Mamas2Hands

Last night I finished Thing 2’s hat. It was just in time as the weather took a turn toward freezing cold temperatures again. This morning he happily wore his new hat to school, though getting a clear photo of him wearing it was a bit of a challenge.

The only part I had to finish yesterday evening was the ribbed band at the brim of the hat. This gives the classic ribbed look around the face, but it also acts to draw in the fabric of the crown and sides for a snug fit around the ears.

For my ribbing I use post stitches. For those of you that have never worked post stitches, their name comes from the fact that they are worked around the “post” of a stitch instead of under the top 2 strands of a stitch. This gives them much more of a textured look and changes how the fabric behaves.

With a taller stitch like the double crochet it is quite easy to see the “post” of the stitch and to work around the center of this post when working post stitches. For a stitch like the Half Double or Single crochet that becomes a bit more fiddly to find.

The first time I tried using post stitches for my ribbing I decided to do what I call “skinny” post stitches. Instead of working down into the stitch, I use the very top of the post just under the “v” that makes the top of the stitch (the bit of brown yarn the arrow is pointing to in the photograph above). This creates a slimmer looking stitch because the base of the post stitch isn’t stretched around the thickest part of the other stitch.

For the ribbing affect I alternate my post stitches, so I needed an even number of stitches. I generally start with a FPhdc, and end the round with a BPhdc. The first round of ribbing is the trickiest.

Once you have finished that round it just becomes a matter of working FP stitches into FP stitches and BP into BP.

For a Front Post half double crochet (FPhdc): Insert the hook from front to back to the right of the post you want to work around, then bring the hook from the back to the front under the top of the stitch to the left of the post (indicated by arrow in photo above).  Yarn over and pull up a loop thru all the stitches, yarn over and complete your hdc. The post of this new stitch will be sitting on the front of your fabric.

For a Back Post half double crochet (BPhdc): Insert the hook from back to front to the right of the post you want to work around, then bring the hook from the front to the back under the top of the stitch for the left of the post (indicated by arrow in photo above).

Yarn over and pull up a loop thru all the stitches, yarn over and complete your hdc. The post of this new stitch will be sitting on the back of your fabric.

Finished BPhdc.

Once I finished the ribbing for Thing 2’s hat all I needed to do was weave in my beginning and ending tails. The tail at the crown is fairly easy to weave in, I’m just careful not to pull the tail too tight and create holes in the crown. For the ending tail at the brim, I want to be sure the tail is woven in so that it doesn’t create a tight spot in the fabric. I weave on the inside of the hat and keep my weaving restricted to 1 “column” of stitches.

I’m always careful with my end weaving to be sure that the tails are well secured. Hats get lots of handling and I want to be sure that this hat doesn’t become un-raveled. The very final step for me was to make an identifying tag that has our family name and phone number, just in case this hat gets misplaced. Hopefully the contact info will insure that the hat makes it back to us.

 

 

 

Last night I had crocheted on the new hat for Thing 2 for 10 Rounds. I used the same increase formula I used in my “Little Bitty Noggin Cap” pattern here on the blog, with 8 increases each round.

I worked the increase by making the first stitch like a normal stitch, inserting my hook under both strands at the top of the stitch.

For the second stitch of the increase I work into the back loop of the same stitch. This creates an interesting texture on the crown of the hat and decreases the size of the hole made for the increase.

The finished increase looks like this. If you look at the hole under the first stitch you will see that it is similar to the other stitches. The hole you see under the second stitch is obscured once the next regular stitch is worked.

I had measured Thing 2’s head circumference (22″) and asked him how he wanted his hat to fit. My husband prefers his hats to be fairly loose, so I actually add ease to the size of them. Thing 2 wanted his hat to be a bit snug, so I calculated that I would want 21″ for the finished circumference, negative ease of 1 inch. That meant a target measurement of 6.69″ for the diameter of the crown before I started working evenly.

Unfortunately, though the math works out, the stitches don’t always cooperate. The expansion of the diameter can be affected by the height of the stitches being used in the hat. Once I had reached 10 rounds for the crown I knew that another full round of increases would make the hat too large. But there is a simple work around for that.

In Round 11 I only worked 4 increase points, instead of 8. I used this same method of limited increases in my Simple DC Hat pattern as well. At the end of Round 11 I had 84 stitches around the circumference. Knowing my number of stitches is a great way of checking my target measurement too. I knew that I had 4 stitches per inch, so 84 stitches = 21 inches.

Now I’ve got a lot of rounds of working evenly (without increasing or decreasing) before I’m ready to create a ribbed brim.