Katielee.co.uk

Screenwriter and crafty type

Yet another baby tomato hat

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I don’t really see the point in having babies unless you dress them up in ridiculous clothes for your own amusement. Luckily, there have been plenty of powerless babes appearing in my life recently, and I’ve taken full advantage of their helplessness by plopping a tomato hat on their innocent noggins as soon as they hit the air.

My latest victim is my nephew, George, who’s shown his gratitude to his favourite aunt by instantly growing too large for his. What he doesn’t know, however, is that I can knock these things up at a hell of a rate of knots, and each time he outgrows a hat, another one will soon appear to replace it.

It’s important that these youngsters know who’s boss.

Here’s a picture of him pretending he doesn’t care that he looks ludicrous.

Orange Crochet Baby Hat. Almost as good as tomato hats

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I never got a photo of the two cute little tomato hats I made a while ago. They were both used, but neither set of proud parents managed to get a photo of his be-hatted sprog before it grew out of the tomato hat. “Useless” is the word that springs to mind.

The hats seemed to have gone down well, especially with Al’s brother, who asked me to make a bigger hat for little Maya, but requested that I make it an orange instead.

Thanks to the lovely Craftster forum people, I came up with the bright idea of making the hat using the orange peel stitch that Jan Eaton uses in her 200 Crochet Blocks book.

I think it came out pretty well – though I ended up over-estimating the size and produced something that almost fits me (as you can see in the pic). However, Maya’s growing like a fast-growing thing, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it fits her soon. Though, no doubt, now she can speak she may have something to say about being made to wear a comedy hat.

I learned a useful lesson while making this hat, which I can’t believe I hadn’t learned earlier: never iron acrylic wool. It goes floppy and lifeless and there’s no getting it back once you’ve killed it.

The hat’s still wearable – it’s just a bit limp.

Petrol Crochet Hat from Japan and Amigurumi heaven!

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I went to Japan a few weeks ago. It was a long trip with a lot of work and very little free time. But on the final day we got 2 hours to do what we wanted to on the streets of Tokyo. What did I do? I ran to the Tokyu Hands department store (via Kiddieland to pick up some Totoro toys) to buy some crochet books of course!

As we all know, the Japanese make excellent crochet patterns and the books they have are just so much better than the ones I can get in the UK. They just seem so much more creative – and cute – which is why I was determined to get some books before I went back. I ended up having about 10 minutes to decide which books to get, but thanks to my pidgin Japanese (“Sumimasen, Amigurumi?”) I managed to find what I was after.

I got this absolutely lovely amigurumi book from Ondori, which contains a lot of patterns that are already available online for free (courtesy of some helpful translators). But it was only 280 yen and it seemed only right to hand over that small sum for the such great patterns. Can’t wait to make some of the kawaiiii toys.

I also got this book from the Let’s Knit series from Tezukuritown (click on the second button down and you can check out some of the patterns it includes). And the first thing I did when I got home was to sit and make this hat. It was too big when I made it the first time so I did it again with a smaller hook. Then it was too small, so I split the difference and did it again. But it was too small again. So I decided to go back to the original size and just do it tighter. But it was still too small. Just what kind of dark forces were at play here?

It was only then that I went back to the original hat (thankfully, I hadn’t unpicked it) and realised that I’d put in two extra rows by mistake. After taking those out I was left with a hat that was the right size. I try not to think about the 4 evenings I wasted doing all those retries… It’s best not to dwell on the lost hours… 🙁

But the fact that I did keep trying it is testament to the simplicity of the pattern – super quick to crochet and drawn in that excellent Japanese stitch diagram. So much easier than a written pattern – why don’t we use them?! I love this hat – and after last year’s hat making debacles, I think I deserve to have one success at last!

The two books together came to around £6 I think! Unbelievably cheap – and so much nicer than most of the stuff we have.

Three quick things

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Forgot to say! The hat went down a treat – both mother and baby were delighted. Or at least I think Mae was delighted, though it may just been a touch of wind (that’s the baby I’m talking about, not the mother – no idea how her wind was).

And on another note, just wanted to say that the paltry number of updates on this blog is no reflection of how much I’ve been crocheting but has more to do with the amount of time I already spend on a computer. After 10 hours sat at my desk staring at the web and writing stuff, I quite often run out of steam when it comes to my personal blogs. But I’ve got some bits to stick up soon, so I will have to be a bit more committed to Good Hooking.

And finally, we’re (Shiny Media) hoping to launch a crafts blog soon. If you want to write for it, or know anyone who might like to contribute, let me know! You can email me on editor[AT]shinyshiny.tv . And if I take ages to respond, please don’t take it personally – I’m all over the place these days and so is my brain.

Crochet Baby Hat

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So this is my latest Louisa Calder work of art. Looking at the ridiculous pixie hats, I thought to myself “just who in their right mind would be willing to step out sporting one of these ludicrous hats in public?” and then the answer came to me “a small child without the ability to protest”. Since my friend is just about to pop out a new recruit for the sisterhood (ie, she’s going to have a baby girl), I thought I’d make little Mae a hat that would be the cause of future embarrassment for her. Her head will hopefully be about the right size by the time the weather requires head attire (if my calculations are correct).

I haven’t quite finished it off yet – I’m going to make it yet more foolish looking by adding some much needed ear flaps – but I’m pretty pleased with it so far, especially as the design was all created freestyle, based roughly on Louisa’s basic hat design with a few modifications from me.

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