Tunisian Crochet cats… I mean hats.

Last week I told your about my habit of starting new projects while I’m at my busiest and my failed attempt at knitting socks. Well this week I’ll show you what the other projects I mentioned were. Basically, hats.

Tunisian crochet in the round hats because that has always seemed like a brilliant idea to me so I thought id give it a go.

I’ve wanted to do it for about a year now but at first I didn’t have the yarn then a couple of months ago I bought the yarn (two balls of DK becuase you need two if your doing tunisian in the round) but wasn’t in the mood to crochet. And now that I’m mega busy, oh look, I’m in the mood to crochet!

Now I’m going to detour here and just tell you that Tunisian crochet it my favourite. It’s as soft as knitting is (my main dislike of normal crochet is that it’s not soft enough) but still done with one hook like crochet. To do it in the round you use a double ended Tunisian crochet hook like these…..

I’ve put them next to a regular hook so you can get a better idea if the size. (you can do it with circular hooks. You know those interchange sets of crochet ones you can get… But they’re a lot more expensive and for small things like hats these knew are much easier to use.)

I made an attempt at a hat last year, but seeing as I’ve never made a hat before and was making the pattern up as I went I got the sizing a little wrong…. It looks more like a prayer cap than a hat. I started decreasing way too early. It doesn’t even reach my ears!

With that in mind, I decided to try a cat ear hat first this time instead of having to worry about decreasing. That’s basically just a rectangle hat and then seam the ears so their even. Ta da!

I think I ended up doing a row or two too much but it fits and it’s comfy and I like it. although I need to do a tighter row of single crochet on the bottom to help stop the curl. Try one: Success!

I also realised that because of the way Tunisian crochet in the round works, (ie you need to use two balls of yarn; one for the forward pass and one for the backward part,) I could use two different colours of yarn and it would make the inside of the hat a different colour to the outside which sounded fun. I also decided to add a brim in regular camel stitch crochet as that’s very stretchy and Tunisian crochet isn’t.

I went through my stash looking for some DK in another colour and the only ones I had with enough yarn were a browny yellow, a dirty pink and a off white. Now there’s a reason those first two have never been used. They aren’t exactly nice colours. And the white would go with the yarn I had.

So off I go making a brim in camel stitch only to realise after an hour that I’d managed to twist the starting chain and it was twisted. So I had to start all over again. Argghh! I’m not sure how I managed to crochet for so long without realising.

But on my second go I was more careful. And was able to get on to the Tunisian crochet.

I’d done some research on knitted hats and the general consensus was to stitch about eight inches from your brim before starting to decrease so that’s what I did.

And here it is:

Taking photos of a hat is rather difficult!

The unfortunate thing about using the white is that it’s made this very nice yarn look a lot more like 80’s snow suit. But oh well. Also I think I maybe did a few to many rows as its a little big looonng. I’m not sure exactly as I’ve never made hats so don’t really have anything to compare it to.

I’m going to be buying some more yarn to give this a few more goes, but I actually like the cat ear one more so maybe another one of those too…. Maybe in 4ply as I think with the thickness of the Tunisian crochet it could do with being a little thinner. And I might try to make some Tunisian crochet wrist warmers in the round too…. Oh dear, even more projects!

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So any hat knitter or crocheters out there – Is there an average amount you would stitch for an adult hat before decreasing? I might just try a more fitted hat next time rather than a beanie type.

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