Celebration Beanie

Hi everybody, welcome to our live crochet event. I'm Brenda K.B. Anderson. And did you know that March is National Craft Month? Well it is and it's the first day of March so we are gonna celebrate.

Today we are making the celebration beanie. This is what it looks like. Here's the real one. This is what it looks like. So if you wanna follow along with the pattern, you can go ahead and download that pattern.

The link, you'll find the link for the pattern in the description. So you can check that out now or if you wanna wait till later, it'll still be there for you to download later. So that's okay too. Alright, so let me just describe this to you a little bit. First of all, this cute little beanie has a nice little fold up brim to make things extra warm.

And of course you probably noticed the gigantic pompom on this beanie. I really wanted to have a huge one because I wanted this to be like a really extra hat. Like I wanted it to be, you know, obviously there's sequins. I wanted it to be like you're having a big celebration and somebody just dumped a bunch of shiny confetti on your head and you know, you're having fun. It's like a party hat, right?

So this hat comb in sizes all the way from baby to an adult large. So you can make one for everyone. And it is made with fingering weight yarn. So fingering weight yarn is a thinner yarn than what we typically find in the big box stores. You can still find fingering weight yarn there though, but it is thinner.

But don't let that scare you if you don't really like crocheting with thinner yarns. That's okay 'cause we're gonna be holding the yarns two together so we are able to use a larger hook. So it's kind of like your crocheting with wurst weight yarn or like a heavier DK weight yarn with those two strands held together. The reason that we're doing that is because we are adding the sequins and the sequins have a very tiny hole in them. And so in order to thread the sequins onto the yarn which is how we get them onto the hat, we needed a thinner yarn to go through that hole.

So we're gonna be holding, we're gonna be threading the sequins all onto one strand of yarn and holding it together with a second strand of yarn. And then we're going to be crocheting with them held together. Alright, so your materials, you're gonna need two or three skeins of fingering weight yarn, and all the specifics of the yarns that I used, exactly how much, all the materials, there's some extra links for where I got this sequins and then this gigantic pompom. Those links are also in your pattern. So you can take a look at that, the yarn brand and everything is in there.

But just to give you the general overview, you're gonna need two or three skeins of fingering weight yarn. You're gonna need a handful of sequins, you know, or like maybe like a few tablespoons full of sequins, if you can imagine that a little bit better. And then you're gonna need a needle that can, that is small enough to go through the hole in the sequin, like just a sewing needle, thinner needle. You're gonna need a larger needle, you're gonna need a tapestry needle for weaving in your ends. And of course the pompom.

And I would recommend if you're making a smaller size hat, think about the proportion of the pompom. So if you're making a baby size hat, you might not want the super huge pompom on the hat. You could, and actually that would be really adorable, but just, you know, I just don't want there to be any surprises when you go and put the pompom to the hat. Just think about the proportion of that before you make your decision. So this, this is the very large one I used and here is more of like the standard size that you can easily find all over the place.

You can find these at craft stores, you can find 'em on Amazon, they're all over the place. So this is more the standard size, I think it's about four inches. And when they say how wide they are, I think they're measuring from most of the wisps way out here. They're not measuring the small part in the middle, the dense part in the middle. Alright, anyway, so let's see.

The other thing you're gonna need are some kind of pins or something to keep your pieces together, 'cause we're gonna be doing a little bit of sewing at the end of this project. Alright so, we're not sewing the sequins on though, don't worry about that. Alright, so let's get started. Alright, so the first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna thread a bunch of sequins onto your yarn, onto one strand of your yarn. Okay, so imagine I just have these two small balls of yarn because I was kind of running low on my yarn, but at the beginning of your project, you would be using, you know, two of the larger skeins, you know, two of the full skeins.

Alright, so to get the sequins on, because yarn is kind of squishy and fuzzy, you're not gonna be able to thread that through your sequin very well. So you can use a needle and thread, just a short piece of thread. Doesn't need to be very long. Don't need to measure it really. And then you're just gonna tie a knot in the end.

