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This week's hat comes from Columbia Minerva's "Teach Yourself to Crochet", published in 1972. The booklet has a lot of adorable patterns that look fun to make. Before we get to the bucket hat here are a few of the pattern photos from the booklet. First the ones that have dog sweaters in the pictures:
Cardigans and Blazers:
A Shawl, Poncho and Shrink:
There aren't a lot of hats in the June magazines so I might make these in June:
And here's the bucket hat that I made for this week's hat pattern:  This hat uses worsted weight yarn in two colors and an H hook for the hat. It does give a gauge for a G hook that you use for the mittens but not the H hook. I had yellow and orange yarn that matches this photo pretty closely. The yellow is Impeccable and the orange is Lion Brand Basic Stitch.  The hat is worked from the bottom to the top. Then the brim is crocheted on using the other side of the starting chain at the bottom of the hat. This was pretty easy to follow and the only quibble I have with the pattern is that it tells you, "work in pat, dec'ing 4 hdc groups evenly spaced around" which means the crocheter has to do that math for that. Since this is a beginner book I was a little surprised by those instructions. This turned out to be almost exactly like the photo and is a super cute hat. I'm giving this hat 5 stars. It was easy to follow the pattern. It's cute and functional. Above all, it fits!
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This week we have the classic granny square hat. This particular pattern is from 1971 and is in a booklet with vests aka shrinks, a scarf and a Hipster hat.  One of the problems with vintage patterns is figuring out the right hook size and this booklet is a good example of that. Many patterns give a gauge to help solve the hook size issue, though we seen that doesn't always produce a hat that fits. The Hippy Dippy hat (the yellow one in the photo) does give a hook size but it doesn't follow the letter or millimeter sizes most current patterns use. It says that the hat should use a "No. 9 Crochet Hook for the Adult size". This isn't completely outdated. Most of my older hooks still have a letter and a number on the hook. A No. 9 hook is typically the same as an I hook so that's what I used for this pattern. The child size uses a No. 8 or H hook. The pattern uses worsted weight yarn and I managed to find some in my stash that is pretty close in color to the photo. I'm using Impeccable Yarn by Loops & Threads for the yellow and maroon and the gray is Big Twist yarn.  There was no gauge given for the pattern or any pattern in this booklet but the directions were pretty easy to follow. This has you make 5 granny squares and join them with one square as the top of the hat. Then you add three rounds of single crochet at the bottom to finish it off.  This looks like a classic granny square hat and I think I did a pretty good job of recreating the hat in the photo. Now the real question, does it fit me?
Nope. It's a little too big. If I made this again, I'd drop a hook size. I don't really love their way of joining the squares either. I think I'd use a join that doesn't give the ridge.
I'm giving this a 3.5. It's cute, the pattern is fairly easy to follow but a gauge would have been really helpful. Next week I'll have a vintage pattern for a bucket hat! My sister-in-law, Julia, tells me that they're "in" and I have started seeing a lot of patterns popping up for them. The pattern I have doesn't use the term bucket hat but it looks a lot like some of the other patterns I've been seeing. This time I have a baby hat to review so I can't answer the question, "Does it fit?". This pattern is from the May 1974, Workbasket Magazine  This pattern says it's for a "six-month-old size" with changes for a one-year-old. I made the smaller version. I'm sure if fits a six-month old child somewhere out in the world. Materials required are an ounce of baby yarn, a size C hook, some ribbon and a button. Baby yarn is a little vague. I have yarn that calls itself baby yarn in fingering weight, sport weight and DK. Fortunately, this pattern gives a gauge in both rows and stitches. I tried some DK weight first and that was way over the gauge so I dropped down to this Panda Cotton I've had in my stash forever. I believe that this is closer to a fingering weight and the gauge came out perfectly. This is a very simple pattern. I ran out of the first color of Panda Cotton but had more in a different color to finish it off. I couldn't find any ribbon that was the right size in my jar of ribbons so I made the ties in crochet instead.  I'm going to give this pattern 4.5 stars out of 5. I'm only marking it down for the use of baby yarn instead of being a little more specific about the actual yarn weight.
Next week: The Granny Square Hat! This week I'm reviewing a hat pattern from the May 1982 Workbasket Magazine. This is the second pattern I've made from this particular issue. Back in 2018, when you voted on the pattern I would make, I had this hat as one of the options to choose from. The pattern that won that year was this capelet. Here's the magazine photo of the hat I did this time.
The pattern says that directions are given for a small head with the medium sized changes in parentheses. I chose to make the small size. Materials listed are; an acrylic blend 4-ply yarn in three colors and an H hook. This pattern also gives a gauge but I didn't check my gauge even though it said in large all caps, "TO SAVE TIME, TAKE TIME TO CHECK GAUGE." This pattern was pretty easy to follow and I have no complaints about the directions. The pattern is done in the cuff part and then you fold the cuff up twice. I used three colors of Big Twist yarn that I had in my stash and it came out ok.  Getting it folded up to match the photo wasn't as easy as I thought it would be and it makes that cuff part pretty thick. I also wish I had planned the colors a little better. There isn't enough contrast between the light and medium blue to show off the stitch pattern. Overall though, this was a fast and easy pattern and it fits! I'll give this a 4.5 out of 5 stars.  Last week I showed you the finished Daisy hat but couldn't find the magazine to show you the way they thought it should look and all of the other Daisy patterns they had. I didn't find the magazine but I did find a photo took of that page in the magazine.  I don't have the pattern to reference but if I remember right there was an issue with the increases that made the hat look like this:   I'm going to lower my rating to a 2 out of 5 because something is wrong with the directions. The May patterns will include a geometric patterned hat from 1982, a baby hat from May 1974 and one of the hats from this pamphlet: |
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