had to come to my house twice)

- and most recently they failed to fix a connection problem. For two weeks. They claim to have made 6 appointments for techs to check out the problem, but we only saw 2. Each of those techs “fixed” the problem, only to have service go back down within 24 hours. (They also both complained bitterly about working for Bell!)

So, what’s a gal to do during this internet outage? (Did I mention that the internet wasn’t working at work either because of a computer virus? *yanks out hair*) Well, I certainly didn’t plan any part of my wedding! (Whose idea was it to keep our notes about it in a Google document? Oh wait, that was me…)

I crocheted, naturally! I also loom-knit.

You all remember Mom’s sorority’s charity thing with the kids hats and scarves right?

Check it!
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The plan is to fill a bin with these. The current count is 23 complete sets (I took this picture before finishing a few of them… all of those hats in front of the pile have matching scarves now, plus there is another set not pictured… and a blue hat I still need to make a matching scarf for…)

I also made quite a few dishcloths. And a crochet-on-the-double hat using Bernat Soft Boucle (that still needs sewing up), and blew through a few more balls of red on the Ladybug blanket. I’m woefully behind on motifs, but expect to see a rush of those soon, as I’m in another motif swap. ^_^

A possible conclusion from all of this might be that having no internet access can be really good for my crafting! Another conclusion might be that having no internet had the potential to drive me so crazy that I needed that many projects to distract myself with just to get through it…

*eye twitch*

New Blog, New Hat

Inspired by how ridiculously cold it’s been here the last couple of days, I decided to drop everything I was working on and make myself a hat.

Black side out:
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Rainbow side out:
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Level of difficulty: if you already know how to do crochet-on-the-double, this is really really easy. If you don’t, but you are comfortable with the Tunisian Simple Stitch, then you’ll find this pattern somewhat easy once you get going on it. If you don’t know either of those techniques, I recommend learning them on something easier (perhaps a scarf?) before attempting this. ^_^

Yarn: Bernat Satin, uses the equivalent of 1 ball for each side of hat; for mine I used 1 ball of black and small amounts of 8 colours.

Hook: 6mm double-ended hook

This pattern is for crochet-on-the-double, using the Tunisian Simple Stitch. Each row has two parts, A and B, in A you lift loops onto the hook, in B you [b]turn[/b] and work them off

MC = main colour
CC = contrasting colour

Pattern:
ch 50 in MC

Row 1A – lift up one loop in 2nd ch from hook, and in each subsequent ch (50 loops on hook, including starting loop)
Row 1B – turn, pull a loop of CC through first loop of MC. *pull a loop of CC through two loops* repeat until 1 loop of CC remains on hook.

Row 2A – loop on hook counts as first loop, insert hook from right to left through vertical bar of the second stitch from the hook on the previous row, pull up a loop of CC. Do this for every subsequent stitch (50 loops on hook)

Row 2B – turn, pull a loop of MC through the first loop on hook. *pull a loop of MC through two loops* repeat until 1 loop of MC remains.

Row 3A – pull up a loop in the second vertical bar from the hook, and continue to pull up loops until there are 2 vertical bars left (48 loops on hook)

Row 3B – turn, work loops off in CC

Row 4A – work loops on in CC (48 loops on hook)

Row 4B – turn, work loops off in MC

Row 5A – work loops on in MC until there are two vertical bars left (46 loops on hook)

Row 5B – turn, work loops off in CC

Row 6A – work loops on in CC (46 loops on hook)

Row 6B – turn, work loops off in MC

Row 7A – work loops on in MC until there are two vertical bars left (44 loops on hook)

Row 7B – turn, work loops off in CC

Row 8A – work loops on in CC (46 loops on hook)

Row 8B – turn, work loops off in MC

Row 9A – work loops on in MC until there are two vertical bars left (42 loops on hook)

Row 9B – turn, work loops off in CC

Row 10A – work loops on in CC (42 loops on hook)

Row 10B – turn, work loops off in MC

Row 11A – work loops on in MC until there are two vertical bars left (40 loops on hook)

Row 11B – turn, work loops off in CC

Row 12A – work loops on in CC (40 loops on hook)

Row 12B – turn, work loops off in MC

Row 13A – work loops on in MC, 40 loops from previous row, plus the 2 missed vertical bars from each previous row (50 loops on hook)

Row 13B – turn, work loops off in CC

Row 14A – work loops on in CC (50 loops on hook)

Row 14B – turn, work loops off in MC

One wedge made!

Repeat from 3A to 14B until you have 8 wedges

To finish, slip stitch to bind off both colours by *inserting the hook through the next vertical bar, pull a loop through it and the loop on the hook* until you reach the end. Do the MC first, then the CC. Leave LONG tails.

Use the CC tail to sew the last row made to the first row (try to join it with the CC of the first row if you can). Use the MC tail to weave in and out of the stitches at the top of the hat, pull tightly like a drawstring until the hole at the top is closed. Secure with a knot, then use the rest of that tail to sew the seam down on the MC side of the hat.

Weave in all ends.

To alter this pattern to fit better, or use a different yarn, etc. :

Make a swatch (I recommend making a scarf-sized swatch ;)) to determine how many stitches and rows you get per inch/cm. Measure your head, and do some math. ^_^

You can easily start with fewer stitches to make a shorter hat, do more “stop two stitches short of the end” rows to make the rounded-top part bigger, and change the number of wedges you do to fit a smaller or larger circumference.

To easily keep track while making this hat, I made sure that my “miss the last two stitches” rows always happened with the black yarn (MC in the pattern), and the CC rows were just repeating its previous row. It’ll make sense when you’re doing it. ^_^

If you need any help with this pattern, feel free to ask! If you spot any errors, let me know so that I can fix them. ^_^

And what do you think of the new blog layout? I’m still tinkering with it; let me know if you find anything that doesn’t work!

Too Sexy For My Hat

One of the problems with writing a craft blog is that it becomes hard to keep up the closer you get to Christmas. More time is spent on crafting, and most of those crafts are presents you’d prefer the recipients not discover prematurely.

The other problem, which I suspect affects all types of blog is: computers suck sometimes. :P

I can’t do a whole lot about that last problem, but take a look at these not-Christmas-presents I made using crochet-on-the-double.

A pink and purple hat for Maddie:
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Purple side, pink side:
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One wedge shape (hat consists of 8)
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And a matching scarf:
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This yellow one is *slightly* bigger and is for Katie:
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Side:
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Flat dark yellow, flat light yellow:
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The folks on Craftster seem to think these are pretty good (I’m glad I’m not the only one!), so why not give these as Christmas gifts? Three reasons:

1. I’m not entirely certain they’ll fit, as I’m just figuring out the pattern… and giving items made for testing a pattern you’re writing seems somewhat unthoughtful.

2. I already made them each something else.

3. If they were gifts I wouldn’t let myself blog about them. :P

Come January I’ll be looking for more test subjects, including adults, so stay tuned!