Whoops, tying the two ends together. Just gonna do a little overhand knot here. And so what you're doing is you're creating a loop out of thread, and that is going to allow us to tuck the end of the yarn through. We're gonna put the end of the yarn through that loop and double it back on itself like this. So what you've cut is you have your needle connected to a loop of thread, and then you have the yarn tucked through the loop of thread and going to your yarn ball.

Just ignore these sequins that I already put on there. Pretend those didn't happen yet. Alright, so then you're gonna take your yarn needle and thread 'em right through the center of those sequins. And if you're lucky you can grab kind of a clump of them and hold them together and thread a bunch on at once. But that doesn't always work.

This does take time. I should mention this project isn't, if you're looking for a super quick fix, this is not gonna be the project for you. This is more of a, you know, you need a little bit of patience to get these sequins on there. You're not gonna be able to crochet as fast as you normally do with these sequins. It's not hard to do, but it does take a little more time.

So just a heads up on that. Alright, so you're going to just slide your sequins onto your needle. And I liked to slide them on with the cupped side of the sequin, you know, the concave side of the sequin towards me. So I'm putting the point through that concave part of the sequin. But if you wanna do it the opposite way, or if you wanna put them on randomly and you just don't really wanna care, that's fine too.

I wouldn't sweat, like I wouldn't worry about getting every one of them absolutely perfect. If you thread some on backwards, you're not gonna notice because the sequins kind of flip around a little bit. They catch the light, it's not gonna look super uniform. You're not gonna notice if one sequin is upside down, you're really not. So I would not bother worrying about that.

But I think it does help if you kind of have a system and you're sliding your needle through the cupped side of the sequin first. Alright, so you'll get a number of sequins on there, you can put even more on there if you want to. And then you're just gonna slide them down, down along the thread and through onto the yarn. And so if you're gonna be threading a bunch more, which I recommend you do about a tablespoon at a time, I would leave some sequins here because that is, that basically holds your yarn in place and it's gonna keep your yarn from falling out of this loop and you can move it all around, it's not gonna fall out. So once you get that anchored, then you can thread some more sequins onto your needle.

So just do that until, either until you get bored of putting the sequin on, or you get about a tablespoon worth of sequins. You don't wanna have, at first when I started making this hat I thought oh, I'll put all the sequins onto the yarn first, then I'll have them all ready to go. It's gonna be the most efficient way to do it. But actually it turned out that it was less efficient because you have to keep moving those sequins down as you are crocheting with them. You have to keep sliding them down your yarn, and it gets to be a little annoying if there's too many sequins, it creates more friction and it's harder to slide them along your yarn strands.

So in the pattern I did recommend, you know about a tablespoon at a time or something like that. You could even do a little more if you wanted to, but I would not try to estimate how many sequins you need for the entire hat and put just all of the sequins on. I would not do that, it's not gonna, it's not gonna speed things up like you think it is. Alright, so you'll thread a bunch on there until you get, you know, however many sequins you wanna start with. And then we are going to hold a strand from each ball of yarn together.

And for the first round we're not actually placing any of the sequins at all. We are just gonna be sliding them out of the way a little bit. That is because at the top of the hat, that's where we sew the snap on. If you're using a pompom with a snap or that's where you fasten the pompom, you won't be able to see the sequins anyway 'cause it's gonna be in the way. Also, it's just a little tricky to be managing your sequins when you are doing your first round.

So it's just easier to just do a plain old first round without the fancy pants sequins. Alright, so we're gonna start with a slip knot. So I make myself a little sort of cursive E shape or little loop de loop, then I fold it over onto the yarn that's connected to the ball. Then I slide my hook underneath that strand and I hold my finger right up here where everything crosses over and kind of hold it in place. I'm gonna make it a little smaller.

And then I begin by just chaining one. That doesn't count as anything, that just anchors my stitch to that magic loop or adjustable loop or whatever you wanna call that, that loop that you can adjust the size of. Alright, so we're gonna do eight extended single crochets holding these two strands together as though they are one into this loop. So we're gonna insert our hook yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through one, yarn over, pull through two. I just realized that I forgot to mention what kind of hook I'm using here.

