Red Hat

I had a random 123g ball of red, apparently acrylic light-worsted weight yarn in my stash, part of some gifted yarn from my daughter's friend Allie. 

Amid the wave of red nisse resistance hats, voici ma version. Mine is crocheted from the bottom up, starting with a slip-stitch ribbing worked flat and then seaming the ends together and continuing to work the crown of the hat from the bottom up. Ordinarily, the crown would be worked in the round, but since I usually wear my hair in a messy-bun style, I'm leaving the back of my hat open with flaps on either side, and I'm working the crown in rows. 

The ribbing has 67 ribs, a number that is meaningful to me. The crown has 68 stitches plus 6 stitches on each end for the overlapping flaps, for a total of 80 stitches. 

The ribbing is crocheted with a 5mm hook, and I switched to a 5.5mm hook for the crown, which I worked using the lemon peel stitch. The braided tassel is detachable, so the hat can be worn with or without the tassel. 

The hat used about 100g of the 123g ball.

 

SPAM Baby

This adorable little SPAM Baby design by Stephanie Pokorny of Crochetverse is irresistibly cute, so I just had to grab some pink stash yarn and my hook to make one! Besides, my husband loves SPAM. 💜

I didn't have any pink chenille yarn on hand, so I improvised with some Red Heart With Love in the Bubble Gum colorway. To approximate the bulky yarn, I used the "triple yarn as you go" technique, which Crochet with Tuula Maaria shows us how to do in this YouTube video tutorial.

If you have chenille yarn on hand, SPAM Baby does look much more cuddly when made with that type of yarn. Stephanie used Ice Yarns Chenille Super Bulky in the Salmon colorway. But mine made with worsted weight acrylic yarn held triple is cute in his own way. 🥰

I used some 15mm safety eyes that I had in my stash, but the 18mm eyes by Darkside Crochet (in the color Succubus) that Stephanie used on hers are gorgeous.

Thank you for sharing this adorable and fun free pattern with us, Stephanie! SPAM Baby is a sweet little softie toy that could also work as a character-filled keychain accessory.

The Simple Thing plus hood

If you like the look of the Sophie Scarf, then give this free pattern for The Simple Thing by Melina Brell a try.

I ended up cannibalizing the yarn and needles from my attempt to make the Slice of Goodness Wrap by Purl Soho to make this project. I really, really wanted to finish Slice of Goodness, but the process was going to be very lengthy, and even though I made it to around halfway through, I lost the will to go on.

Gauge shot

I had been aware of the Sophie Scarf design for a while, but that design by itself didn't intrigue me, mainly because I don't like short scarves. I do like i-cord edges and garter stitch, however. So when the Sophie Hood version was released, that's when I started getting interested.

So my plan is to see if I can approximate the hooded version of this scarf by using The Simple Thing as my starting point.

HeathlandKnits has a good video tutorial on YouTube that walks you through the setup process for The Simple Thing scarf, and I highly recommend that you watch that video when casting on. There is also a video showing how to graft the ends together when finishing the scarf. Both of the video links included in the PDF of the pattern appear to be broken, so that's why I'm sharing the links with you here. It took me a bit of clicking around to find them.

Part 1 done

Because I prefer my scarves on the longer side, I'm making this using a 6-row repeat instead of the basic 4-row repeat suggested in the pattern. Whatever length you prefer for your pattern repeat, definitely use a stitch marker that opens/closes as a progress keeper! This almost becomes a mindless knit with the help of a progress keeper clipped to your project. 

Part 2 starts with a buttonhole

I originally planned to have the scarf part be at least 30 to 36 inches long and around 10 inches wide on each side before starting on the hood part. The way I'm visualizing this coming together, I'll have to knit each scarf side before joining them together to knit the hood. I haven't done that sort of thing before, so we'll see if it works. 🤞

Parts 1 and 2 complete

Part 1 ended up being about 27 inches long by 9.5 inches wide at widest end, or 50 stitches (not counting i-cord stitches) by 296 rows. I started part 2 by making a buttonhole at the tip, which required it to be a bit wider than the tip of part 1, so I knitted a few rows without increasing part 2 until the width at that length was about the same as on part 1, and then I continued the same increasing pattern (every 6 rows) as on part 1 until achieving the same overall width and length.

Before grafting the i-cord edging

After joining the two sides to begin the hood (and adding stitches along the i-cords at the back of the neck for a comfortable fit), I ended up with 120 stitches on the needle, not counting the i-cord stitches on each edge of the work. This will give me a hood with enough depth to comfortably fit over my hair, which I usually wear up in a messy bun style. 

Start of part 3

There is a Sophie Hood video tutorial that shows some key techniques for that pattern, and in watching that video, it's clear that I'm using a different method to knit the hood for my project. They knit the hood flat (in line with the scarf) and have a seam to join the entirety of the sides of the hood at the back; I'm also knitting my hood flat, but I'm doing mine seamlessly (bottom up) except for where the top edge will be grafted. 

Rescue line added before starting hood decreases

I debated for a while how to work the top of the hood, meaning whether I would attempt to make the back part slightly shaped/rounded with short rows or decreases. Finally, I found this video tutorial by Yuha Knitting that shows an easy-to-understand method for making decreases to help make the back of a hood knitted like mine a bit rounded, so it looks less pointy on the wearer's head. I think I'll try doing mine that way. (I could also envision a method of working short rows on either side of the center of the back of the hood to shape the crown that way, but I just didn't want to work that hard, so I'm glad I found the technique by Yuha Knitting!)

Hood complete with crown decreases

To prepare for the decreases, I added a marker to show where the center of the back of the hood was, and I will make the hood decreases on either side of that marker. I also added a marker to show when I was working a right-side row, since I intended to work decreases only on the right side of the work. Lastly, I added a rescue line in the last row before starting to decrease, just in case I wasn't happy with how the decreasing section was going. It would be easy to rip back and start the section again if needed. 😂 The decrease before the marker will be a left-leaning decrease (SSK), and the decrease after the marker will be a right-leaning decrease (K2tog).

Hood complete with top seam closed

I calculated that I wanted to decrease the crown of the hood by about 40 stitches (about one-third of the hood's total width), which, decreasing 2 stitches on each right-side row, would require 40 rows to achieve. (With decreases worked only on right-side rows, every decreasing row is followed by a non-decreasing row on the wrong side, so 20 decreasing rows plus 20 non-decreasing rows equals 40 rows total.) Based on my estimated gauge, those 40 rows would add about 3.5 inches of height to the hood. And since I wanted the total height of my hood to be about 13-14 inches (measuring from the top of my shoulder to the crown of my head), that meant that I should knit about 10 inches of hood before starting the decreasing rows.

Time to add a button

I also found a nice tutorial by Lindsey of the Yarina blog hosted by Custom Yarn that shows how to join the top of a hood knitted in garter stitch like mine using a 3-needle bind-off technique that blends invisibly into the established garter stitch. Woo-hoo! I'm going to try doing that, too.

Button info

Waylon's blanket

Earlier this year, we learned that my sister-in-law Linda's daughter Brianna was expecting her first child, which was going to be Linda's very first grandchild, and our family was super excited to welcome our newest little addition. It's going to be a boy! 💙

Naturally, this news also meant that Auntie Susan needed to get busy stitching up a keepsake blanket to welcome her newest grandnephew!

Finished with 43 rows of squares, before blocking

I searched for baby blanket ideas for a few days with nothing really jumping out and grabbing me until Red Heart Yarns shared on social media their pattern for this blanket made with Red Heart Bitty Stripes yarn. Instantly I could see in my mind's eye how amazing this design would look made in shades of blue and green, so I ordered the kit with those colors and then anxiously waited for it to arrive. 

This pattern says to use an 11.5 mm hook, even though the yarn is rated as a standard 4 weight. I did purchase the 11.5 mm hook with the Yarnspirations kit (it was less than $2, and I didn't already own a hook that size, so why not?) for the blanket project, but as I started working the foundation chain, it was just soooo loose that it really didn't look right, so I switched to using a 6.5 mm hook, and that seemed to look a lot better to me. A 7 mm hook would probably be ideal, but I don't have one that size (yet).

The free pattern wasn't yet listed in the Ravelry database when I started this project, but it could be downloaded from this page at Yarnspirations.

Measures about 36 inches wide

Since I'm using a smaller hook than the pattern suggested, I also added more chains to the foundation chain to ensure that the blanket wouldn't be too small. Thus, I started with a foundation chain of 153 instead of 113. After working several rows of blocks, the piece measured about 36 inches wide, which is a good size for the width of a baby crib blanket. This blanket is 14 squares wide. I'm aiming to have the finished blanket size be about 36 inches wide by 48 inches long. I figure I will just keep adding rows until the blanket looks more rectangular than square, so I'll let you know how many rows that ends up being after I've finished.

Work in progress...

I'm also fairly new to tunisian crochet techniques, and I wasn't understanding the written instructions for how to get started, so I looked up this Yarnspirations video tutorial (hosted by Mikey!! Yay!! He's such a great teacher) to get me through the blanket setup. Once I was able to understand how the tunisian block pattern works, it became super fun to make this pattern. It only takes about 4 or 5 minutes to complete each block (it takes about an hour (ish) to complete a whole row of blocks), and as the yarns gradually change colors, half of the fun is seeing which color will come next, so I found myself wanting to keep making "one more block" and never wanting to stop. 😊 The beautiful colors of the Bitty Stripes yarn play so well together, too. It's just a gorgeous effect when it's all put together. 

