Update Nov. 30/2020: I’ve received quite a few com­ments and ques­tions regard­ing this pat­tern since it’s been pub­lished. It is not a begin­ner’s pat­tern. A few folks are fine with the writ­ten pat­tern and few pho­tos, and some folks request­ed more clar­i­fi­ca­tions. I apol­o­gize that I’m not a pro­fes­sion­al pat­tern design­er, my pat­terns have not been test­ed by oth­ers (though this one was repeat­ed­ly test­ed by me), I don’t have the time or know-how to make videos, I write pat­tern and instruc­tion to the best of my abil­i­ty in the clear­est way in my under­stand­ing and offer them for free. I do acknowl­edge that the pho­tos in this par­tic­u­lar pat­tern is admit­ted­ly lack­ing. I’m sor­ry about this, and if I do make anoth­er hat this win­ter, I will retake/replace the pho­tos. Work­ing and study­ing full-time cur­rent­ly means that at this point I don’t have the time nor capac­i­ty to respond exten­sive­ly to inquiries about how to make this hat. And a lot of times I can­not deci­pher what is going wrong in the ways that peo­ple describe them with­out see­ing the pieces and show­ing peo­ple what to do in per­son. So it means that at times it is sim­ply impos­si­ble for me to help peo­ple out. Going for­ward I will sup­port and clar­i­fy to the best of my abil­i­ty, but my respons­es may be delayed. I con­tem­plat­ed tak­ing this pat­tern down alto­geth­er because it sounds like it’s been caus­ing a lot of frus­tra­tion for peo­ple. But I thought I’d still leave it up for folks who find it use­ful. Thank you for visiting.   

I’ve made quite a few of these hats with cro­chet slip stitch. I like that they’re made slowly. 

I’m going to attempt to write the pat­tern for 3 dif­fer­ent yarn weights, so it’s ver­sa­tile for what­ev­er yarn you have on hand. They all make a hat that is 19″ around and 11″ in length (with brim unfold­ed). The stitch is quit stretchy so it will fit most I think. Here’s the worsted weight ver­sion on me.

And the worsted weight ver­sion on Mike (I have a small­er head than he does).

This is the sport weight version.

After test­ing the sport weight ver­sion with a left­over skein of acrylic yarn, I treat­ed myself to a skein of meri­no hand-dyed by Toron­to Yarn Hop co-orga­niz­er Emi­ly Gillies. She has a range of beau­ti­ful colours, and one skein of meri­no sport is per­fect for mak­ing one hat. 

I made the hat in blue spruce (pic­tured here, in first pho­to, and in process pho­tos below). The won­der­ful cus­tom veg­an tag is by Mil­lie Mar­ty Co. in Belleville, ON.

The hat can also be made more quick­ly in bulky yarn. I test­ed it while attend­ing the Warm­ing Toron­to event (an after­noon of hang­ing out with great folks at a local pub while mak­ing hats, scarfs and mit­tens for dis­tri­b­u­tion at emer­gency shel­ters in the win­ter). And this hat took about 3.5 hours to make.

Dimen­sion of all three ver­sions (sport, worsted, bulky): 19″ around, 11″ in length with brim unfolded. 

Sug­gest­ed yarn:

Sport — Meri­no Sport by Emi­ly Gillies, 1 skein, 282 yards

Worsted — Patons Clas­sic Wool Worsted, 2 skeins, 210 yards each

Bulky — Patons Shet­land Chunky, 2 skeins, 148 yards each

Pat­tern:

Instruc­tions are for sport weight (worsted and bulky in parenthesis).

The turn­ing ch does not count as a stitch.

The hats are made with slip stitch in black loop only (BLO), made side­ways with short rows for crown shap­ing, then seamed at the back with slip stitch (or sewing).

Cro­chet loose­ly, oth­er­wise it can be dif­fi­cult to get the hook into the slip stitches.

The hat can be made wider with one or two addi­tion­al short rows, and longer with addi­tion­al stitch­es in the begin­ning chain (makes for a wider brim).

Hooks: 
Sport — 5.5 mm
Worsted — 6.5 mm
Bulky — 10 mm

Row 1 (set­up row): ch 55 (40, 33), sl st in sec­ond ch from hook, sl st in each ch to end.

