Leggi questo post in: Italiano
How is your holiday season going? I, myself, am feeling pretty burnt out with all the Christmas and other craziness that for some reason always seems to get piled up at Christmas, even if it has nothing to do with the holidays. So I’m going to hold off on tutorials for a week or so and show you some of the projects I’ve been working on lately. And much of that work has been not sewing, but knitting and crocheting.
When it started getting chilly this fall, we realized that somehow my husband no longer had any winter hats. Who knows what happened to them. So I got to work with Sesia Echos, a gorgeous organic wool and alpaca yarn. I love that this yarn is available in various tones of the same colors, so I decided on stripes of medium brown, light brown and mix of the two. Originally my idea had been to recreate the Voyages Beanie, which my husband liked a lot, but this yarn was too bulky for the project. After a bit of searching on Ravelry, I found the super easy Ayer’s Rock pattern.
You can see the details of my version of this pattern in my Ravelry notebook, but basically I used a 7 mm hook. The hat is worked in the round, top-down. I started with a round of the lightest color, then a round of the mixed color, and a round of the darker color. I repeated this pattern of stripes until it was long enough. The whole thing is worked in half double crochet, so it only took me two or three hours.
The wool is so soft and wonderful and my husband loved it! It’s slightly big on me, so just imagine it on a bigger head.
Seeing as I only used up a bit of each of the three colors, I decided to make a matching cowl neckwarmer. In order to have enough yarn, I purchased another skein of the mixed color yarn and alternated stripes: light – mixed – dark – mixed – light – mixed – dark – mixed, and so on. You can see the effect in the photo above. I honestly prefer the stripe pattern in the hat because the colors seem to stand out more. To make the neckwarmer, I just chained enough to be able to slip over my head, slip stitched the beginning to the end and continued to work in the round with half double crochet.
Alas, my crochet skills are sometimes a bit lacking and these two pieces didn’t come out perfectly. You can see weird bumps where each round is slip-stitched closed. Oops…
Who cares, though? This hat/neckwarmer set is so snuggly! My one complaint about this yarn is that it’s a pain in the butt to crochet and even more to unravel because it is not well-twisted, so the two strands separate easily and tiny threads come loose and get caught in the crochet hook.
I love knit cafès and some friends (including Ilaria from Airali Handmade and Rachele from Arteteca) started up a new knit cafè on the Sorrentine Penninsula at Rachele’s Bistrò delle Rose. The awesome name: Tricò al Bistrò!
In early December, Ilaria walked us through how to crochet a slouchy beret without a pattern. The only yarn I had with me was Morefil Rainbow, which I’d gotten at Abilmente Roma for a project that I’ll show you soon, so I started my beret with it. I was almost done with it when I finally admitted to myself that I didn’t like how the self-striping yarn worked up in the round.
So I got my helpers, who have both been reprimanded in the past for pulling apart my knitting or crochet work, to unravel the hat on purpose!
And I started the beret over again with the same Sesia Echos yarn that I used for the Ayer’s Rock hat and neckwarmer, but in a grey melange color. This hat is also worked in half double crochet, which thankfully works up very quickly, because I had to unravel the hat perhaps three times (after unravelling completely the first version with the other yarn) before I got the size and fit perfect. It’s worked in the round and then, when it’s time to start the ribbing, I turned it inside out so that the wrong side of the crochet work was facing outwards. (Thanks to Ilaria for this idea!)
I love berets, but I like them big and I like hats that actually cover my ears and forehead, unlike the Simple and Sweet beret I knit last year. And this one is just perfect! It’s snuggly and warm and it looks good with short hair and glasses (which is definitely not a given in hats). Yah! I have a feeling that I didn’t do the ribbing quite right, but whatever… it does the trick and I’m done unravelling and reworking this hat!
Making crochet hats is so satisfying because they’re useful, cool-looking and relatively quick! And they can last for generations, like this red knit hat that my grandmother made for me when I was a little girl, and now is my little Nicky’s!
Question of the Day: What are you working on right now? Sewing, knitting, crocheting, crafting, etc?
Right now I’m finishing up my friend Maria’s Mani in Alto bandana-style neckwarmer with the yarn that I unravelled from that first beret. I love how the colored stripes are coming out worked in rows! As soon as it’s done, I’ll show you that and another cool project I made with the same yarn!
We are so spoiled here in SF. The temp is only 53, but the wind-chill makes it feel like below zero. I know it’s not cold compared to what others are experiencing. This post comes just in the nick of time. Thanks.
We’re very spoiled here, too, at least compared to the cold I grew up with in Boston area. But this week we’ve been having 0°C temperatures with strong winds, which is very strange for us in southern Italy! It feels good to have nice warm hats these days!