Happy New Year! I was asked by a co-worker to make a "Kevin" minion hat (two eyes, one chunk of hair standing up in the middle). Since I had previously made so many, and got to the point I could whip them out fairly quickly, I thought it was no big deal so I agreed. Turns out, it was a big deal. I couldn't remember how to make them, couldn't find the pattern, once I found it and made it, it wasn't the right size, I couldn't remember how I altered the pattern to make it work, and the problems seemed to go on and on.
The first batch of these hats I made weren't minion hats, they were hats in whatever color yarn I had that I donated to a homeless shelter as part of a church service project. I didn't care what size the hats turned out because people are all sizes and children need hats too, but it gave me the opportunity to experiment risk free with sizing, which also required no obligation to store the sizing details in my long term memory. I also have a tendency to inadvertently add stitches as I go, so some of the best sized hats ended up that way on accident. A situation not easy to duplicate. After several variations of undoing several rounds of work, and sometimes starting over completely, I probably made the equivalent of four or five hats to produce this finished product...
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| Kevin! |
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| It looks a little goofy standing up by itself not being on a head. |
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| It's very telling of this project that my name tag ended up crooked in the end :). |
More than make a post about this particular hat, I wanted to write a post that included some tips so that I don't have to start from scratch again if I ever want to make another hat.
Tips:
- For starters, click here for the pattern.
- Round 1 says "work 10 sc in ring" but I prefer more. For this hat, I did 12 which was acceptable, but I think I would have actually liked one or two more. By doing 12 in the first round I ended up with 36 sc that I was working around in a circle (I'm not sure if there was supposed to be 35 and I added an extra stitch, or 37 and I dropped one) but in any case I was working with 36 for most of the hat (somewhere toward the end I finished with 38).
- I used the gold #5 crochet hook. I don't know what I used before, probably the pink one (not sure the number), but this is the first time I really noticed the different results from the size of hook. The gold hook has bigger stitches, so fewer rows are required for a full hat (which was nice since I made it so many times), but I actually prefer the look of the pink hook better. The stitches are tighter and the hats feel thicker.
- My favorite hat has 42 stitches at the end (keeping in mind 42 stitches with the pink hook, not the gold one). This is probably too big for most people because it doesn't have the snug fit associated with beanies. I really like the loose comfortable fit though because it covers my ears and doesn't slide up with movement. Future hats should err on the side of bigger.
- Put the black band for the goggles higher than you think you'll need. Maybe rows 9 or 10 instead of 13 (these are pink hook estimates).
That's it for now and should help me the next time I do this project. You will be seeing more crochet from me this year as I've set a goal to make blankets for all of the nieces and nephews for their birthdays (20 total). Some of them already have blankets that I made for them as babies, so those kids might get something else, but I'm determined to have this be a home made year, so we'll see. I also have a portrait in progress so stay tuned for lots more posts. The first birthday is this Friday and the blanket is already done!