First set of short rows:

Row 2: ch 1, sl st in each st until there is one st left, skip remain­ing st, turn.

Row 3: ch 1, skip first st, sl st in each st to end. 

Repeat rows 2 and 3 six (four, three) more times.

Next row: ch 1, sl st in each st. At this point the piece will look like this.

Con­tin­ue on and sl st into each end of the short row and the space in between each row — 14 (10, 8) stitch­es across the short rows, then sl st in the remain­ing last stitch from row 2. The piece will now look like this.

Next row*: ch 1, sl st in each st to end.

Sec­ond set of short rows:

Row 1: ch 1, sl st in each st until there are 14 (10, 8) stitch­es left in the row, turn.

Row 2: ch 1, sl st in every st to end.

Row 3: ch 1, sl st in every st, then sl st in the next two st in the row marked with * (the row made before row 1 of the sec­ond set of short rows), turn.

Repeat rows 2 and 3 six (four, three) more times.

Next row: ch 1, sl st in every st to end.

Repeat first and sec­ond sets of short rows four more times. Don’t fas­ten off.

Cro­chet seam togeth­er right side out. Turn inside out. Weave yarn through each stitch in crown open­ing, cinch and tied off. Weave in ends. Turn right side out. Fold up brim. Â 

Hap­py crocheting!

 

Note: No incen­tive or com­mis­sion was received for this post. Sim­ply thought it was neat that I could find local arti­sans for both the yarn and cus­tom tags, and want to sup­port indie businesses :)

 

 

Real­ly enjoy­ing work­ing with slip stitch after mak­ing the lunar new year bam­boo. I like the slow­er pace of work­ing up the fab­ric with this stitch. And I fig­ured it would be a dense enough stitch to make a warm pair of mittens.

I used:

Worsted weight yarn

5.5 mm hook, and a small­er hook for weav­ing in ends

Tapes­try needle

The mit­ten is cro­cheted flat in one piece, fold­ed in half at the thumb, and seamed togeth­er from the tip of the thumb to the cuff edge. The pho­tos that fol­low will help make sense of the construction.

All sl st worked through back loop only (BLO).

Mit­ten mea­sures 9″ long, 4″ across palm, 3″ across wrist, 2″ length of thumb. I have rel­a­tive­ly small hands. The mit­tens can be made larg­er with addi­tion­al ch in the begin­ning and begin­ning ch of thumb, and addi­tion­al rows between rows 7 and 15 

Pat­tern:

Row 1: ch 23, sl st in sec­ond ch from hook, sl st in every ch to end, ch 2 (these two extra ch increase the length by 1 st). 

Row 2: sl st in 2nd ch from hook, sl st in every st BLO (back loop only) to end.

Row 3: ch 1 (does not count as a stitch), sl st in every st to end, ch 2.

Row 4: repeat row 2.

Row 5: repeat row 3.

Row 6: repeat row 2 (25 st altogether).

Row 7–15: ch 1, sl st in ever st BLO to end.  

Row 16: ch 1, sk first st, sl st in next st and every st to end (skip­ping the first st decreas­es 1 st).

Row 17: ch 1, sl st in every st to end.

Row 18: repeat row 16.

Row 19: repeat row 17.

Row 20: repeat row 16.

Row 21: repeat row 17 (22 st altogether). 

Row 22 (thumb begins): ch 1, sl st in the first 12 st, ch 7, sl st in sec­ond ch from hook, sl st in every ch BLO, sl st in next st on the side of mitten.

Thumb row 1: ch 1, sl st in every st on thumb to end (8 st on thumb)

Thumb row 2: ch 1, sl st in every st on thumb, sl st in next st on the side of mitten.

Repeat thumb rows 1 and 2 three more times. 

Con­tin­ue work­ing 10 rows on thumb, with­out attach­ing the end of the row to the side of the mitten.

Don’t fas­ten off. ch 13, sl st in sec­ond ch on hook, sl st in every ch, work 5 sl st across the base of the 10 rows of them that are not attached to the body of the mit­ten, work 5 sl st into the remain­ing 5 st in the side of the mit­ten. It will end up look­ing like this with the thumb fold­ed in half.

