Lacy Slouchy Hat

I know, I know, I've been neglecting the yarns.  Inspiration for interesting things has been hard to come by lately, at least in yarn form.  I've been having a great time making Halloween decorations.  Actually, that isn't completely accurate.  I've mostly been planning the decorations out, learning the techniques I need to make them, and doing some practice work.  There are a lot of changes that have been required and, as suspected, several bits are taking more work than expected.  Of course, that is about par for crafting.  But I know that most of you visit my ramblings for patterns and I have been seriously remiss as far as that goes.

I also have a remarkable ability to be distracted.  My attention span is about ooo, shiny!  Which decidedly does not help.  Since my patterns haven't been coming together quite like I would like, I decided to make something that would allow me to debut one of my new toys.  Toy, actually, is probably a bit of a misnomer as it isn't something that can be played with in the conventional sense.  On my wonderful shopping foray with my mom a few weeks ago I found a bunch of neat stuff.  One put me in transports of joy for days.  The toy in question is a glass head.

That isn't a typo, I did actually find a human head made out of glass.  It's life sized and everything.   I'm guessing that most of you are now staring at this with the same expression I had when I saw a shelf of glass heads at Ross.  Its the look of WTF?  In my case though, it took the time it takes to say "Who in their right mind would buy a ... I NEED A GLASS HEAD!" that look of WTF turned into a burning desire to get said glass head.  Clearly I am not in my right mind, I always have preferred my left mind anyway, but if you've been reading this blog for any length of time you probably figured that one out a while ago.  The important thing is that I now am in possession of a glass head.  Getting it when I did turned out to be a good idea, too; I went back to Ross the very next weekend after getting the head and there were none left.  This leads me to believe that there are, in fact, people crazier than me out there.  I can think of several reasons why I would need a glass head, but I can't think of any reasons for someone else to need one unless they want it for the same reasons I did.  Since the purposes to which I intend to put the head are vastly different from each other, I would be very surprised if other people got the heads for the same reason.

My reasons for getting the head are very simple.  I didn't like the foam head I got to display my hats.  It fell over a lot because it was so light and I had to pin my hats to it for it to work at all.  I don't like having pins out in my open spaces, they tend to disagree with the cats.  The glass head, though, now there was an improvement.  It's heavy.  Like probably close to 10 pounds heavy, I haven't weighed it so that's just an estimate.  The head is also well balanced and doesn't care if it has a hat on it or not.  It continues to sit where ever it was placed.  So, score one happy for successful hat display.

Reason number two for the head's greatness is a little special.  The head is hollow, you see.  Hollow and made of glass.  Those to facts chased each other around for a while and finally "meat head" came out.  You see, when you make a meat head, you have to have a form to build the layers on.  Most people use Bucky skulls or something similar for that but I was having a hard time with the idea of putting food on something with lots of little crevices.  Getting anything like that clean takes way more effort than I'm willing to expend and I can't use it or store it unless it's clean.  None of that is an issue with the glass head.  It's nice and smooth and, well, glass.  The nice thing about glass is that it holds temperatures reasonably well.  So if I build my meat head on the head after having chilled the head not only should the cream cheese stick to the glass better but it will also help keep the meat cold.  Especially after I get done filling the head with ice.  It's hollow, remember.  Before serving all I have to do is fill the head with some crushed ice and I have a refrigerated meat head.   Squee!

Anyway, what all my rambling amounts to is that, even though I couldn't think of anything interesting to make I really wanted to show off the head.  The best way to do this was to make a hat, so that's what happened.  Hats are pretty easy to bang out, too, which helped.  It's very hard to devote a lot of time to something that you can't bring yourself to care about so having a quick project really helped.  The hat turned out super cute despite my complete lack of interest in it.  Hopefully the weather will sort itself out soon and I can go back to being human and creative.  Hats are pretty free form to make and they don't take terribly long to do.  This one only took a couple of hours.  I do mean that quite literally; I think this hat took 3 hours or less to make.  It's another in the "Rasta tam" style because I quite like that style.  They can cover your neck and ears, you see.  This is important when you have short hair and get cold very easily.

Lacy Slouchy Hat

Fits a 22 inch head comfortably.


Materials
80 grams (about 150 yards) Red Heart Super Saver, I used "Aruba Sea"
I hook


Hat Pattern
ch1
Round 1:  8sc in the ch1, join but don't turn.
Round 2:  ch 5, sc in each stitch around.  Join and don't turn.
Round 3:  Ch1 and 5sc in each loop all the way around.  Join and don't turn.
Round 4:  ch5 and sc in the third sc of each loop.  Work until you get to the last loop.  Ch2 and dc in the starting st.  Turn.
Round 5:  (ch5, sc in the loop space) around until last loop then ch 2, dc, turn
Rounds 6-10:  Repeat round 5.
Round 11:  (ch5, sc) around in both loop and sc of previous row.
Rounds 12-23:  Repeat round 5.
Round 24:  (ch1, sc in lp) around.  Join and turn.

Round 25-26:  Work all sts in sc, join and turn.

Round 27:  Ch 2.  Sc, dc (moss st) around ending on sc.  Join and turn.
Round  28-29: repeat rounds 25-26.  Break off, weave in ends.

Pretty flower in the center (-: