hat

Winter Hats

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Welcome to fall! With fall comes, of course, cooler weather. And with cooler weather comes … colds. We’re only a third of the way through fall, which means at least five more months of cooler weather before spring, and my older boys have each been sick twice already. This does not make a mama happy. So I headed over to my local JoAnn store to get some yarn using my half-price coupons to make stocking hats for them to keep their heads warm during the next 5-6 months – until springtime.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I was looking for when I went in, except that I didn’t want a “regular” yarn. I wanted something soft and moderately warm so that it would do its job when turned into a hat. What I found was Sensations brand “Angel Hair” yarn. It’s magnificent. If you knit or crochet, I highly recommend you go to your JoAnn store and buy a skein or two to try out. Even hubby agreed it was wonderful feeling :).

The hats are just a basic beanie. You can find the pattern here. You’ll notice that I didn’t do the stripes in the pattern. That’s because my yarn was already striped, and I loved the way each color looked on its own; I didn’t want to take away from the beauty of the main color by adding those stripes. If the yarn had been a single color, I probably would have given each boy’s hat stripes in the other color. But since it wasn’t, I didn’t, so it’s a moot point :).

A New Hat (and an update!)

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Wow, I didn’t realize it had been so long since I’d made a post! I knew it’d been a while, but I didn’t remember just how long.

So, I recently made this hat. I love the colors, don’t you? 🙂 Funny thing about this one: I stitched a sample for determining gauge, and adjusted my hook size accordingly, but then when the hat was done, it was way too big, so I ended up pulling the whole thing apart and making it again with a smaller hook. But as my hubby said, “At least you got good entertainment value from that skein of yarn!” He’s always looking at the bright side of things :).

As for the “update” part of this post, part of why it’s been so long since I made a post is because Small Fry was born! He arrived via scheduled c-section (which I do not recommend!) on July 12th, 2012 at 8:15 a.m. PST. He weighed in at 6 pounds, 8 ounces, and was 19 3/4 inches long. He was born with a shock of black hair, which was a surprise for all of us considering both of our other sons have red hair! But his facial features are pretty much identical to Munchkin (our 5-year-old) as a baby, so despite the difference in hair color, there’s no doubt that they’re all brothers.

I’ll still continue to add posts of my creations as I’m able, but until Small Fry is a bit older, it’ll probably be longer between them. Having a newborn makes it hard to find time for crafting! But I wouldn’t trade him for anything.

Sun Hats

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My kids both have red hair, which means they’re very fair skinned and sunburn easily. But they both hate having sunscreen on their faces – which actually works okay since I am NOT fair skinned and never burn, therefore forget to slather them *bad mom*. So this year, I decided to try something new in the hopes that we could avoid having them burn too badly: I made them sun hats. I scoured Google for patterns both in crochet and sewing varieties. I tried a fabric one first, but I wasn’t thrilled with the way it turned out, so I scrapped that idea (no pun intended ;)). The next day, I was looking at a video tutorial on YouTube (hadn’t actually started watching it yet) on baby booties when one of the “suggested videos” caught my eye. It was a brimmed hat, which I thought would be perfect for the boys. I had M with me in my little sanctuary, so I had him pick a color from my stash (he chose light blue) and I got to work. Roughly 3 hours later, he had a hat. Next up was A’s. It took him a while to choose the color; in the end, he went with red – which I could have predicted, since that’s his favorite. I only got about half done with his that night, but easily finished it before lunch.

Now comes the hard part: reminding them to wear them every day!!

I’ve included at the bottom of this post the video tutorial for the hats if you’re interested in making one of your own. It’s very easy, and I definitely recommend trying it if you’re in the market for anything even remotely similar. Doesn’t take too much yarn, either, which is always a plus. One thing I encountered that you should be aware of should you make one (or more!) of these hats: it takes on a taco-shell-like shape for the first several rows. Once you get to around row 10, though, it evens out and finds its place as a hat.

If you prefer written instructions rather than a video, click HERE for the link to the Crochet Geek blog. Her instructions are clear and concise. If you know even the basics of crochet, you shouldn’t have any trouble following them.

Happy stitching!!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ5fgRt8DK0&feature=relmfu]