Experimenting - peaked hat with novelty yarn embellishments.

After working up the pixie hat, there were a few things I wanted to try out.  Digging around my stash, I found a large skein of worsted weight yarn that would be more than enough for another hat.

This time, I went with a 5.50mm hook and worked in a spiral.  I still worked with a base 6, doing 2 sc, 2 hdc and 2 dc into the magic ring.  After that, I worked in dc stitches until near the end.

Like the pixie hat, I added 3 stitches to each increase round, but kept 2 rounds without any increases in between each increase round.  Using a stitch marker to keep track of the rounds was a necessity.  I also staggered where the increases were worked in the rounds.  The result was a very even, cone shaped peak.



In this back view, you can see where some of the increase rounds were done, as there is a bit of  a "step" visible.



The downside of working in only one stitch is that it gets very boring.  So when I got it to head width and started working only rows without increases, I started throwing in some cables by doing front post triple crochet for three rounds.

The next part is completely covered by the novelty yarn.  I wanted to make a different sort of brim.  After doing a round in just dc after the cables, I worked an increase round in sc, then a couple more rounds of sc without any increases.  For the last round, I flipped this "brim" up and worked the sc into the body of near the cable stitches.  This gave it a sort of roll for a brim.

I had intended to stop there, but it looked really unfinished.  I dug around my stash and found a novelty yarn with blues in it and decided to figure something out.  It's a very thin yarn, so I used a much smaller hook (a 3.50mm, I think) and did several rounds of sc around the posts of the stitches on the outside of the rolled brim until it was completely covered.  The "pom pom" at the tip is actually a bunch of chain loops in alternating sizes.

When my daughter first tried it on and did this...



... I had sudden images of the same hat made with bright red yarn for the body and white fun fur or eyelash yarn for the embellishment for a crocheted Santa hat!  A good thing to try with felting yarn, perhaps.

I think the colours on this one definitely challenged the pixie hat for the fugliest hat I've ever made.  LOL

As I was working the cone shaped peak, it occurred to me that, with some minor adjustments, it would make a great Thanksgiving cornucopia.  In basket weave stitch, of course.

After this hat, I got really silly.  More on that in my next post!