This new hat is all summer and sunshine. I love it to bits!

Having completed the Loose Change Basket, I was rather keen to get back to making those coasters I was imagining. Just one would be nice. In fact, I could make it a little larger and use it as a cake-stand-doily-thing. Or something. Maybe.

But, oh no, it wasn’t to be (again). I was happily crocheting round and round in circles, and it was getting all mindless and just how I like it when I’m making dinner at the same time, but then that crafty Craft Cotton started getting the better of me once more:

“Er, what are you doing? I thought we were just crocheting around in circles, nice and even?” I asked.

“Mm. Our plans have changed,” said the Cotton, “You shall obey me now.”

“Oh dear, not again. OK, what are we doing next?”

“You feel the urge to treble crochet. Go on, do it now.”

“But if I treble, I’ll have to increase, and that will spoil the pattern.”

“So don’t increase. YOU MUST TREBLE NOW!”

“OK, OK. We’re not making a flat thing anymore, are we…”

“Mwa-ha-ha!”

…And so it was that some more of that first skein of Craft Cotton became something other than a set of coasters. Ah well, Flame has a new hat, and she likes it very much. As usual, I’ve made it to fit an adult rather than a child because the drama of growing out of a much-loved item is completely avoidable with this type of clothing.

The Craft Cotton is fab for this sort of hat. I think it would make a great beach bag too, but I already have too many bag projects on the go to start yet another one now. Also, I’ve started to get a callous on my left index finger where the yarn has been rubbing, so I think I’ll switch to a softer one for a while to give my hands a break.

Anyway, as you can see from the back view, the hat did look good plain, but I think the starfish motif (Rowan Cabled Mercerised Cotton) just finishes it off nicely. That hat makes me want to go on holiday, and I’ll be off in a few weeks’ time! We’ve booked to go to the Isle of Wight (again) in June because it has become our annual Perfect Family Holiday. No rushing around at airports, no pressure to make the most of our time in a faraway place. Just buckets and spades, sandy feet and cream teas, discovering places to explore, creatures in rock pools, and a little caravan overlooking the sea. The girls are at the perfect age for this type of holiday. I remember going on the coin-operated rides, my mum trying to get sand out of my knickers because I was screaming, and my dad spending the evenings watching the shipping lane with his binoculars. Ah, such sweet memories! chuckle

And the coasters? Oh yes, the coasters. They are now on hold because I have lots of things to do for Flame’s birthday. Bah!

Entry plonked in Crochet • Life @ 6:07 pm
Tagged thusly: crochet hat, rowan cabled mercerised cotton, rowan yarn, starfish hat, stylecraft, stylecraft craft cotton, yarn

I’ve been pouring over the yarny goodness on the Web, but there’s nothing better than a bit of yarn fondling at the not-so-local yarn shop. Unfortunately, you are unlikely to get much of a bargain there because they consider a 5p (less than US 10c) discount per ball/skein to be a fantastic offer, but I try to buy a few things every now and then because they cram a lot of stuff into that small shop – fabric, beads, yarn, cardstock, etc. – and it would be a real shame if they didn’t get enough local support to stay open.

The first thing I did was to look for all the yarns I had found on the Web, to see what they would be like in real life. A yarn I got completely wrong is Rowan Cotton Braid – when I first looked at it online, I thought of the similar looking yarns that feel like they’ve been spun from nylon fishing line, so I assumed Cotton Braid would be rather stiff, perhaps scratchy, and not very comfortable at all. In actual fact, it’s incredibly soft (next time, I’ll read the ingredients label and work it out!).

Cotton Braid consists of an approximately 1.5mm wide soft strand, loosely bound in soft zig-zags by fine chain stitches. The chain stitching is not joined widthwise, so they occasionally separate and then bunch together along the length of the yarn. Similarly, the chain stitching does not penetrate the wider strand and so there is some freedom of movement. The overall yarn width is approximately 1cm on the ball, but squashes down to less than 4mm because it is very ‘loopy’.

Cezanne (shade 358) is the lighest of creams, with a slightly darker chain-stitch binding. I can see this colourway as an accent, like a textural edging, but I’m going to have to tinker with it a bit before I finally settle on what to do with it.

Although I love the look and feel of this yarn, but I don’t think I will be buying any more because it varies in quality along its length – quite a lot of the zig-zagging has been pulled and scrunched, so I will have to steam and reset it before I can possibly use it. This is going to take hours because of the amount of damage. sigh The problem area is close to the centre of the ball, so it’s possible that something went wrong during the manufacturing process.