Repeat rows 2 to 21 of mit­ten. I found that it was eas­i­er to fold the thumb in half and pin it togeth­er as I worked along so I don’t get con­fused about which direc­tion I was going.

Fas­ten off. 

Cuff: Attach yarn to edge of cuff (direct­ly oppo­site of where last row end­ed), ch 11, sc in sec­ond ch from hook to end of ch, sl st in next stitch in the mit­ten that looks like a “v”, sl st in next st that looks like a “v”, sc BLO in every sc to end. The mit­ten here is pic­tured upside down with the first cuff row started. 

Con­tin­ue across the edge of the cuff. Here is a close up of the hook point­ing at the mid­dle of the stitch that looks like a “v”.

Attach yarn at the top of thumb. Weave yarn through all the stitch­es in top of thumb, cinch and tie off. Con­tin­ue seam­ing down the thumb and around the mit­ten to edge of cuff. Fas­ten off and weave in ends. 

The mit­tens are actu­al­ly fair­ly quick to work up. If you’re in/near Toron­to, con­sid­er join­ing us in the annu­al Warm­ing Toron­to event on Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 9. We spend an after­noon at at a pub down­town, knit, cro­chet, loom, have a pint, share snacks, chat­ter, and make hats, mitts, scarfs, cowls, etc. for dis­tri­b­u­tion at emer­gency shel­ters over the win­ter months. If one mit­ten is fin­ished at home first, one can def­i­nite­ly fin­ish the pair while hang­ing out for a few hours at the event.  

Stay warm! ❄

Today is the first day of Chi­nese new year. I made this bam­boo as a gift. Pret­ty hap­py with how it turned out. 

I thought bam­boo gen­er­al­ly sym­bol­izes good luck because it’s sold in every Chi­nese shop that sells plants. But with a quick search on the inter­net I learned that it also rep­re­sents renew­al (because of how quick­ly it grows), flexibility/strength, and longevi­ty — so, resilience, tenaciousness. 

“Tena­cious” is a word that I’d like to be described by. I don’t give up, or per­haps more truth­ful­ly I find it hard giv­ing up on things or peo­ple. Some would say that I’m not very good at let­ting go. Oth­er have said I’m stub­born. I’d like to think that I’m tena­cious. But I guess a way for­ward would be to cul­ti­vate flex­i­bil­i­ty, to renew or reori­ent my approach to how I’m tena­cious­ly con­nect­ing to some things. 

Any­way, I’d also say that the cro­chet slip stitch is a very bam­boo-like stitch, because it makes a firm fab­ric and there­fore tena­cious, it is how­ev­er also very flex­i­ble and stretch­able, almost like a knit­ted rib.

Here I’d like to share a loose­ly formed recipe for mak­ing the bam­boo. It’s kind of like free-formed cro­chet­ing, and how tall the plant is depends on the vase you’re using, but there are some basics to it, in case any­one would like to give it a try.

I used:

Caron Sim­ply Soft for the bam­boo stalk because of its sheen

Patons Astra for the yel­low rings and caps

Bernat Super Val­ue for the leaves

5.5 mm hook for the stalk

3.5 mm hook for the rings and caps

Tapes­try needle

Pop­si­cle sticks

Vase with pebbles

Stalks are made with back loop slip stitch (tuto­r­i­al).
With larg­er hook and lighter green, make a chain of desired length. I start­ed with 25 ch for the tallest, and 21 and 15 for the oth­er two. Then sl st BLO until piece is about 1.5″ wide. With­out fas­ten­ing off, sl st to join the seams togeth­er length­wise, mak­ing a long tube (the sl st seam will be on the out­side; the piece won’t be turned inside out after seam­ing). Fas­ten off. 

Rings are made around the stalks with sur­face slip stitch (tuto­r­i­al).
With small­er hook and yel­low, attach yarn where you want the ring to be at the back seam of the stalk. sl st in every stitch in the rows cross­wise (not just the stitch that appears as a “v”, but also the stitch in between the “v“s, so that the rings would pro­trude a bit). Fas­ten off after every ring made and pull the tails inside the stalk.

