What's In My Crochet Bag

This week: more chemo hats!!



There are three in this picture. I, like ten seconds ago, figured out of fix the light meter on my point and click and these are at least twelve hours past clicking. The gray and white one you've seen, the pink one is my first attempt. (And no, I won't curse a poor chemo patient with it. I'll make Maren wear it. Because in addition to being really badly done, it's freakin' tiny.)



This is just the purple one. A little better, but still awfully dark. It has a band. I wanted you to see the band. Mostly I like the rolled edge better because I find it sort of hippie chic, but some nice church ladies reminded me that perhaps everyone does not like hippie chic. I was all ready to put a flower on it, but it was too big for The Husband. Since he has a pretty large head, I figured it would probably end up as a guy's hat and I don't have any patterns for something manly to stick on the brim, so I'm leaving it.



This is the one I'm working on right now. I love variegated yarn like this that has long patches of the color. It's like stripes without having to switch colors which is easy but for some reason I hate. With worsted weight yarn, you really need to do this with two strands, hence the solid. I like it though, because it makes the stripe more subtle. I can't wait to show you the finished product.

Soooo.... I was totally planning on distracting you from the fact that what's in my crochet bag this week, is essentially the same thing as last week by showing you pictures of my beautiful new cat, but since she spent the weekend hiding under the hutch and I have to hide to get her to eat, we'll be showing those in a few days/weeks/months. Whenever she decides to be sociable. So, instead, I thought I'd talk about my favorite yarn.

I love boutique yarn, handmade yarn, hand dyed yarn, whatever. Go to Etsy and search for yarn and you'll see the kind of stuff that gets drool on my keyboard. Unfortunately, I'm typically broke. So, most of my yarn comes from chain fabric stores, or *gasp* Wal-Mart. It's hard to find the good stuff, but I thought I would share some cool, happy economical yarn and why I like it.

For starters, scroll back up to that nearly invisible purple hat. That is one of my favorites I've ever bought. (I feel the need to interject here that I never keep yarn labels so I have no clue what any of these are, what their color names are or where I got them.) I bought this purple to make the world's softest scarf. It was fabulous, but it's kinda fuzzy, so I had to try it on three or four different patterns before I found one that really worked. I love this because it's solid, right? It's a deep dark purple, but if you look close you'll find a really red-purple, a royal blue, a sage green and a golden yellow. Hiding in there. There is nothing solid about this yarn. It's a big faker.



I love this stuff, too. I love this stuff so much, I may never make anything from it. I bought it for a specific project that had very, very bad instructions and was a train wreck. I'm not sure I'll ever find anything else worthy of it. I think this one is Lion something something. I like the texture. It's really thick yarn, which is always fun, but it's also got that twisty texture. It reminds me of the yarn-y stuff that we wore in our pigtails in the '80's.



I got this one on accident. I was looking for something in greens and browns for a beautiful green eyed girl and I got this. It was called Camo, but I figured that was like being called Pink Lemonade. You're not literally buying pink lemonade. This crochets up exactly like camo, though. I need a second skein of this because I want to make some chemo hats from it for the guys. I might make one with a hunter's orange flower on it, though, for the outdoorsy girls.



As you can tell, I'm a fan of the variegated. These are two of my favorites. The blue is the perfect example of something so mellow, so calm, you want to wallpaper with it. I love how this looks like ice, but somehow isn't cold, just deliciously cool. The rainbow (forgive the blurriness, this was after midnight, folks) is a symptom of never growing up. I have never gotten over my 16 year old desire to crochet something that looks like a rainbow. Although Brynna pointed out this has no purple, so it's not really a rainbow. I am going to get a skein of just purple and do a hat out of this, and then I'm going to do another one for Brynna. I'm old enough that rainbow berets would just look silly on me, but that's no reason not to stick one on my kid.



I don't know how well you can tell, but these are sparkly. I kinda went crazy for these a few years ago. Most cheap, sparkly yarn is kinda scratchy, but this is baby stuff and it's as soft as any other baby yarn I've ever bought. So, I made a bunch of baby afghans as gifts out of this. Both of those variegated have yellow, so I'm left with like three skeins of this yellow. I will never use all of that yellow, but I love the white, yellow and lavender.



I totally saved the best for last. I know this looks like plain, old ordinary pink yarn, but when it's all worked up, it feels and looks like terrycloth. Really, like a nice fuzzy towel. I made a hat for Maren out of it this past winter. It was my third project, and I am regretfully, almost out. This ball is tiny. I think I'm going to use the rest for a washcloth. Just because there is nothing else I could make out of an amount this tiny. A single bootie maybe.

So, I know that was wicked long, but trust me, it was abbreviated. There are at least ten more balls of yarn in that bag and they are just the leftovers. I truly love yarn and that is what I intend to do in my dotty old age, buy good yarn and make interesting things out of it. Hopefully by then, I'll never again have to stand in the tiny short yarn aisle at Wal-Mart trying to figure out if there are any two skeins here that coordinate.