Playing in hats
Dec. 23rd, 2011 10:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidI've gotten a bunch of cheap variegated blue yarn (by the pound, with unspecified name and fiber content; I'm assuming it's 100% acrylic) at one of the craft stores, thick enough to work up reasonably quickly, which lets me feel the glow of a finished hat that much more frequently. It's not 'exciting' yarn, but it has let me play with shape, prototyping without taking too much time.
I started with a basic sort of brimmed hat, old jeans of summer, the only new part of it being the row of double crochet, tall enough to allow threading a white ribbon through.
For some reason, I started thinking about how to incorporate the waviness of too many stitches in a slightly different way, and ended up gathering the extra fabric into holes on the top in blue (not black) holes. It felt like there were possibilities there that weren't yet realized, though I do think I could make it more entertaining by having sprays of fiber optics coming out of the holes, or by stuffing some gloves and having hands coming out (possibly painted in some fantastical or creepy way).
I got a second one-pound (four-skein) bag, and decided that I could make something involving curls again. I'd made hats with one curving spiral; this time I tried four, and ones that were more raised off the main surface, calling it curved ribs. In some ways I'd've preferred the ribs to have been in a contrasting color, but having it in the same lightly variegated blue emphasizes how it's all made in one piece (read: I was lazy, and didn't have a similarly-sized appropriately-colored yarn).
And since I still haven't gotten a bunch of black yarn (I keep thinking I'll get a bunch and work on some other hats that I think need to have a black base), I started another hat in this variegated blue, doodling rather while watching TV with friends. I wasn't sure where I was going with it for a while, then decided to have a single 'blue hole' on the top, but fill it in, to see how that would look. I ended up with blue Seussian play, shown below (and more photos at the link). I'm really happy with this, because I'd been thinking for a while about how to get more cantilevered sort of height without resorting to wire or other non-yarn things to add rigidity, and this seems to be successful. Plus, silly!
I'm thinking the next experiment (er, once I get more yarn; these take at least two skeins, and I have less than that left) might have three of these Seussian shapes on top to make some form of crown. So many options...
I started with a basic sort of brimmed hat, old jeans of summer, the only new part of it being the row of double crochet, tall enough to allow threading a white ribbon through.
For some reason, I started thinking about how to incorporate the waviness of too many stitches in a slightly different way, and ended up gathering the extra fabric into holes on the top in blue (not black) holes. It felt like there were possibilities there that weren't yet realized, though I do think I could make it more entertaining by having sprays of fiber optics coming out of the holes, or by stuffing some gloves and having hands coming out (possibly painted in some fantastical or creepy way).
I got a second one-pound (four-skein) bag, and decided that I could make something involving curls again. I'd made hats with one curving spiral; this time I tried four, and ones that were more raised off the main surface, calling it curved ribs. In some ways I'd've preferred the ribs to have been in a contrasting color, but having it in the same lightly variegated blue emphasizes how it's all made in one piece (read: I was lazy, and didn't have a similarly-sized appropriately-colored yarn).
And since I still haven't gotten a bunch of black yarn (I keep thinking I'll get a bunch and work on some other hats that I think need to have a black base), I started another hat in this variegated blue, doodling rather while watching TV with friends. I wasn't sure where I was going with it for a while, then decided to have a single 'blue hole' on the top, but fill it in, to see how that would look. I ended up with blue Seussian play, shown below (and more photos at the link). I'm really happy with this, because I'd been thinking for a while about how to get more cantilevered sort of height without resorting to wire or other non-yarn things to add rigidity, and this seems to be successful. Plus, silly!
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I'm thinking the next experiment (er, once I get more yarn; these take at least two skeins, and I have less than that left) might have three of these Seussian shapes on top to make some form of crown. So many options...