Caps are made with mag­ic ring (tuto­r­i­al) with 8 sc inside the ring, sl st to join with first sc, then fas­ten off and leave a long tail for sewing. Attach ring to the top of the stalk. 

Leaves may be a lit­tle tricky to explain… I regret not tak­ing progress pho­tos, very sor­ry. It took quite a bit of exper­i­men­ta­tion but I set­tled on this method and I think the results are quite live­ly look­ing. I hope this makes sense.

With small­er hook and dark­er green, ch 5 to 7 (this is the stem you’re sewing to the stalk, so its length depends on how you want to posi­tion the sprig of leaves on the bam­boo), dc in sec­ond ch from hook, *[ch 1, dc in ch just made] two or three times (depend­ing on how long you want the leaf to be), ch 2, sl st in 2nd ch from hook, sl st even­ly into the dc’s made ear­li­er (rough­ly 2 sl st per dc), sl st into the last ch of the stem*. At this point you can sl st down every ch of the stem then fas­ten off with tail for sewing, or you can make anoth­er leave by sl st down just a cou­ple of ch on the stem, then repeat * to *, and sl st down every ch of the stem, fas­ten off and leave a tail for sewing.

Sew the leaves to the stalks as desired.

Assem­bly:

The bam­boo stalks are sup­port­ed by pop­si­cle sticks on the inside. I used pop­si­cle sticks because it’s the only thing I can find to use at home. The width of it and the thick­ness of the cro­chet fab­ric takes up the inte­ri­or of the stalks so they don’t need more stuff­ing. I’ve had to con­nect a cou­ple of pop­si­cle sticks togeth­er for the taller two stalks by sim­ply over­lap­ping the ends of the sticks and glu­ing them togeth­er with white glue (hot glue would be a bet­ter choice). 

To deter­mine the lengths of pop­si­cle sticks you need, mea­sure how deeply you want the sticks to extend toward the base of the vase. I would want the sticks to actu­al­ly touch the base of the vase to make sure the sticks don’t wob­ble too eas­i­ly. Deter­mine the length of stick that is stick­ing out of the end of the stalk. It would be the same for all the stalks. Then mea­sure how tall each stick will need to be accord­ing to the length of the stalk. 

Pour a lay­er of peb­bles into the vase. I think small­er stone chips at least for the bot­tom lay­er are bet­ter for sta­bil­i­ty. Insert the stalks and arrange as desired, then pour on more peb­bles. I used dif­fer­ent glass ones on top for interest.

I lat­er added a red rib­bon around the stalk for gift-giv­ing that is not pic­tured because it blocked the bam­boo too much. But that also helps with the stability.

I did­n’t have any oth­er new year dec­o­ra­tions but thank­ful­ly there are emojis 😊🎋

Wish­ing every­one good health and hap­pi­ness in the year of the 🐀

A quick kimono style cardigan/shrug I pulled togeth­er to wear to my cous­in’s wed­ding this week­end :) Can’t come up with a more poet­ic name, but thought it looks pret­ty fab (if I do say so myself), so fab kimono it is :D

I had quite a bit of left­over Red Heart Unfor­get­table after mak­ing a scarf as a gift, so I bought anoth­er skein to make this. It’s cropped length because I was going to wear this long black dress and want­ed some con­trasts in style. But it’s easy to make longer if you’d like.

It’s cro­cheted from side to side, mak­ing both front and back pieces at the same time (so there’s no seam­ing in the mid­dle!). It is then fold­ed in half with just 2 short sides to seam at the end.

With autumn in the air I think this is a good lay­er­ing piece for wear­ing with sum­mer dress, t‑shirt, long sleeve shirt, or even but­toned up col­lared shirt.

Size: 

Length (shoul­der to low­er edge) — 17″

Around — 60″

Gauge:

16 st = 4.5″

I used:

3 skeins of Red Heart Unfor­get­table in Dragonfly

6.5 mm hook

Tapes­try needle

Small­er hook to weave in ends with

Pat­tern:

Left front/back:

Row 1: fdc 126 (see instruc­tion for foun­da­tion dou­ble cro­chet or fdc here)

To increase length, add 16 fdc for every 4.5″.

Row 2: ch 3 (counts as 1 dc), dc in next 5 dc, ch 2, sk 2 dc, *dc in next 6 dc, ch 2, sk 2 dc* repeat from * to * to end, dc in last 6 dc. 

