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.