Crochet beanies

Another awesome late winter-with-just-a-touch-of-spring day!! Aaahh I'm in love! I really, really wanted to spend all day outside, weeding and digging over some of the garden beds, but it was not to be. Earlier in the week I had crocheted a funky beanie for myself (yes, something for me!) and naturally the girls wanted one too, so what could I do? I did get to sit in the sun and soak up some warmth while madly crocheting and I did get to supervise some grass raking, so all is well! 

Our three youngest girls got the job of modelling (I did ask Master 11 to join in but he not so politely declined) On the left is mine, then The Fairy and Miss Layla - and yes we had a lot of fun during our photo session! There are quite a few out takes though!! 

The pattern is from lovely Linda at Natural Suburbia. I saw it a little while ago and when I read that it was doable in a couple of hours, I was hooked - ha ha, love that pun! Remember when I bought these skeins of locally spun wool? It was a while ago and I had thought I'd knit them into something nice. Well, I'm not a knitter so they hung there on the corner of our bookshelf until I realised I'd better use them for something other than knitting. Something I could do quickly and with far more skill!!  

Linda did a great job of writing out the pattern and I didn't 'tweak' it at all other than crocheting a row less for the littlest one. I did however, add a couple of chains at the beginning of each new row and I will attempt to show how I did it. Please bear in mind I have never written a tutorial before and am not an expert crocheter and will be speaking in layman's terms! 

Here goes.......

Right at the beginning, after you have joined your chain and before you begin crocheting, you need to make two more chain stitches. The reason for this is so that it gives a square start to the new row of double crochet. 

In the photo's below (and please excuse the well worked mama hands, at least my nails are clean today!) I've already made several rows but it's the same each row so just pretend its the first one - as you see, it gives a nice 'tall' start to the new row and you can then do your first double crochet into the next stitch, although I forgot to take a pic of that - sorry. 

These are the two chain stitches. 

Below you see the end of the row of dc's where I am just about to join them up and finish off. 

And here I'm joining up into the second chain stitch just using the following - yarn over hook and pull through both stitches. Then you make another two chain stitches and continue on with your next row.  

Not sure if thats explained really well, but if you can work it out it does make a nice beginning to your new row. Of course if you are using treble crochets you would make three chain stitches and so on. 

Once again, many thanks to Linda for her great tute - I am a bit inspired now to have a go at making another sort of crochet hat, a rasta hat, for my Golden Girl who likes a bit of hippie chic!! 

Let me know if this made sense - or if you already knew how to do it and I was only thinking that I knew more than you!!!