Crocheted and Knitted Cloche Hats

Lately I've been working on some crocheted cloche hats. I had previously made a knit one using Deborah Norville Serenity Chunky Weight Yarn in Pink Candy. It was my first knitted hat. I took the patter for the Jayne Hat from the show Firefly and instead of adding the earflaps, I added a little ruffle along the bottom edge of the hat. I also added a three tier Irish Rose with a wooden button sewn in as the center of the flower. I thought it turned out pretty cute, especially for my first knitted hat. Since I had some yarn left over, I also made a matching neck warmer / collar. Here are pictures of both of those.

In the last two weeks or so I've been trying my hand at a crocheted version of a cloche style sun bonnet. I was working using a child's pattern and sized it up for an adult. The first one that I made turned out HUGE! It was really big even for my large noggin, and I was using a size F needle. Take a look if you don't believe me ...

See, I told you ... HUGE! It's still usable as a sunbonnet, but it wasn't quite the sophisticated yet simple 1920s/1930s look that I was going for.  So, for the second one, I moved down to an E size needle and changed from the Red Heart Sport yarn to the Caron Simply Soft Eco yarn in Soft Taupe. This worked out much much better. I made a similar Irish Rose to accent this hat as well just to add a little feminine touch.  Here's a picture of it. Way better than the first try. I will definitely stick with this yarn and size hook for future hats of this style

What I'm Hoping to do Here

My friends and I do a ton of crafting and crafty things. Knitting, crochet, quilting, costuming, corsetry, canning, cooking, gardening) ... you name it, one of us or all of us does it. We each might share a project here or there on sites like Ravelry, Facebook, and LiveJournal, but I thought it would be fun to have a place to share and document my crafty endeavors all in one place. 

Most recently I've been absorbed with wedding items like wedding favors, handfasting cords, and designing wedding attire. If you stick around for long on here as a reader, I'm sure you'll see and here about more of these than you want to. I'll try not to inundate you with too much wedding stuff though.

Around the holidays, you're likely to see a lot of birthday and Christmas/Yule gifts that I've made for people as well as holiday themed home decorations, clothing, and purses. Some of my favorite items that I've made during the holidays recently were the aprons that I made for my aunts, cousins, and grandmother for Christmas and the monster themed stockings that I was quite enamored with this past year.

During the summer you're likely to see more projects centered around Renaissance Festival costuming. We go to several different faires in the Midwest and enjoy quite a few costuming themes. I've made wench, pirate, nun, and woodsmen costumes so far, and I have several more in different levels of development. You'll quickly discover that we pounce on any reason to dress up and go out and about with friends. When we aren't doing that we enjoy gardening and subsequently canning what we grow. I consider preserving to be a home craft or art, so I'm likely to include recipes and processes for this as well here.

Inbetween those key times of year, I satisfy my crafting urge with all sorts of small projects either sewing, crocheting, knitting, or whatever else catches my attention. I hope you enjoy browsing through my projects as I post them. I'd love to hear what you think and hear about what your own crafting experiences are. When available I'll post tutorials and/or patterns for how to make what I've written about.