FO: The Pur-bo Bag and The Be-red

For the past 2 weeks, I have been working my crochet hook like MAD because 2 of my friends' birthday are coming up this week and I planned on making something for them as presents. Actually, one of them is celebrating her birthday tonight (Friday) and the other one is having a BBQ lunch tomorrow. I'm only going for the one tomorrow. 


Ok, you're probably not interested in that much details. Enough of all that jabber. Now, photos! 


First up, the purple hobo bag, aka The Pur-bo bag:

I made a few changes to the original pattern by Stephanie Gage because I was running out of the purple yarn and there was no way that I could get a ball of this yarn from the same colour lot, since I bought the yarn ages ago. So I made a few changes to the pattern in order to accommodate my yarn shortage: 

Close-up

• 18 rows of the dc instead of the 20 in the pattern 
• 4 rows of sc at the top of the bag instead of the 5 in the pattern 
• 1 strap with the width of 7 sc instead of the 2 straps made using 4 sc each as stated in the pattern 

I thought it would look ugly with all the changes I have made. But it did not! I even feel like making one for myself now! But I shall not and must not, lest I end up with too many knitted/crochet hobo bags.

WIP

Next up, the red beret aka The Be-red:

This is the first time that I made a crochet hat. All my previous hats were knitted. When I completed this pattern by creativeyarn, I thought, "what!? that's it!?" I was quite disappointed as the opening was really too big and the beret did not have the slouch that I expected from the photos. Am I missing something about crochet hats here? Nevertheless, I continued with 1 more round to make the opening smaller:

• Round 19: sc 1, sc2tog, rep to end

Unfortunately, that did not help and I ended up with something that is slightly tight. It's either too loose or too tight... I decided to go with the latter. I guess it's cuter to see a little hat perching on a head? I might be wrong... >_<


So, I'm really not quite sure what I feel about this crochet beret. I have a feeling that it might not fit my friend's head because the crochet ends are quite tight. Maybe it's better to knit hats to give them the ability to stretch rather than to crochet...


But that said, I might still make one for myself...Might...

WIP

Ooh La La Slouchy Beret!

I love to knit berets. They are chic, easy to knit and it requires only 1 ball of yarn!

I remember the very first beret that I knitted for myself to practise my increasing and decreasing. It certainly does feels kind of nostalgic talking about it. Well, I made it using cheap white acrylic yarn and it was a little tight. I didn't think I looked good with it so I shoved it all the way to the back of my shelf.

But I have never forgotten about that beret. I have been wanting to make a slouchier version of it. Slouchy hats are all the rage right now in the fashion scene, aren't they? So when Kelly passed me the one ball of yarn that she didn't like, I decided to make a beret out of it.

What she gave away...

Actually, I still don't understand why she didn't like the yarn. It's a soft 100% acrylic with beautiful colours. It's almost like a self-striping yarn!

It seems to be self-striping! (^_^)

So to make the slouchy beret, I used needles that are one size bigger (5.0mm from the original 4.0mm)  and I did 19 more repeat rows in stockinette stitch after the last increase. Meaning to say that After the last increase row I didn't increase anymore, but instead did 19 more rows of stockinette stitch before I move on to the decreasing rows.

The result was a jumbo sized beret. I think I should have started off with smaller needles (I used 4.0mm)  for the ribbings in the beginning. Fortunately, my beret was knitted flat, so I simply stitched up more of the seams again and again after I achieved the desired result. 

So much bigger than my hand! I didn't even have to block it...

I am definitely going to make one for myself. (I have 3 balls of this yarn at home!) 

(^_^)