Progress !

My first big crochet post.

The background: I learned how to crochet when I was young, but I don't recall ever progressing past square objects. Didn't crochet for years. Then, last May, we had a baby (known here as El Burrito, for reasons to be explained later). El Burrito takes after DH's side of the family, and is in the 95+ percentile on head circumference. Note the "+" after the 95. That means that the 9-month size hats? He outgrew those at 6 months, if not sooner. He had newborn hats that wouldn't have fit him when he was born. Finding a winter hat for the boy has been practically impossible. I had to pass up dozens of adorable - and cheap! - denim hats on clearance at Gap and Children's Place, because even the 12-month size won't fit the boy next spring when he needs it. Broke my heart.

So, I decided to make his hats myself. He came home with a too-cute hospital hat that was crocheted, which ended up being the pattern for the second hat I made. (The first hat was a hit-or-miss conglomeration that I did while trying to figure out crocheting in the round. It's pretty ugly.) The third hat was the candy-corn hat he wore for Halloween and Thanksgiving. It turned out pretty good.

The fourth hat is the Acorn Hat. This is a pic from the pattern book of what it will look like, although I'll probably chicken out and not do the leaves, which require a picot stitch among other things. I meant to have this one done for Thanksgiving. Didn't happen. Oh well. I started on it last weekend, when we were cooped up by a nasty ice storm. I ran into a snag early this week, when the hat was turning out bigger than it should, and the book wasn't any help as far as adjusting the size. Which, as a book full of patterns for baby hats, is silly. Their advice was "make the hat too big, the kid'll grow into it." That's paraphrased, but you get the idea. Not helpful if you need a hat now.


After the last disc of the Good Neighbors DVDs, and most of a disc of Murphy Brown, I figured out how to fix the size issue. Math was involved, as well as lots of measuring, counting, and re-counting. Last night, I finished the light brown part of the hat, although I accidentally ended a row early. Hooray! Then I got out that Ugly Hat and started trying to figure out a stitch that the aforementioned book calls a Pineapple stitch, but which other sources call a Puff stitch. I think I've got it down, so later tonight I'll start working on the brim of the hat.

This is what the hat looks like at the moment. It's done in Lily's Sugar 'n' Cream yarn, 100% cotton. Not the acrylic I'm used to, but now that I'm accustomed to it, I kind of like it.