WIP at 27 rows

I'm using the Seaweed (green) colorway as Color A in the pattern and the Horizon (blue) colorway as Color B. 

The first skein of Seaweed ran out after the 15th row. The first skein of Horizon ran out in the middle of the 16th row. The blanket was basically a square at the point where these first skeins ran out, so if you wanted to use this pattern to make a roughly 36-inch square blanket, you might be able to do it with just one skein of each color (plus more yarn for a border, if you wanted to add one). 

In working out the math for the sizing of this blanket, I calculated that 48 inches is approximately 1.33 times 36 inches. And since 14 squares measures about 36 inches, I estimated that I would need to work 18-19 rows of Color A (or 14 times 1.33) to reach my target length of 48 inches long. Notice that that's only counting the Color A rows. Since the pattern is alternating rows of Color A and Color B, the total number of rows would actually be approximately double the number of rows of counting only Color A, which I'm estimating would be around 36-38 rows of squares. 

Standard hook = crowded

I went through phases of using three different 6.5 mm crochet hooks while stitching this project. I started off with my regular blue-handled Boye hook (this set is one of my overall all-time favorites to work with). Because the squares in this pattern are fairly small and only require a maximum of 7 loops to fit onto the shaft of the hook, it is possible to manage that with most standard crochet hooks, even if 7 loops gets to be a bit crowded. 

A Furls hook helps

I looked around at the options available and thought that the long shaft of the Furls style hooks might work better for this project than my Boye hook, so I ordered a pretty 6.5 mm Furls hook from Amazon. 

All the hooks I went through

When the Furls hook arrived, it was noticeably easier to fit all the loops onto its shaft. But the problem with the Furls design is that the shaft gradually tapers into the larger grip area, and that larger part of the shaft was making the loops on that end of each row bigger than the other loops. It wasn't a huge issue, so I worked quite a few rows with the Furls hook. 

A tunisian hook is ideal

But eventually I decided to finally bite the bullet and buy some type of actual tunisian hook, in the hope that it would make it easier for me to keep the loop sizes more consistent across the entire row. I settled on this double-ended tunisian hook by Red Heart. 

The only reason why it took me so long to finish this blanket was because I struggled somewhat with finding the energy to keep working in the middle of the project (health struggles, sigh), so even though I knew that I really wanted to have it ready to be a gift for Baby's first Christmas, I put it in time out for a few months to let myself rest. But as December rolled around, I found the burst of energy I needed to pick it up again. 

After finishing the 43rd row, I measured the length of the blanket and found that it was just about exactly 48 inches long and celebrated finally reaching my goal.

I had ordered a skein of baby blue Red Heart yarn that looked online like it would coordinate well with the blanket's colors and make a good solid color for the edging rounds. But it was evident as soon as I saw the yarns in person that this edging color was not going to work. Happily, I still had a lot of leftover Red Heart in the Denim colorway, which complements the blanket colors nicely in the border rounds.

For the border, I worked two rounds of SC (turning to work the second round in the opposite direction to help prevent curling) followed by one round of twsted SC, which gives a simple but lovely, texture-y, rope-like edging that I have used to finish many blanket projects. Twisted SC looks exactly like RSC, but twisted SC is a LOT easier to work, IMO. 

Floral arrangement for Rose's birthday

My grown-up bonus daughter Rose loves the colors orange and black. This year for her birthday, I decided to make her a pretty silk floral arrangement. Roses for Rose!! 🌹

The florals all came from my local Michaels store. I started with this 18-inch Orange Ranunculus Deluxe Bush by Ashland. Flower arranging is easy when you start with something like this that provides a lovely base for the bouquet, and I loved that it had lots of orange roses and greenery. Then I added five of these Black Open Rose Stem by Ashland. The stems on the black roses were longer than the stems on the orange ranunculus bush, so I used my wire-cutters to trim about 4 to 5 inches off the end of each black rose stem so the flowers had a balanced appearance.

The vase is the Beautiful Amber Glass Flower Vase for Fresh or Artificial Flowers by Drew Barrymore, which I found online at Walmart. To hide the bottoms of the stems, I filled the vase with one box of these 6mm acrylic beads from Amazon, but by themselves, they didn't fill the vase quite enough, so I mixed them with most of one tube of Clear Colorfill Diamonds by Ashland from Michaels.

The finishing touch is the adorably goth 9" Black & White Cat Skeleton Pick by Ashland from Michaels. Isn't she just the cuuuuutest?!?!? 😍