A Butterfly's Tale and Some Turtles

Pattern: Boyfriend Hat by Stephanie Nicole Bennet - Yarn: Red Heart Super Saver Multis in 997 Sage Mary - Needle: US 8

  Since we are going to put a bid on one of the cabins, I thought it would be a good idea to see what pattern I want to use for the Safety Hats.  If we are going to have a cabin in the forest where people might want to take a stroll during hunting season, I want to have something that they can grab easily to stand out.  I don't think everyone would think to bring something neon to wear, so I figured I'd provide it.  The ribbing let's the hat fit many sizes and I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like.  I had to make a few changes to the decreases, but otherwise this pattern works out really nicely for me.

Pattern: Waves of Hope by LMJ Designs - Yarn: Red Heart Super Saver Multis in 997 Sage Mary and Red Heart Super Saver Heather in Grey Heather - Needle: US 8

  I don't know why but recently I remember something that happened to me during a Girl Scout outing many many years ago.  We had hiked through the woods and found a beach area.  Everyone was looking for shark teeth and I spotted a butterfly that was being battered around by the cold wind.  I picked it up and put it on my sweatshirt so I could block the wind with my hands.  I carried it for the rest of the time we were on the beach like that.  Once we got back to the woods where the wind was a lot calmer and the air felt warmer the butterfly managed to warm up enough and flew off.

Pattern: Saw it on AliExpress - Yarn: Caron Simply Soft in Autumn Red 9924 and Bone 9703 - Needle: US 6

  That reminded me of some turtles I've helped fairly recently.  One I spotted sitting in the middle of an intersection near where I work.  The intersection isn't super busy, but it was busy enough that the turtle was just huddled in its shell.  I turned on my hazards and jumped out of my car to take it to the nearby woods.

  The other turtle was trying to cross a fairly busy road.  When I saw it I turned off on the next small street and parked as close as I could.  I then hurried back and hoped that it was still okay.  Someone with a truck had also seen it and had stopped to try and block traffic.  I saw a huge truck coming that would have probably hit the turtle, but the person in the smaller truck opened their door to stop it.  I grabbed the turtle and took it across the median and to the other side where it had been heading.

Rainbow Hat Experiments

  I want to start out this post by announcing that the numbers are in from the Hatathon!!

Boston Marathon 31 out of 26

• Meanicequeen - 2 out of 1

• mere2012 - 4 out of 4

• MinnieMay9 - 9 out of 7

• Rsm6 - 6 out of 4

• Sulwen - 4 out of 4

• nettietheknitter - 6 out of 6

  I'm so proud of my team!  We came in second to the Chicago team who got 34 done.  I know it's not technically a competition, and everyone is on different teams than last year, but it's still fun to make it a friendly competition in my mind.

Pattern: Side To Side Ribbed Hat by Sally L.M. - Yarn: Caron Simply Soft in Country Blue Ombre 2720 dye lot 046414 504 and Red Heart Eco-Ways in 3372 Petal - Hook: 5 mm

   You've seen this one before, but it was one of the first ones in the experiment.  I did the color changes at the top because I was thinking that I then wouldn't have to worry about anything showing on the bottom where I had to weave in the ends.  It looks fine, but the colors aren't as crisp at the top as I would like them to be.

Pattern: Side To Side Ribbed Hat by Sally L.M. - Yarn: Caron Simply Soft in Autumn Red 9924 and Bone 9703 - Hook: 5 mm

  I like the color changes on this one a lot more.  I was hoping to avoid having so many ends at the bottom, but the wedges look a lot crisper this way.  I just chained at the beginning and started working on my version of row 2.  That means that I had three chains just dangling off the top until I worked the full row using the gather stitches.  I feel like this made the wedges more uniform in size.

Pattern: Side To Side Ribbed Hat by Sally L.M. - Yarn: Red Heart Super Saver Multicolor in 997 Sage Mary and Red Heart Super Saver Heather in 400 Grey Heather - Hook: 5.5 mm

  I had planned to do 14 rows of each color to see how it would look in case I needed more than seven wedges for the hat.  However, with this yarn and the gauge I was getting, each wedge is going to be 2.75" if I follow her short row instructions and 3.5" if I add my extra short row.  That means that it would work out that each color will get its own wedge.

  Since I'm still experiencing anyway, I decided to go a bit wild with this one.  I rolled a 20 sided die to see how many rows to do.  Since I liked the look of the color changes being at the bottom, I rounded up if it was an odd number expect for the very last chunk.

    12 • 6 • 10 • 14 • 10 • 3

Pattern: Side To Side Ribbed Hat by Sally L.M. - Yarn: Red Heart Super Saver Heather in 400 Grey Heather - Hook: 5.5 mm

  The seam always looked funny to me, no matter if I used the back loops like she said to or the front like I have been doing.  There is a good chance that that is because of how I've started skipping the first row.  So for this one I decided to end on the bottom instead of the top.  I also experimented with having only 8 sc top stitches, so my short rows went: 6, 4, 2.  I cannot explain why it has taken me this long to make an experimental hat that is a bit shorter.

  For me, this one had the best seam.  I went through the loop farthest away from the seam and then the entire chain on the other side.  I held the hat with the beginning chain close to me, so that meant that I was going through the back loop of the last row worked.  This pushed the Vs towards the front.  I continued the same on the top sc area.  If you look really closely, you can see where the seam is, but otherwise I almost lost where it was when taking the picture.

  I'm really excited to start the rainbow hats, but I need to get some more yarn out of my stash before I run off and buy more yarn for a new project.  With all the yarn I already have, you would think I would already have everything I would need for rainbow hats, but somehow, I do not.

Head Hug Chemo Cap: Is It The Best?

© Laura DeFlora

Head Hug Chemo Cap 

Overall rating of 5/5 from 21 votes

Cost: Free

  I signed up to do some knitting/crochet for St. Jude to help earn some money, so I decided to try one of the highly rated patterns this time.  This one looked fun so I decided to give it a try.

  One thing that did confuse me for a bit was the chart for the ribbing pattern. The numbers for what stitch you are doing are the same size as the K and P above it. I thought they meant that the number was how many stitches you were supposed to do. When I read through the stitches written out, I figured out what they actually meant.

Thanks very much. A dear friend of mine will be going through chemo and radiation and I was looking for a nice hat to knit for her. Take care and I wish you all the best.

~ LuvYarn5 (3 years ago)

Yarn: Caron Simply Soft in Autumn Red 9924 - Needle: US 6

  I did find some problems with the pattern in the decrease rows.  If you are an intermediate to advanced knitter you might not even notice them, but it might be a problem for someone who is a beginner and is trying to follow the pattern exactly as written.  Here are what I have found:

• On row 2 she tells you to "Knit one row in pattern, which will be p2 *k5, p4* p2" which makes it seem like you would end the row with 6 purl stitches.  It should read as "p2 *k5, p4* k5, p2".  It could also be written as *p2, k5, p2* and get the same results.

• Row 4 has the same problem.  It reads as "Knit one row in pattern, which will be p1 *k5, p3* p2" but it should be "p1 *k5, p3* k5, p2".

• The repeat asterisk should be between the first p1 and the second k5 for row 6 of the crown.  The way it is now would lead you to believe that there are some sections with two purl stitches next to each other.  The second set of k5, p1 could also just be taken off.

From a survivor - good for you to make that free design!

Best wishes to all using your hats and going through chemo. Always a challenging time, but really worth the battle. ❤️

~ MissButtons (5 years ago)

Yarn: Caron Simply Soft in Autumn Kiss Ombre 2708 dye lot 27366 115 - Needles: US 8

  It is a very nice and easy pattern to read for the most part.  I like how simple the repeat is while also having enough of an interest so that I wanted to keep going.  I also appreciate when someone works the pattern into the crown decreases.  It seems that she doesn't check the comments on her pattern because someone posted that there was a stitch count error on row 8, but it doesn't seem to be fixed on the pattern.  Though to be fair I also don't check the comments on my patterns as often as I probably should.  Since there are so many errors in the pattern, I wouldn't call it the best.  Though because a lot of the rest of the pattern is well written I wouldn't call it the worst either.  Whichever you want to call it, I enjoyed making it.

Meet Marguerite

   You might be wondering who the lovely lady is who I've been getting to model my hats recently.  This is Marguerite, I don't remember how many years ago I got her, but she has been living at my mom's house for quite a while now.  I think I got her to work on cosplay wigs.  However, I'm pretty sure she wasn't missing bits of her head when I got her, and she has just been wearing a hat I was thinking of using for a Wendy cosplay since I got her.  She isn't telling me much about her private life outside of her hat modeling carrier, but I feel like she might sneak out at night and get into bar fights.

Pattern: Side To Side Ribbed Hat by Sally L.M. - Yarn: Big Twist Classic Yarn in Ocean Abyss - Hook: 5 mm

  I really like this pattern.  The one shown above is altered slightly because I'm trying to figure out if there is an easy way to make rainbow hats.  I wanted each wedge to be its own color.  I had a feeling that 6 wedges wouldn't be enough and would add pink since it's hard to find affordable yarn in indigo and violet.  The colors would be red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and pink.  I wanted to widen each wedge so I wouldn't have to have a color change in the middle of a short row, though that might not be the worst thing.  I'm going to play around with it some more.

Pattern: Metro Hat - Yarn: Bernat Berella So Soft in Dark Rose - Needle: US 8

  I'm not sure where I saw a hat like this, I might have been on the metro.  I think the general stitch pattern is good, but the gauge for it is off.  I want there to be more repeats in the body of the hat.  I know that Marguerite's head is smaller than the usual adult head, but it isn't by that much.  I'll have to try it again with thinner yarn.

  I've gotten a bunch of yarn from Cheryle recently.  She is trying to get her stash down and has been bringing a lot of it to the K&CC meetings.  She has had some for so long that they have older labels, and she has brought some that I have never heard of before.  It is fun working with yarns that are new to me but might not exist anymore.

Pattern: Side To Side Ribbed Hat by Sally L.M. - Yarn: Caron Simply Soft in Country Blue Ombre and Red Heart Eco-Ways in 3372 Petal - Hook: 5 mm

  The pattern has you work one or two short rows, but I like the look of 3.  I also played around with the order of doing them.  For the blue I worked them like usual, where each row was less than the one before, so I worked 9, 6, and 3.  For the pink I reversed to so that each row was more than the other.  That was a bit interesting because of the way she has you join the rows, so I only really had to work two more single crochets on my way to the top, but worked 3, 6, and 9 for the way back.

  I also experimented with how I did the seaming.  When the hat is one color it doesn't seem to matter how you to the single crochet area, but with the two I liked how it looked when I took one loop from the front of the near side and one loop from the back of the far side.  Taking the front loop from the half-double crochet side and the whole of the chain stitch looks very good from the outside and a bit off on the inside of you look too closely, but it would only show on that one section where the brim is rolled up.

  I still have some more things I'm thinking about trying.  One is to use a long striping yarn to mimic changing yarn colors mid triangle.  I'm also thinking of seeing how it looks with the color changes at the bottom of the triangle instead of the top like I did for the one above.