I made a couple more pussyhats for an exhibition celebrating the first anniversary of the resistance. I had a few plain ones on hand but wanted some fancy ones to go with them.

This is another idea I’ve had in my head for a while: a hatband made of crocheted granny squares with a knitted top. I wanted to evoke a flower child vibe. It worked out quite close to what I had in mind, which is always a pleasant surprise. I don’t have much experience with crochet and hadn’t picked up a hook in years, but these squares went surprisingly well. I worked two of each motif, with the latter two so much tidier than the first. If I’d had time to re-work the first couple of squares, the FO would have been a lot neater, but we’ll call this slightly wonky creation “folk art” and be happy with it. It’s awfully cute.

The squares went around my head more quickly than I expected, so I was stuck with using an even number. I fiddled around with the arrangement a bit and decided to emphasize the “folksiness” by placing the seams slightly off center in front and back. A happy side effect of this placement is that you can see both flowers from the front.

If I were to make this again, I’d make smaller squares, probably doing the same number of stitches but in finer yarn at a tighter gauge.

I crocheted the squares together, then picked up stitches all around the top, as evenly as possible. Since I only had 90 crochet stitches to work with and I wanted to work the body in 2x2 rib, which would pull in quite a lot, I needed at least 104 stitches. I picked up the 14 extra stitches from the front and back of the crochet stitches.

At about 5 inches, I increased 2 sts in between the two side stitches on two consecutive rounds, to give me a quick 4-stitch increase and a natural-looking contour for the “ears”. Worked body in 2x2 rib until piece measured about 7 1/2 inches, then bound off on the wrong side using 3-needle BO.

Since it was clear the lower edge of the crochet band needed to be drawn in and tidied a bit, I picked up 88 stitches along the bottom edge, then worked a few rows in 2x2 rib. Bound off on the RS using Jenny’s surprisingly stretchy BO, and worked eight evenly space k2tog into the BO. I’ll work this ribbed band on smaller needles if I make this again.

hook size G
squares based on motifs from Beyond the Square: Crochet Motifs by Edie Eckman. The first two were worked as written; the second two, of course, were not.