Ah well, serves me right for deviating from the usual twisted strands, but I still think this is a yummy combination of interesting texture and neutral shade…

Next, I fancied some mercerised cotton, so I picked up some Patons 100% Cotton DK as it looked like an incredibly tight and shiny twist – yes, a nice change from the roughness of the polythene I’ve been crocheting with lately! I went for the DK as I thought it would make for quicker results, but I’d like to do something in 4-ply cotton as well.

Anyway, then I noticed a tempting bit of rough dangling from a shelf…

…And followed it back to a skein called Stylecraft Craft Cotton. Ohmygoodnessme! Instant inspiration! I immediately wanted to take it home and make drinks coasters, dinner mats, jug covers, everything! I’ve wanted to do some household items for quite a while, but I had all but given up hope because I couldn’t find the right yarn for the job – the mercerised cottons were too smooth, hemp and jute were too rough, and I was beginning to feel like Goldilocks’ yarn-obsessed sister, unable to find something that was ‘just right’. No matter, no more, though; Craft Cotton is the one for the job – yum! yum! yum!

As you can see, we also picked up some seed beads. Flame found some in wonderful shades of teal and also a dark, sort of ‘oil on water’ effect. Generally, though, I was only interested in neutral/muted shades of anything today as I want to explore texture to a greater degree without being distracted by strong colours or patterns.

I definitely feel like I’ve got my creativity mojo at the moment (which is a relief because I spent a small fortune on things I could buy a lot cheaper online!), so we’ll see what happens now that I’ve stocked up a little…

Entry plonked in Yarn @ 11:56 pm
Tagged thusly: patons 100% cotton dk, rowan cotton braid, rowan yarn, ryc natural silk aran, seed beads, sirdar luxury soft dk, stylecraft craft cotton, yarn

After quite a bit of unpicking and re-doing (originally thought I was making a ‘top hat’ sort of shape, then a beret, but then finally what you see here), I’ve finished the hat I promised Pixie as a justification for buying the Glastonbury yarn. grin

The ‘Hazy Alpaca’ hat is double-crocheted in circles, increasing as necessary to make it the right shape, and I sized the hat for an adult because Pixie is growing very quickly and she gets upset when she grows out of things I have made for her.

Once the final incarnation of the hat was underway, I had developed the plan of making it look like the crochet had been done in vertical sections and then stitched together with the Kidsilk Haze. In reality, that would have been hard to achieve without a pattern because I would probably have ended up with an misshapen hat once it had all been sewn together! So… I started at the top of the head and then simply worked around in circles (not spirals), changing colour as necessary. This meant that I wouldn’t waste any yarn by leaving long ends, or have a screaming fit if I had to unravel some of the work because it wasn’t shaping properly!

Thus, the Inca Cloud colour blocking was done by dropping the current yarn and picking up the next one to change colour. At the end of each circuit, I chained three stitches and turned the work to pick up the right colour yarns as I came back the other way. To rotate the colours, I just crocheted on with the same colour I was using, passing passed by the colour I would normally have picked up. I passed the second colour up past the rows for which it wasn’t needed, and it seemed to work out OK because all the row-skipping yarn was passed up on the inside of the hat where it wasn’t obvious. I don’t know if this was the right way of handling the colour aspect, but it was certainly the simplest plan I could up with.

Once I was finished with the alpaca and all the ends were tucked in, I double-crocheted up the ‘seams’ with the Kidsilk Haze and then ran some more of it around the brim. Incidentally, I noticed the Inca Cloud yarn was slightly fatter/woollier in the Fuchsia than it was in the other two shades, but it doesn’t seem obvious when the hat is being worn. Texture-wise, I noticed a nice synergy between the Kidsilk Haze and Fuchsia Inca Cloud that suggested they’d like to get felty together. I might put them together again, as I have a good amount of each left over.

Oh, and I must mention the lovely tablecloth you can see here. We call it the Easter tablecloth because that’s when we use it most, but my mother used to bring it out on Sundays for tea when I was a little girl. It’s the most wacky design – lots of sunny yellow fish in silhouette on a bright white background. Completely crazy, but utterly fab!

Entry plonked in Crochet @ 9:48 pm
Tagged thusly: artesano alpaca, artesano inca cloud, Crochet, crochet hat, rowan kidsilk, rowan yarn