Repeat row 2 until piece mea­sures 15″ (approx. 26 rows).

Next row: dc in every dc and 2 dc in every 2 ch sp. 

Split right front:

Next row: ch 3, dc in next 62 dc, fdc 63 and leave the remain­ing dc from pre­vi­ous row unworked.

Repeat row 2 of left front/back until piece mea­sures 15″ from split. 

Last row: dc in every dc and 2 dc in every 2 ch sp. Fas­ten off.

Assem­bly:

Fold piece in half so that the split is per­pen­dic­u­lar to the fold line. The fold line will be the shoulders. 

Sew side seam togeth­er by attach­ing yarn at the low­er edge, match­ing stitch­es on front and back pieces, sew togeth­er the next 30 dc. Fas­ten off. Repeat on the oth­er side seam. Weave in ends.

Wear and be fabulous!

 

So ear­li­er in the sum­mer I start­ed writ­ing a num­ber of cro­chet pat­terns that I was hop­ing to com­pile into an e‑book for sale. But the sum­mer is quick­ly going by, and I’ve had more free­lance work than expect­ed (which is a good thing). So then I real­ize I don’t real­is­ti­cal­ly have the capac­i­ty to pat­tern-test, cal­cu­late for dif­fer­ent sizes, etc. in order to make the pat­terns sell-able. So! I’m just going to con­tin­ue in this blog’s tra­di­tion in shar­ing pat­terns for free! :D It’s just that it will require some creative/math work if you’re not mak­ing the exact same size I’m wear­ing. But that also means lots of rooms for cus­tomiza­tion! This is the first of the few pat­terns I was work­ing on :)

I’ve always want­ed to try using cor­ner-to-cor­ner (c2c) cro­chet to make a top. My first idea was a cozy sweater with a dinosaur on it (I might still do that, we’ll see!), but all these heat waves we’ve been hav­ing are not con­ducive to cozy sweater-mak­ing, so I thought I’d try with a lace weight yarn for a breezy sum­mer top. 

The “tiles” made in c2c cro­chet reminds me of colour­ful pix­els, and Nin­ten­do video games of my child­hood, and sum­mer vaca­tion spent play­ing these games. So I called it “8‑bit”.

It can be worn both ways, either with the but­tons on the front, or on the back!

But­tons in the front makes it a cardi­gan, which can be paired with a spaghet­ti strap sum­mer dress!

The top is made in 4 pieces then sewn togeth­er. So you can also sew the v‑neck pieces togeth­er and place the but­tons on the round-neck side.

There is also some shoul­der shap­ing so that the cap sleeves will fol­low the shoul­ders rather than stick out. I thought that goes bet­ter with the gen­tle, del­i­cate feel of the lace weight Noro Taiyo.

Size: Bust 36″, arm­hole depth 7″, neck open­ing width 8″, total length 17″

Size is easy to adjust as you go with the c2c cro­chet stitch. There will be tips for adjust­ment through­out in ital­ics.

Gauge: 5x5 “tiles” = 2“x2”

Mate­r­i­al: 

3.5 mm hook, and the small­est hook you have for weav­ing in ends (mine is 1.5 mm)

Lace weight yarn about 1100 yards (I only used a bit of the sec­ond skein of Noro Taiyo Lace, one skein of this is over 900 yards), larg­er sizes will require more yarn

Sev­en 1/2″ buttons

Sewing nee­dle

Cor­ner-to-cor­ner cro­chet: this pat­tern requires famil­iar­i­ty with c2c cro­chet. If you’ve nev­er used this stitch before, no wor­ries! It’s quite easy and I find it rather med­i­ta­tive too. There are tons of very detailed tuto­ri­als out there. I learned from the pho­to tuto­r­i­al by One Dog Woof, take a look and use some scrap yarn to prac­tice, and I’m sure you’ll be ready in no time!

Charts:

 

 

Pattern/recipe:

V‑neck piece (make 2):

Start from the low­er left cor­ner, tile 1. Con­tin­ue through chart. Chart is read diag­o­nal­ly. Fol­low this excel­lent pho­to tuto­r­i­al by One Dog Woof if you need some help!

