the best crochet hat

in December, as part of my end-of-semester/birthday/holiday celebrations, I picked up a simple drop spindle and two 4-ounce packets of Kraemer Mauch roving in two colors-- "pomegranate" and "oregano"-- from my local yarn shop (Fiber Creek).

and then I used all the youtube videos and blog posts to figure out how to turn it into yarn. I'm still learning, practicing, and enjoying the simplicity and beauty of the whole process. add twist to bits of fiber, and it becomes something else.

something differently usable.

and now this is what I'm using that pomegranate pink yarn for. a lovely crochet hat.

mid-June in Arizona is not a time one needs a hat, but that's okay. what else does one do with only 140 yards of handspun pink yarn?

this is the hat pattern I love, from a blog called Yarning for Sanity. I make mine less slouchy than the photos there show, and it fits my head and hair and face just delightfully. I have made several hats from this pattern and at least two (one red, one grey, and maybe a blue one too?) are currently kicking around in our coat closet. 

I love the hat this pattern makes, and I simply love the pattern itself (though on this work-through I have made a few adjustments that make the V-puff stitches line up more thoroughly from beginning to end). this crochet pattern ultimately writes itself into the object you're making as you make it. once you're five rows in, you don't need the words anymore-- the stitches become readable in themselves. it's easy enough to remember what goes where at which intervals. otherwise, just a few quick references to check row counts is really all you need. lovely.

the idea of reading objects is very cool. reading craft projects is especially cool-- at the very least it makes it easier to know what you're crafting and whether it's coming out as it should.

and with regard to others' knitted objects, in if a given piece of knitting is legible enough and a given person is literate enough in knitting stitches, that's magic. inspiration! reverse engineering! creative remixology and all that.

is it silly to think of reading physical crafted objects as a sort of craft forensics? taking a static scene and seeing through it into the preceding processes? all objects, after all, can be considered slow events. we can look at an object, or a piece of content, or a work of art, as just that... or we can try to look through it and see how it came to be.