A Whistlestop FO tour

Once again, three FOs to share with you this week, but not many photos (thanks to the broken memory card).

I mentioned last week that I had started work on a crocheted Mobius wrap, well, that's finished.

Project: Infinity Wrap

Pattern: Vintage Crossover Mobius Wrap by The Sunroomuk (direct link here)

Yarn: Hayfield Bonus Aran in purple heather (about 1/4 of a ball)

Hook: 8mm

This pattern is great, once you get started. Getting started, though, now that's tricky. The pattern isn't written very clearly at all. It doesn't explain the concept that you should crochet both sides of the chain stitch before joining the round, and instead of describing each subsequent round as one row, it splits it in two! So it says there are 14 rows, when in actual fact there are seven. It just looks like 14 because you've got stitches above and below the foundation chain!

I finally got my head around the concept of a mobius strip, and with the assistance of the lovely Ravellers in this forum thread on the subject, I managed to get my head around the starting chain. Instead of doing a normal chain of stitches, do foundation single crochet. It gives you a much better stitch to crochet into on the underside, and it really helps cement the twist idea. It takes a couple of goes to get the hang of, but the basic idea is you only join once you've gone around both sides of the chain, and you have to twist around 180° to get the twist into the loop. Then, you just do each round in a big loop, and magically you have a piece of fabric with only one edge. I did a few extra rounds to make mine wider.

As I still had a seemingly endless supply of this yarn (which I'm getting pretty fed up of now!), I wanted to find another project which might hopefully use it all up. A friend of mine recently joined Ravelry after picking up some knitting needles, and she'd put a crochet hat pattern in her queue. She happened to mention it was there, so I went to take a look. It was the Brimmed Cap by Lion Brand and it's a free pattern. It calls for aran weight yarn... it was fate, or destiny, or something.

Project: Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat

Pattern: Brimmed Cap by Lion Brand (direct link here)

Yarn: Hayfield Bonus Aran in purple heather (about 1/4 of a ball)

Hook: 6mm

I was incredibly suspicious of this pattern right from the off. Was it going to suit me? Was it even going to fit? The pattern claims it makes a hat sized at just over 18". I measured my head. I'd need a 22" hat. For once, I was going to have to actually pay attention to my gauge! Pattern called for a 5.5mm hook, with 14 sc to 4 inches. I dug out my 6mm hook, and got 12 sc to 4". A quick bit of maths told me this should lead to a 22" circumference for my hat, as there are 66 stitches in the final rounds of the hat.

I got very tired very quickly of having to count stitches for the increases, so resorted to putting stitch markers at each increase point, with a unique marker for the start of the round. This sped things up a lot! It looks massive when you're still in the increase section, but the decreases go a lot faster (stitch markers came in handy here too, although I was struggling to keep my unique marker unique by this point, as I needed far more for the decreases - 11 compared to 6 for the increases). When I finished the main hat part, I tried it on and it felt like it was still a bit too big, so I did an extra round of decreases, meaning my hat ended up with 55 stitches in the band. Not sure how that works, because it still ended up the right size for my head!

The brim was also tricky. The pattern isn't particularly clear, and I wasn't particularly awake when attempting it. I was also watching Iron Man 2, so was a shade distracted (I have a bit of a soft spot for Robert Downey Jr, ever since I saw Chaplin many years ago). It took me a couple of goes to get into my head that when the pattern says continue until the brim measures 2 inches it means how far the brim comes out from the hat, not how wide the brim is when you stop.

It's one of those patterns where you just have to have absolute faith that all will be well once you've finished, no matter how weird it looks inbetween! But I am pleased with the end result, and it seems to look ok on my head so I'm not too worried.

My final piece for today is a very small project, made because I thought perhaps my hat would look odd without any sort of decoration. I had a small amount of the same yarn in brown, left over from my sofa cushions. So I made this:

Project: flower

Pattern: Two-layer Flower to Adorn a Sock Monkey Hat by Shelley Tudor (free Ravelry download)

Yarn: Hayfield Bonus Aran in brown

Hook: 5mm

A nice, quick project. I still need to attach the flower to the hat, but I think I might just attach it to a clip of some kind, to create a removeable decoration that I can wear on hats, or as a brooch, or to pin a shawl together or something.

For more wonderful FOs, head on over to Tami's or Beth's (or both!) and check out the links!