DIY Dobby Hat

Halloween is quite over and the New Year is upon us, but I feel like it's important to document my great crocheting moment! See, I don't know how to crochet. As a young teenager, I learned how to do a basic chain stitch of some kind at a church activity once . . . and that's about all. Still for some reason, I had it in my head that we were going to be Harry Potter themed for Halloween as a family, and I wanted to make SourPatch a Dobby hat.

Actually, I know exactly what the reason was: my mom. Anyone who has briefly perused the blog can tell she's a talented sewer, and she always made our Halloween costumes. So that's part of my Halloween paradigm, I guess.

Yet since I was very pregnant and not a talented sewer, I thought that making the hat fulfilled my mom requirement for the year. First, I decided to learn how to crochet. There's some amazing online classes that are completely free!

They also take time. So I then decided not to learn how to crochet and to dive in anyhow. Thus begins my tutorial of "How to Make a Child Dobby Hat for Those Who Don't Know How to Crochet."

First step? This marvelous youtube video. Thank you, "Crochet Hooks You"! May it stay up forever. I suppose any beanie tutorial would do, but this wonderful woman goes step by step by step (in a fabulous accent, I might add), so I could learn how to crochet while making the hat. Since I knew Patches has a big head, I did the tutorial for 4 to 8 year olds despite the fact that he isn't 3 yet. It fits great.

So, after buying the yarn and hook recommended in her video, I crocheted the beanie following her instructions, rewinding whenever I got confused. I can't now remember if she uses the U.S. names for stitches or the U.K. names (why oh why do we have two different naming systems? Sad day.)

Once I completed the beanie, I used this wonderful free pattern from Knot Your Nana's Crochet on how to make the ears. Like I said, I learned enough from the video tutorial to follow the written instructions, googling "magic rings" and "sc2tog" whenever I didn't know what to do.

Then, after looking for a few minutes on how to sew the ears on... I just winged it.

I think the final result was pretty adorable.

Crochet an Infant Football Helmet Hat

Like most alumnae, I'm proud of where I got my undergraduate degree! I bleed blue; go BYU cougars! Elin and her hubby, too, have such a pride, especially in our football team. This is loyal of them, since our football team is usually pretty ho-hum. Still, they religiously watch the games, all decked out in BYU apparel.

Elin and I are living parallel pregnancies, and I thought it would be perfect to crochet her little bun in the oven a BYU football helmet hat. There were, of course, a few barriers to this:

1.  I really don't know how to crochet. I'd only made one thing: SourPatch's Halloween Dobby hat.
2. There's no tutorial specific to such a helmet. 
3. I really don't know how to crochet.

Still, despite these difficulties, I forged ahead, and here's the result:

I decided to work off of this free pattern from Breezybot. So cute, and I love it when talented people generously post their patterns for free. I do wish I'd read some of the comments posted below before I began, however. Several people had trouble getting the stitch count to add up. So did I. I pulled out and re-crocheted one of the rows multiple times before giving up and continuing on with an altered stitch count from the pattern. Still, it worked out! Also, I used a larger hook than recommended, hoping the hat would come out on the larger side. No such luck; this is definitely a newborn size. This is probably fine for a baby born in Texas; he won't have very many occasions to wear warm hats after he outgrows it.

I then found a tutorial to make an oval and another to make the letter "Y." I had to cut back on the stitch count of the "Y" to make it small enough for the hat. I carefully sewed my appliques (and the button in the tutorial) onto the hat with a yarn needle. I was pleased with how it turned out, and now am just excited to see it on my nephew!