FO: Football hat and gloves

One of my colleagues at work is in the unfortunate position of having a birthday which falls just a few days after Christmas. A few weeks ago, while she was on leave, we began plotting ways to celebrate the day, as we were all in the office over the Christmas period. As she's a huge football fan, we tried to come up with ideas that tied in with that (my favourite being having her picture come up on the big screen at a game she went to just before Christmas, but the game was called off due to weather conditions). We spent an age browsing the online shop of her home club, Wycombe Wanderers. The others really wanted to get her a branded beanie to wear when she goes to games in the winter, but they only had baseball caps. Of course, the suggestion then came up that I could make one instead!

I spent a whole evening on the laptop, hunting for a suitable pattern, Googling for pictures of the Wycome Wanderers strip and comparing yarn colours from the Deramores website to ensure I was buying the right shades of dark and light blue!

I chose Sirdar Supersoft Aran. Buying yarn online is always a risk when you are colour matching, but when it arrived I was pleased. I thought they were a pretty good match for the pictures I'd seen online of the club's kit. 

The pattern I chose for the hat is a crochet pattern (for speed), crocheted as a rectangle then seamed to make a hat. I wanted one worked sideways as it would allow me to easily incorporate the colour pattern from the shirts, which is quarters.

Project: Jenna's Football Hat

Pattern: Easy Sideways Hat by Lion Brand

Yarn: Sirdar Supersoft Aran

Hook: 6mm

The crocheted rib and colour changes meant I didn't get bored while I was crocheting! It was a really quick project, taking just over one evenings work. Rather than sew the hat up, I seamed it with single crochet through one loop from each end of the rectangle, then cut a long tail to sew through the edge of the top of the hat to pull tight to gather into the beanie shape. I had planned to put a pom pom on it, made in both colours, but felt it didn't need it once I was done. The rib stitch is nice and stretchy too, which makes the hat very comfortable.

I had so much yarn left oveer, I decided to make her a pair of matching gloves too. Keeping with the quarters theme, I crocheted one glove in the pale blue, and one in the dark blue.

Project: Jenna's Football Gloves

Pattern: improvised, but based on the stitch pattern of the hat above

Yarn: Sirdar Supersoft Aran

Hook: 5mm

I used the same rib stitch pattern from the hat, starting with a chain of 40 as I wanted them to come right up over the wrist and down the arm. I crocheted until it was wide enough to wrap around my wrist, then seamed up the side. The top part of the seam above the thumb was sewn shut using the yarn tail from my cast on edge, while the bottom part of the seam was done using sc in one loop from each edge. I left a hole for the thumb, and crocheted two rounds around the thumb hole to keep the base of the thumbs warm.

They were well received by my colleague; she remarked on how well I'd matched the colours too, so I'm glad I got that right!