When there are 22 tiles on both edges, begin decreas­ing on the right edge by work­ing 1 sl st through each dc just made, and sl st in turn­ing ch, then ch 3, 3 dc in turn­ing ch, and con­tin­u­ing on.

For a larg­er gar­ment, con­tin­ue work­ing more tiles until desired width before decreas­ing. To deter­mine “desired width”, decide on fin­ished bust mea­sure­ment you’d like for the top. Say 40″. Divide it by 4, which is 10″. Then con­tin­ue c2c cro­chet until both edges are 10″ long before decreas­ing on the right edge. Note the num­ber of tiles you have at the bot­tom edge when you reach desired width. You will need to have the same num­ber of tiles on the bot­tom edge of each of the pieces.

Con­tin­ue increas­ing on the left edge but decreas­ing on the right edge until the left edge has 37 tiles. 

For a longer gar­ment, con­tin­ue increas­ing on the left edge until desired length. Note the num­ber of tiles when you reach desired length.

Shape shoul­der:

Begin decreas­ing on the left edge after the 37th tile (or desired length). Work one row towards the right edge, then one row towards the left edge. After cro­chet­ing the last tile on the top edge, work anoth­er tile on top of the pre­vi­ous row (I placed an addi­tion­al white tile on top of the brown tile of the pre­vi­ous row).

Then, as usu­al, turn, sl st in next 3 dc, sl st in turn­ing ch.

And con­tin­ue down the row.

Repeat the above steps for shoul­der shap­ing until shoul­der resem­bles the chart. 

(We’re of course not going to leave the shoul­ders jagged! We’ll fill in the cor­ners as we sew them togeth­er later.)

Then, decrease on both the top edge and the right edge until there are 9 tiles at top edge. End with work­ing loop on the top edge, don’t fas­ten off.

If you have increased in the bot­tom edge, increase the same num­ber of tiles at the top edge.

Neck edge:

*Work 3 dc in the cor­ner between first two tiles (where the low­er left cor­ner of the tile the work­ing loop is on meets the top right of the next tile), sl st in next turn­ing ch* repeat from * to * until end of row (the neck edge is shown in the next pho­to). Fas­ten off.

Round-neck piece (make 2):

Fol­low pattern/recipe until neck edge. (mak­ing the same increas­es if you’ve made them in the v‑neck pieces.)

*Work 3 dc in the cor­ner between first two tiles, sl st in next turn­ing ch* repeat from * to * 3 more times, ch 3, 3 dc in turn­ing ch.

Con­tin­ue in c2c stitch pat­tern, decreas­ing on both edges until there final tile is made, fas­ten off.

Sew halves together:

Sew togeth­er the cen­tre seams of the two round-neck pieces.

Seam­ing shoulders:

With wrong side fac­ing, attach yarn to low­er edge of shoul­der on one piece.

*Work 3 dc in cor­ner between the first two tiles, sl st in next turn­ing ch* repeat from * to * until end of row, don’t fas­ten off.

With right sides togeth­er, place shoul­der of v‑neck piece to the shoul­der of the round-neck piece just com­plet­ed, match­ing both pieces. With work­ing loop still attached to the round-neck piece, sl st in top of shoul­der of v‑neck piece.

*Work 3 dc in cor­ner between the first two tiles, sl st in next turn­ing ch* repeat from * to * until end of row, leave a long tail for sewing, fas­ten off. 

Sew entire shoul­ders togeth­er (the slopes we just worked on and the top edges). Repeat on the oth­er shoulder.

The rest of assembly:

With wrong sides fac­ing, sew side seams togeth­er. For my top I count­ed 17 tiles down from shoul­der for 7″ in arm­hole depth, then start­ed sewing to the bot­tom edge. If mak­ing a deep­er arm­hole, mea­sure the desired depth and count the num­ber of tiles with­in the measurement.

But­tons:

Sew but­tons on one edge where the turn­ing ch on the edge will form nat­ur­al but­ton holes, which is every 4th tile.

Weave in all the ends with a tiny hook, and we’re done! :D

Leave a com­ment if you have any ques­tions or need clar­i­fi­ca­tions! Hap­py crocheting!