This is a G hook, it's a four millimeter hook, but you're gonna use whatever size hook you need in order to get the gauge swatch to match mine. 'Cause you don't wanna have any surprises when you're working on this hat. After you place that many sequins, it's really hard to tell actually when you first begin this hat how big the circumference is gonna be. I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to convince you guys to make the gauge swatch so you know that it's gonna be okay. Because when you start out making this hat, you can see here's all the sequins it gets kind of ruffly.

We do all of our increases at the very top of the hat and that way we don't have to mess around with placing sequins a certain pattern and trying to work our increases in there. It just would be too much of a mess. So we get all of our increases outta the way at the beginning of the hat and it's really hard to tell when there's something that only has a few rounds in it, how big this circumference is going to be. So you can't really just rely on knowing how big that circumference is gonna be and measuring it as you go. You do, you really should do a gauge swatch, and if I'm telling you to gauge swatch, you probably should do a gauge watch 'cause I don't know if you guys have watched my other lives before, but I oftentimes will try to find ways of getting you out of doing the gauge swatch 'cause I don't like doing them myself.

But this is one time where it is important. Alright, so we're doing extended single crochets. We've done one extended single crochet. Now we're gonna do seven more into our adjustable loop. Alright, so we insert our hook, yarn over, pull up the loop, yarn over, pull through one, yarn over, pull through two.

That's another extended single crochet. Now we're gonna do six more into that same loop. One and we'll just slide all these sequins down. Two, three, four, five, and six. So now we have a total of eight.

Sorry if that was confusing. We had already had two and then I started counting those extra six. But we do need eight single crochets. Then you can pull on that beginning yarn strand and now is where the exciting part happens. This is where we start placing all those sequins.

And as we work, we are going to be always looking at the same side. We're not turning in this section, we're just working in the round, always looking at the same side. And the side we're looking at, normally we called it the right side, but because of the way the sequins are placed, the sequins are gonna end up on the back of our work. So this is really the right side and we are always looking at the wrong side if that makes sense. Alright, so we're gonna just grab one sequin here and sometimes they like to stick together, so you kind of have to check and see if you really have more than one.

This is the part that makes it a little fiddly. And you know what, if you accidentally slide up two sequins and crochet them together, that's fine, it's not a big deal, it's just, you know, the only thing with that is that you're gonna end up having to put more sequins onto your yarn, which is fine. Alright, so you slide your sequin all the way up to your hook and it's gonna kind of end up a little bit on the back of your work. Then we are going to work into that first stitch that we made, that first extended single crochet. And we are gonna put two extended single crochet stitches in there.

And each time we make a extended single crochet. right before we make it, we're gonna slide up a sequin. Okay, so we've already slid that sequin right up next to the hook. And then we're going to insert our hook here into that first extended single crochet. Yarn over, pull up a loop.

So you can see already when I pulled up that loop, I trapped the sequin right on the back of my work there. Then we yarn over, pull through one, yarn over, pull through two. Alright, so we're gonna slide up the next sequin here. And in this round, round two, we are gonna be placing two extended single crochets into each stitch around. Alright, so we've placed our first extended single crochet, let me just grab a stitch marker here so we don't lose track of where we're at.

So there's our first stitch of the round. And then we're going to do another extended single crochet into that same stitch we already worked into. Okay, so that's right here. Insert, yarn over, pull up the loop, yarn over, pull through one, yarn over, pull through two. So now we have two sequins back there 'cause we've placed them right before we did those two last two stitches.

Alright, so we've done two stitches. So like I said before we're doing two stitches into each stitch around. So we're gonna slide up the next stitch, or I mean slide up the next sequin. Oh, it looks like we have a question here. Any tips for those of us with vision or dexterity challenges in threading these sequins?

Oh, okay. You can almost do them a little bit more by feel. You can, when you have that sequin in your hand, you can press the needle in and kind of swirl it around until you find the hole and pull it through. That's actually how I do it 'cause I, my eyes aren't so super great either. So that's what, that's how I do it.

