My husband and I spent last weekend coming down with and recovering from a head cold respectively. In other words, we sat around in our pajamas doing nothing, randomly whining about how we feel or comparing snot. Oh, the joys of marriage. . .
The upside for me is that I was on the road to recovery and actually had unfogged enough to do something - crochet. Since I was sick, I decided to focus on crocheting something for myself. It's so hard to think of others when you don't feel well.
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| Fingerless gloves with mystery yarn |
My first project was a pattern for fingerless gloves from
The Chicks with Sticks Guide to Crochet by Nancy Queen and Mary Ellen O'Connell. Since this is an item that actually has to fit, I tried to pay attention to gauge. I have to be honest and say that I have never crotched a swatch like the books always recommend. Usually, I'm just making a shawl - it's either long and wide enough or it's not. I haven't gotten into any of the complicated patterns with different motifs, so I'm sure at some point I will be forced to really figure out this gauge thing until then . . .I used some fuzzy blue yarn that came from the donation pile at church (don't worry, I didn't use it all on myself). So, being mystery yarn, the gauge didn't exactly come out as specified in the pattern. I tried changing to a smaller hook twice to no avail, so I went with the original hook size. Everything turned out A-OK in my book.
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| Flapper Hat Model with cute curly hair |
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| My flapper hat attempt |
Now, the hat is another story. I then attempted to crochet this lovely flapper style hat with some
Caron Simply Soft that my mom gave me. Again, I could not for the life of me, get the gauge to come out correctly. Also again, it is possibly because I didn't use the
exact yarn called for in the pattern. What is a cheap crotcher to do? So, needless to say the hat did not come out quite as cute as the picture (hence the rubber ball as a model head, and not mine). Or maybe it was some weird hope that if I made this hat and wore it on my head, I would suddenly have cute curly hair and when that didn't happen I was disappointed in that hat? Nah, I would never have an irrational thought like that!
4 comments:
Here is the hat I made for me last winter. http://cherishthesedays.blogspot.com/2010/12/one-down-one-to-go.html I very rarely (read: possibly never) use the yarn called for. But I do try to use the correct weight of yarn.
Oh, and technically this isn't the hat I made for me. This one I gave away. The one I made for me was the same yarns but in the opposite places (trade around the 2 blue colors).
I have a hat like that, but I cheated and bought that one at Wal-Mart. :) I thought I had yarn that was similar in weight to what was called for, but oh well - the hat and gloves do fit.
I never make gauge swatches either. Someday I know this is going to come back to get me, but for now - like you - I mostly make scarves and things that don't have to fit exactly. Your fingerless gloves are fabulous! Have you tried blocking the hat? Sometimes it does wonders to cover mistakes and can help you get something into a closer approximation of the correct shape.
- Leigh
Leigh - Thanks for the suggestion and validation of my non-gauge practices. I may need a lesson in blocking. I've always skipped over that part in the how-to books since I haven't tried patterns that required it.
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