Last time on this Bat-channel, I mentioned that the Mild Girlfriend and I spent some time in Colorado a few weeks back. We managed to get some fun pictures, though I also managed to scratch up my hand and bang up my knee. Still, our trip was not all about hiking and injuries. No, there was a beanie involved, too.
First off, let me start off by explaining that a good friend of mine recently had a son. It was his second son, in fact. Since I've known him for so long, he's met my parents, and they're somewhat fond of him. So, when my mom heard that he was having a kid, she was really happy for him. In fact, she was so happy about this turn of events that she dedicated some time to making the newborn a beanie, baby clothes, and baby booties. Yes, I said "make;" she crocheted all of these things.
My buddy and his wife were quite thrilled with the gift(s), and I even heard his wife comment that she wished they still fit the older son at one point. Basically, it was a good gift. However, since we were all in Colorado, my mom wasn't going to have time to crochet another set for the second baby. I thought that was a shame, so at one point, I took it upon myself to try to remedy this situation.
To be clear, I should point out that I don't really crochet anything. My mom once tried to teach me when I was a kid, just so that I understood how it all worked. I remember understanding the basics of it, but it never really stuck. I certainly haven't crocheted any items of clothing, baby-sized or otherwise, before. Still, I figured there was no harm in trying, and in the worst case, I just wouldn't try to pawn off my failed creation on my buddy.
However, this meant that for about a week in Colorado, I spent my time with a crochet hook in hand. The Mild Girlfriend was so amused by this whole thing that she took a few candid photos to commemorate the occasion. YouTube is an amazing resource, I will say. I went from not knowing how to do any kind of stitch to understanding how to do several of them, and then grasping the basic idea in how to make a circular-ish object like a beanie. The only rub was that I had to actually execute on this newfound knowledge.
See, the simplest way (that I know of) to make a beanie is to make a bunch of concentric circles to give the thing its size and shape. Basically, you make a circle, and then you attach a slightly bigger circle right outside of it. In practice, you just add another "row" right outside of your last circle. As you do so, you give the beanie its shape. The more slightly bigger circles you add, the larger a head you can accommodate. Once you've got the right size, it's just a matter of continuing to add rows with the exact same number of stitches. Essentially, you make the part of the beanie that then covers the rest of someone's head. It's not about expanding the size, it's about giving it enough size to cover someone's head.
The YouTube videos I watched did give me measurements ("you want it to be 6 inches" or "you should stop adding stitches after the 4th row"), but this was all brand new territory for me. I simply had no frame of reference. Even the little kids at the day care weren't enough to help, because I'm not used to dealing with them so young (the youngest age I see is usually around 3-6 months). So, I asked the person I figured was the most suited to help: my mom. She'd clearly done this before, and she's around a crap ton of children. It seemed like the most logical solution.
Well, she didn't think that the YouTube videos were right. She suggested that it was still too small even when I followed the directions. I don't remember her exact words, but they were roughly along the lines of, "that's too small, it won't fit his head." At one point, we started looking for objects that were roughly the size of a newborn's head. The idea was to give me a rough measuring stick, so that I could easily gauge whether I had to add even more rows or not. As an aside, those cylinders that people use to hold utensils are quite useful.
Mind you, I'd already started to add the rows that simply add length to the beanie. So, I had to undo some work in order to make this happen. Worse yet, I was making the thing bigger, so I was guaranteeing that when I re-did those rows, they would now take more work. Dammit.
Still, I was committed to this project at this point, so I undid my work and made it bigger. Then, I started filling it back out again, so that it was the actual size of a beanie. Now that it was a group effort, I ran my work by the Mild Girlfriend and my mom. They deemed that it was now ... too big.
Well, hell. If I had to choose between the two, I was going to pick too big rather than too small. Still, it was pretty funny that the beanie refused to come out to the right size. I ended up finishing my work shortly thereafter, but the whole process had led to a lot of laughter.
Luckily for me, my buddy and his wife liked the beanie well enough when I presented it. Heck, even if they were just humoring me, I'll take it. It beats them flat out disliking the gift. Though I will also say that now I kind of want to crochet something else, to put my new skills to use. Go have some more babies, people.