I kind of do it more by feel a little bit to find that hole in the middle. But dexterity challenges, it might be pretty tricky to get these sequins on there, but I did find some slightly larger sequins, I think they're called paillette, or that's spelled paillette, but I'm pretty sure that's not how you pronounce it. It's a French word. They're the flat sequins with the larger hole in it. Now you can get those and most of the time they come in very large, you know, like they're almost like three quarters of an inch wide or something.

But I did find some on Amazon that were just only slightly larger than these sequins and that's what I had originally intended on using. But then they disappeared off of Amazon and I couldn't find them again. So they are a little bit tricky to find, but it is worth, sometimes they pop up or may you might be able to find 'em at a craft store, but it would be worth looking for those because they have a much larger hole and they would be a lot easier to, a lot easier to manage 'cause they're slightly larger than these also. You could also do these with beads if you find that easier, since you don't have the little tiny flat, maybe it's a little bit more awkward to pick up a flat sequin. I hope that those tips help.

I mean, the other thing too, you can actually, I mean you can make this hat without the sequins. You could also, I think I have seen thinner yarns that already have some sequin threaded onto them. So you could try combining one of those yarns. You could look for one of those yarns and combine it with, you know, another yarn held together with it to make the thickness here because I think usually those sequin yarns are pretty thin. It's almost like a thread that you can hold with it.

If you do that, you won't be able to control how, you know, the sequins in this hat kind of gradiate from being a lot of sequins at the top to being less towards the bottom. So you won't really be able to do that, but it will be a really cute sequin-y hat. Alright, so back to round two. We're putting two extended single crochets into each stitch. And before we make each stitch we just slide that sequin right up next to the hook.

And that one kind of slid itself up there. So two stitches, two extended single crochets into each stitch around. On this first, second round here. The first round was with the sequins. Alright, so insert, yarn over, pull up the loop, yarn over, pull through one, yarn over, pull through two, place your sequin.

So in this pattern I have abbreviated PSESC. And what that means is place sequin extended single crochet. So it's basically like adding the motion of moving the sequin up and making the extended single crochet into one stitch. If it helps you though to think about it as two separate things, on the first couple rounds you are going to be just making two stitches into each stitch around and you're placing a sequin in between each stitch that you make if that makes sense. You make a stitch, place a sequin, make a stitch, place a sequin.

Alright, so we'll take a look at this in a minute. So you can see this is a little bit more slower going than normally, than it would normally be. But once you kind of get used to holding all these pieces and how to spread out the sequins, it does get easier. So don't be discouraged. And also the other thing too is it may seem like, oh my goodness, this hat is taking forever when you do the first couple of rounds, but that's because you're placing a sequin between each stitch.

or you know during each stitch you are placing a sequin. So that does take extra time. After a couple of rounds at the beginning, you're gonna start putting less and less sequins in per round. And so it's gonna go faster and faster. Alright, so let's take a look at the backside of our work.

This is, you know, we are calling this side the right side 'cause it has the sequins on it and you can see all those little sequins kind of stacked up in a little swirl. So you're gonna continue, you're gonna finish that round, you're gonna do another round. And if you are working on a size that isn't the baby size, that's the size that I'm gonna be demonstrating today. If you're working on another size you're gonna do a third round of two extended single crochets into each stitch round. I'm just doing the baby size so I did two rounds of that.

And then on the next round, you know it would be round four for all the other sizes. Round three, let's see, one, two, oh that's incorrect. Round four for the baby size. Let me just double check and make sure I'm telling you the right thing. I think it's around four for the baby size and all the other sizes would be round five.

Yeah, round four for the baby sizes and round five for the other sizes. You're going to be working different amounts of increases depending on the hat size you're working on. So I just wanna show you really quickly here, if you are working on the baby size, which I am, you're gonna do two place sequin extended single crochets in each of the next seven stitches. Then you're gonna make a place sequin extended single crochet into the next stitch four times. So what that means is you're doing, you're increasing seven times and then you're just doing one stitch in the next stitch.

