By Erika Kwee, 18, reporting from Houston, TX, on a cool crochet project
To begin with, let me say that I am not a hat person. I hate wearing them. They tend to squash my bangs awkwardly across my face, or they make my head itchy, or they just poof out weirdly... It's good that I go to school in Texas, where it's not ever really THAT cold.
But. Over winter break, I decided that I needed a new knitting/crochet project. Besides, I was home in northern California on a damp, dreary Eskimo-hood kind of day and tired of scarves. I wanted a quick, cute project—so I ran an Internet search and came across this free pattern for the "Pretty Puffs Slouchy Hat" on a blog called Crafty Pants!
Lucky me—sometimes you can't tell by looking with these crochet patterns—but this one was quite easy, even with my rusty crocheting skills.
If you are new to crocheting, I highly suggest Leisure Arts' 10 20 30 Minutes to Learn to Crochet book for clear and easy instructions. However, if you don't feel like spending the money (especially for the less desirable granny-aged projects, i.e., the coasters and afghans found in the second half of the book), you can always do a quick search for beginner instructional websites and YouTube videos; there are many.
The night after I found the pattern, I began the hat while watching Love, Actually with my family. It took me the entire movie, plus about an hour, to finish the hat—a grand total of approximately three hours. I used only a little more than half a 100g skein of worsted weight yarn. Quite the satisfying project!
I ended up giving it to my friend Tracy (that's her pictured), because I thought it would go well with her hair and she goes to Tahoe for snow stuff a lot—many apres-ski occasions to keep her head warm. And it's pretty non-frumpy and maybe even fashionable(!) bit of handiwork if I do say so myself...