A Week Later...

and I made another thing!

Okay, it's actually been almost a year since I'd set the crochet hooks down. Once I completed Emily's Moebius Scarflet, finished in February or March, but not in time for her to need it, I didn't mail hers to her until this Christmas. So in the meantime, I packed all of the handicrafts away for colder weather.  Then I recently picked it all back up, finished

the wrist gauntlets

that I had started with the small remainder of InnerHippie's yarn (but had kept connected to each other, making them impossible to actually wear), started a new something-or-other that turned into

a headband,

using more of Emily's yarn, and then pining for a bulky yarn like I'd had with

my own, original Moebius Scarflet,

but doing nothing about that yearning.

Then, last weekend, millions of men, women, and children marched in the #WomensMarch, and large numbers of them were wearing "(Grab 'em by the) Pussy Hats", mostly in pink, and ALL hand-knitted or -crocheted by the wearers or by crafters who couldn't physically march but could contribute warm headgear. I marched, but without the hat, because I hadn't gotten around to figuring out how to make one, or buying the appropriate yarn, or anything else.

See, prior to the march, all of my crocheting was single straight lines, back-and-forth, until I was ready to connect the thing to itself. Well, except for the gauntlets, which were essentially tubes, straight lines of stitches that spiraled until I was out of yarn. But really, I had no idea how to make anything that wasn't a straight line, and I didn't feel I had time to learn a new stitch. So I marched without any headgear.

However, upon my arrival at the subway station beneath the starting point of the march, I commented on one hat in particular, and indicated that I only knew straight-line crocheting. The wearer told me that you just stitch a big rectangle, fold it in half, and stitch the sides. The "corners" become "ears" once you put the thing on your head! Voilá! ... too bad I didn't know that two weeks ago. Hrmmm...

So. The march itself was super-energizing, even with the 1.5+ hours of standing still, waiting. I got home from it, blogged, and then found time to make a dummy hat with more of Emily's yarn, break the hook I was working with (I'd always used plastic, rather than metal hooks, and the finer the yarn, the smaller the hook, meaning the "weaker" the hook. I've broken two plastic crochet hooks in my time doing it; probably the same size. Thankfully, Jo-Ann has allowed me to replace the full sets each time). I completed my dummy purple hat (without "finishing" the stitches), tried it on my head, liked how it looked, for the most part, but ended up taking it apart (because an inspired dream gave me a better plan than "folded rectangle"). The purple-dummy-hat-rectangle is currently another Work-In-Progress, a soonish scarflike something.

When I returned the broken hook, I "upgraded" to a metal set. They are not as comfortable to work with, in my hands, so I'm glad that while I was at it, I also picked up a coupla skeins of really bulky "baby" yarn. This stuff is SO soft! And with it being "bulky", I get to use my larger (stronger) plastic hooks.

So here we are,

one completed "pussy hat" 

and one just started, in a smaller size, just in case any of my nieces would like to wear a soft pinkish kitty on her head!

Who wants one? I also have the super-soft bulky yarn in purple (of course, DUH!)