You're not increasing that. And then you repeat that entire section within the brackets. So you're gonna do that entire section within the brackets a total of four times, okay, for the baby size. For the other sizes you're gonna do different amounts of the non increased stitches between your increased stitch. So if you take a look here, it says for toddler child, adult medium, this section here, it'll tell you to place sequins, extended single crochet in the next stitch, place sequin extended single crochet, and to each of the next either 15 or four or two stitches.

So that whole section, so this depends on the size you're making. So if you're doing a toddler size, you'll do it in the next 15 stitches. If you're doing the child size, it'll be four stitches, adult medium, every two stitches, okay? And then you're gonna repeat what's inside that bracket, either four or 12 or 20 times, depending on whether you're making the toddler, the child, or the adult medium, okay? So I just wanted to explain that 'cause sometimes when people are newer to reading patterns, they don't understand what all those crazy bracket-y parentheses stuff is.

It can be a little confusing when you first start. So just know that your instructions, if you're following the toddler size, it's gonna be outside of the parentheses, okay? It's gonna be the first number. So here would be 15, here would be four. If you're doing say, the adult medium, it would be the last instruction inside the parentheses okay?

So here it would be two, and here it would be 20 that you pay attention to. So it's gonna be a different amount for the different sizes, but regardless you're going to be working two of the sequin stitches in each stitch for a certain amount. And then you're just gonna be doing one sequin stitch in a certain amount of stitches also alright? So after you've worked through, let's say round, it would be round five for the adult large, round five for the toddler, child, adult medium, or round four for the baby size. After you've completed that, then your piece should look like this.

Or you know, it'll be larger for the little larger sizes, but you'll have some swirls around where you have one single crochet in each stitch round. Actually this is, let me back up for a second. I'm sorry if this was confusing. This is right before we do our increased round where it is a varying amount of increases, okay, per size. So because I'm working the baby size I'll show you what that looks like here.

So this, just to be clear, this is round number four for the baby size, alright? So, but this also applies to the other sizes, not the same stitch counts though, alright? So we're gonna be working two of the place sequin extended single crochets in each of the next seven stitches. Alright, so we're gonna slide those sequins up, we'll just give ourselves a few like that, and we'll do one. Let's see, did we place one?

Oh, we gotta place one before we do that stitch sorry. Slide it all the way up to our hook. Because in this round, even when you're doing those increases per size, you are still placing a sequin in front of every stitch, okay? So we're doing two, there's two in the first stitch, and we're gonna do that six more times. There's the first one of the next two, let's see.

Alright, placing a sequin each time, and now we're placing another stitch into that same stitch. Let me put this in the first stitch of our round. It's right here. Alright, so we've worked four stitches so far. We've worked into two stitches, two of the seven.

Alright, so there's the next one, and we have to have a second stitch in there. There we go. Alright, so we've done three stitches so far. Well, we've done six stitches, but worked into three stitches. So one, two, three, four, five, six.

And oops. See how you can see these really like to stick together and it's really, it's hard to know. You kind of have to have a good thumbnail in order to separate them or just not worry about it. You know, placing more than one at a time, which is fine too. Alright, we're working in another stitch into that same stitch.

And let's see, we're gonna count how many we've done so far. Let's see, two, four, six, eight. And we'll do two more in here. One, and place the sequin. Two.

The good thing is, is if you somehow mess things up and you have to rip out your stitches, then your sequins will be perfectly spaced and you can crochet it back up really quickly. At least there is a bonus, right? This does, it does take some time. Alright, I think we have a couple more stitches to work into, and then we're just gonna do one stitch. Let's see, two, four, six, eight, 10, 12.

Alright, so this is our last stitch we're working into of the increases, okay? Okay so we work into it once and a second time. There we go. Okay, so now we have, we've worked seven stitches and we've worked, sorry, we've worked into seven stitches, but we've made two stitches into each of those seven stitches. So we have 14 stitches so far, and then the next stitch is just one extended single crochet with the sequin, there's the sequin, and then we do one extended single crochet into the next stitch like that okay?