First off, let me start off by explaining that a good friend of mine recently had a son. It was his second son, in fact. Since I've known him for so long, he's met my parents, and they're somewhat fond of him. So, when my mom heard that he was having a kid, she was really happy for him. In fact, she was so happy about this turn of events that she dedicated some time to making the newborn a beanie, baby clothes, and baby booties. Yes, I said "make;" she crocheted all of these things.
My buddy and his wife were quite thrilled with the gift(s), and I even heard his wife comment that she wished they still fit the older son at one point. Basically, it was a good gift. However, since we were all in Colorado, my mom wasn't going to have time to crochet another set for the second baby. I thought that was a shame, so at one point, I took it upon myself to try to remedy this situation.
To be clear, I should point out that I don't really crochet anything. My mom once tried to teach me when I was a kid, just so that I understood how it all worked. I remember understanding the basics of it, but it never really stuck. I certainly haven't crocheted any items of clothing, baby-sized or otherwise, before. Still, I figured there was no harm in trying, and in the worst case, I just wouldn't try to pawn off my failed creation on my buddy.
However, this meant that for about a week in Colorado, I spent my time with a crochet hook in hand. The Mild Girlfriend was so amused by this whole thing that she took a few candid photos to commemorate the occasion. YouTube is an amazing resource, I will say. I went from not knowing how to do any kind of stitch to understanding how to do several of them, and then grasping the basic idea in how to make a circular-ish object like a beanie. The only rub was that I had to actually execute on this newfound knowledge.
See, the simplest way (that I know of) to make a beanie is to make a bunch of concentric circles to give the thing its size and shape. Basically, you make a circle, and then you attach a slightly bigger circle right outside of it. In practice, you just add another "row" right outside of your last circle. As you do so, you give the beanie its shape. The more slightly bigger circles you add, the larger a head you can accommodate. Once you've got the right size, it's just a matter of continuing to add rows with the exact same number of stitches. Essentially, you make the part of the beanie that then covers the rest of someone's head. It's not about expanding the size, it's about giving it enough size to cover someone's head.
The YouTube videos I watched did give me measurements ("you want it to be 6 inches" or "you should stop adding stitches after the 4th row"), but this was all brand new territory for me. I simply had no frame of reference. Even the little kids at the day care weren't enough to help, because I'm not used to dealing with them so young (the youngest age I see is usually around 3-6 months). So, I asked the person I figured was the most suited to help: my mom. She'd clearly done this before, and she's around a crap ton of children. It seemed like the most logical solution.
Well, she didn't think that the YouTube videos were right. She suggested that it was still too small even when I followed the directions. I don't remember her exact words, but they were roughly along the lines of, "that's too small, it won't fit his head." At one point, we started looking for objects that were roughly the size of a newborn's head. The idea was to give me a rough measuring stick, so that I could easily gauge whether I had to add even more rows or not. As an aside, those cylinders that people use to hold utensils are quite useful.
Mind you, I'd already started to add the rows that simply add length to the beanie. So, I had to undo some work in order to make this happen. Worse yet, I was making the thing bigger, so I was guaranteeing that when I re-did those rows, they would now take more work. Dammit.
Still, I was committed to this project at this point, so I undid my work and made it bigger. Then, I started filling it back out again, so that it was the actual size of a beanie. Now that it was a group effort, I ran my work by the Mild Girlfriend and my mom. They deemed that it was now ... too big.
Well, hell. If I had to choose between the two, I was going to pick too big rather than too small. Still, it was pretty funny that the beanie refused to come out to the right size. I ended up finishing my work shortly thereafter, but the whole process had led to a lot of laughter.
Luckily for me, my buddy and his wife liked the beanie well enough when I presented it. Heck, even if they were just humoring me, I'll take it. It beats them flat out disliking the gift. Though I will also say that now I kind of want to crochet something else, to put my new skills to use. Go have some more babies, people.
Comments
Post a Comment