Sunday, December 16, 2007

A Crocheted Hat

There was a cute crocheted diagonal shell pattern posted on Craftster's crochet board not too long ago. I don't have too many crochet patterns for preemie hats (most of the ones I've seen aren't as stretchy as knit, and I like making preemie hats with a good amount of stretch). This one has a diagonal spiral to it, plus some 'empty' space between shells, so maybe it has some stretch.

I tried it and came up with this:





Finished dimensions: 4" tall, 10" around, so maybe a 5lb preemie size. (these are my measurements, the pattern's written for adult size, I think)

(it's being worn by another ball of yarn. This other ball is not as cooperative at becoming a finished project, but it seems to work well as a model.)

The pattern is at the link above, what I changed (of course) is minor-

15 gms of DK weight yarn (according to the label - Wendy's Peter Pan yarn - it seems a little thinner than that to me)
crochet hooks sizes H and G,
Gauge of a "1fpdc and 3 dc shell" is about 3/4 inch, using size H hook.

Round 1 - 10 dc to start with instead of 15
Rounds 10-14 - stayed at 3dc, instead of increasing to 4. I stopped the shells after round 14.
The sc round (round 17 on the pattern) I did in the larger hook instead of switching to the smaller hook. I thought doing the sc's in the larger hook kept some of the stretch.
I only did 2 rows of the fpdc's and bpdc's.
And reminder to self for next time: the shells are worked ONLY in the space after the fpdc (rounds 2 to 16), not in the space after the shells, not in the space before the fpdc, not in the spaces between dcs. Just in the space AFTER THE FPDC.

Not quite as stretchy as a knit hat, but good enough.

I haven't been spinning on the wheel the last few weeks...


I was spinning just fine, mostly, given the learning curve of treadling and scotch tensions, etc. Then the footman crank separated. I thought I hadn't tightened something properly but then I realized that where the separation is, isn't something I played with when I assembled the wheel. I went back & forth with the vendor and released they had sent me a wheel with some parts belonging to a folding model, and some parts belonging to a non-folding model. Apparently they almost, but not quite, are interchangeable. So I packed up my wheel and sent it back yesterday and hopefully I'll get a new, complete, wheel soon. I really like the Fricke wheel too. I miss it already.

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