A Hat Inspired by the Mountains it will be Used On
Last Christmas in Iowa I offered to make my brother a crocheted hat. A beanie, specifically, because that’s what snowboarders wear.
Snowboarders can be pretty serious about their beanies.
{Jeff wearing the hat. Jeremy has a bigger head than either of us. When I wear it, it comes down over my eyes.}
Jeremy took me up on the beanie offer and made his specifications: red on top, then blue, then charcoal. He picked out the yarn himself at Jo-Ann’s: Lion Brand Wool-Ease Chunky in Charcoal and Medium Blue and Deborah Norville Serenity Chunky in red ochre. I’m amazed I know what the red one is, because Wesley LOVED it and tried to eat it at every opportunity. Wesley did away with the label a long time ago.
Jeremy requested that the hat depict his very favorite thing, mountains. That it match his snowboarding gear (blue and red). That it have a puffy yarn puffy thing on top made of all three colors. That it have a fleece ear lining for comfort.
Thus it was that this rather epically warm hat was made.
The color changes are made by carrying both yarns along as you crochet (i.e. tapestry crochet). I carried 2 strands of red or blue or gray the entire way, even if I wasn’t changing colors within a row, because I wanted the whole thing to be the same thickness.
I used a size L hook to do this. Even so, the hook was almost too small for 2 pieces of chunky yarn. It’s a thick hat. Sturdy. Squishy. I dare say this hat will take Jeremy comfortably through negative temps with no problems.
This was my third try making it. Totally my own pattern. I think I got it right this time. Can you see the ribbing on the bottom? It’s hard to see. It’s crochet-in-the-back post faux ribbing, i.e. 2 stitches regular, 2 stitches back post, repeat around.
The pattern (it’s a graph) is uploaded in case anyone would like to try, and is located here: Mountain Beanie – Excel or Mountain Beanie – PDF. It doesn’t have much explanation, just shows how many stitches in each repeat and the colors, and the number of stitches around for each of the 28 rows. My notes on carrying yarn and the ribbing are in the post. If anyone has problems with it, let me know!
Now to mail it to Jeremy.
Update: Added links to explanations of color changes for crochet, below.
By the way, when I didn’t like my color changes on Draft 1, I went to the Interwebs, and came up with a list of articles how to crochet color changes the right way. I’ll update my other post with the chart with these.
How to Crochet Using a Chart or Graph (includes color change)
Tapestry Crochet – right or left hand color changing. From Carol Ventura, who’s written tapestry crochet books.
How to Switch Colors and Use a Chart – Crochet by April Draven
An interesting yarn-joining/color-changing technique. Russian? Maybe.
An Awareness of Time Passing
At the beginning of this month (aww crap it’s already next month, nevermind) January I wrote out a sort of plan for production of creative things for the year. And already, I’m behind. I thought of time passing, about how I now have just 11 months to feel accomplished about my year!
And then I said no. I am not going to beat myself up about this. I know this happens. It is not a real problem and I am not actually upset. I think, in fact, that I’ve soldiered quite bravely on in the face of some disappointing problems that require fortitude to correct. You see, sometimes when I encounter a problem, I solve it by just getting rid of the problem. You have to admit, it is a type of solution. However, when the problem in question is something you’ve spent hours or days working on, it’s not so easy to just get rid of it. Actually, I think it would feel physically painful to try to throw something away like a sweater I crocheted.
The red sweater is a good example of this. After my last post, I sewed up the sides. As I suspected, the sweater does not fit – the arms are too small and it requires decreases in the yoke. I am going to have to rip out the entire yoke, detach the sleeves and start on this part again. I do not want to. It makes me want to throw a two-year-old’s tantrum. But I will finish. Later. When I’m not so irritated that just looking at the problem makes me feel a little, ok a lot stabby. It’s a long version of that “count to 10″ recommendation for people with tempers.
Then there is the case of Jeremy’s Mountain Hat.
First, I made a mountain crochet chart. The chart is awesome. Then I made a beanie crown. The crown was … meh. Then I started making the rest of the hat, and encountered HAT FAIL. (1) I didn’t like my color changes, and (2) somehow I lost 10 stitches around. That’s right. I went from 72 stitches around to 62. The yarn that I’m working with is bulky, and when you carry yarn, sometimes the stitch the color changes on ceases to look like a stitch, so I ended up accidentally skipping it in the next row. I thought I was losing my mind.
PLUS -(3) the crown color yarn is slightly less bulky than the other two yarns, and I’m using tapestry crochet (where you carry 2 strands of yarn) for the pattern part. Ergo – there’s a significant fabric difference between the Not-as-thick-single-strand-crochet of the crown and Thicker-two-strand-crochet of the pattern. It was not attractive.
So I frogged the whole thing.
I going to start over. And when I’m done, it will be a thing of joy and beauty.
Just you wait.
Goal Achieved, Level Up
KNOCK KNOCK. Hello? You guys are being extraordinarily quiet. Everyone okay out there?
So you know I finished the One Skein Scarf, and mentioned the hat, and said it was all part of a hat/scarf/mittens set. The set comprises the scarf, the Applejack Cap and Lion Brand mittens made out of 3-year-stashed Homespun Prairie. Voila!
I’m pretty happy with how it all turned out. The hat was supposed to be looser than this, but since I (a) used a smaller hook to make the stitches smaller to make it warmer and (b) used bulky yarn instead of worsted, you can maybe see how I’d end up with a different hat than the pattern makes. I added stitches to it to compensate, and also added length to the hat so it would cover my ears. After all, what’s the point of a warm hat if it won’t cover your ears? Actually, for acrylic, all this stuff turned out very warm.
The making of the mittens was an odyssey. I started them the day we left Iowa (the 26th) and made the ribbing, then continued the next TWO DAYS OF FREEZING TRAVEL through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. It was very snowy in Iowa and Missouri. Made for exciting travel. All my pictures look sort of dream-like, because I couldn’t keep the condensation off the windows. Here’s where I was just south of Kansas City, Kansas. My toes felt totally frozen.
I made both mittens at once as I went along. I knew if I just did one, the other would never get made. Here we are in the spectacular Flint Hills in Kansas. It’s amazingly … I don’t know. Not much there but cows. The Flint Hills are a unique place. You know that super green and huge blue sky with hills desktop in Windows? I think that came from this place. In winter, it just looks scary-barren.
I’d managed to get a pair of warm slippers in Wichita, which gave me enough energy do all but the fingers by the time we’d gotten to Northern Oklahoma, near Ponca City (where I used to live). We thought we’d be able to make it home the first night, but a 2 hour traffic jam and icy conditions meant we stopped for the night in Oklahoma City. Mittens going well, though.
Somewhere south of Ft. Worth, Texas I was mostly done with a thumb and was finally warm again! It was about this point I gave up on following the pattern, because the pattern had long since begun to seem stupid. It wasn’t wide enough in the hand, for one thing. So I just kept going and made them to fit my hand exactly.
By the time we got home to Austin both thumbs were finished. I needed to finish the fingers for the last three inches, and sew ‘em up. Two weeks later, I was done. It was frustrating to make mittens with this yarn. The thread-like core kept snapping when I tried to pull a seam tight. All I can say about it now is that my stash is smaller, and they’re very soft mittens.
It was an interesting start on non-beanie hats and finger-wear. I kind of wanted to try the patterns out on a yarn I hadn’t spend a lot of $$ on, so I could do them again but better. Now if I can only remember to write up what I did!
