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....
....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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