So you're gonna repeat that all, whatever that is between the brackets. You're gonna repeat that all the way around until you get to your stitch marker, and you can see what it looks like on the back. We're still placing a sequin before we make each stitch around okay? So after you've done that one round of, you know, increasing in a different way per size, you know, whatever size you're making, your piece will look like this. Let's see, here we go.

Your piece will look like this. This is what it'll look like toward you. This is what it'll look like on the other side. So you can see there's one sequin in each stitch, and then you are going to work. This also includes the next, I think two rounds.

Let's see. If you look here, for all sizes this is rounds five and six of the baby size. Okay we're just doing, placing a sequin and doing an extended single crochet in each stitch round. No increasing. We are all done with our increasing already, after we finish this round, that is where we're done with all the increasing for the hat.

I know that seems crazy 'cause this is so small, but it starts to ruffle and the circumference will actually be pretty, pretty long if you actually measure it into all those dips. And from then on out you are just working one stitch into each stitch around. And whether you're placing a sequin per stitch or every other stitch, you'll just have to be reading the directions. But I'm gonna explain that a little bit more to you, the pattern that we're gonna follow here. Alright, so we've already worked, in this sample here we've worked through rounds five and six of the baby size.

So we've worked that crazy increase round. And then we've done two more rounds of one stitch into each stitch around, okay? After that, so this would be for round seven for the baby size, we're going to be placing a sequin into the next stitch, and then we make an extended single crochet without a sequin into the next stitch. And then we repeat that all the way around. So basically what we're doing is we're making extended single crochets into each stitch around, but we're only placing a sequin every other time, alright?

So in that round we're going to place a sequin. Okay let's see, I'm getting a little behind on my questions. What is extended single crochet? Okay, I'll show you that again in case you missed it in just a second. And then yes, and great, my old eyes and arthritic hands thank you very much.

You are welcome. I hope that that helps you. Do I need to worry about the yarn twisting while crocheting? Okay, yes. The yarn, well you don't have to worry too much about it.

It will start to twist around. Let's see, as you work, because you're normally working from the center of your yarn ball, or if your yarn is not allowed to roll around freely it might start getting a twist in it. And then sometimes your strands can twist around each other. If that happens and you can't and you're having a hard time untwisting it, usually you can fix that by just turning your entire work around like this and unpinning the two from being twisted around each other. You'll just have to look at which way it's twisted, twist your project around a couple of times and then see if that's helping, or if it's making it worse, then twist it the other way around if it's making it worse.

Okay, so you can undo all that. The other thing you can do is you can cut one strand of yarn, pull them apart from each other and add it back in, which is fine too. Extended single crochet. Yes, we will go over that again. So here we are working the round, let's see, round seven where we do a a sequin, extended single crochet.

And then we just do an extended single crochet into the following stitch and we repeat that over and over. Okay, so we've placed our sequin for the first stitch. Here is an extended single crochet. We insert our hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through one, yarn over, pull through two. And now remember, so that was our first stitch of this round.

And now remember on the the next stitch, we are not placing a sequin this time. This is the first time we're not placing a sequin before a stitch. We're just gonna work a regular extended single crochet. So let me show you that one more time. Insert your hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through one, yarn over, pull through two, that's an extended single crochet.

And then we're gonna keep repeating that. So we're gonna slide up some sequins here so we have 'em a little closer to us. And then we're going to work one extended single crochet with the sequin. So right there. And then the next one, no sequin, we don't place a sequin this time.

So insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through one, yarn over, pull through two okay? So we're just gonna repeat that all the way around the circle and let me do one more and then I'll show you what it looks like. 'Cause I think it's a little hard to tell at this point what the pattern's gonna look like. We're really sticking together here. Alright, so we placed our sequin, insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through one, yarn over, pull through two.

And then the next stitch is just a regular extended single crochet. Insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through one, yarn over, pull through two. Alright, so now, and sometimes your sequins will be not pulled all the way through to your work. You might find that like this one, you might not even be able to really see that. I'm kind of looking down on the side of it, but if you pull it to the side, you can kind of pop it out to the front of your work there.

So you might have to, you might find yourself having to adjust a couple of the quins when you look at it, if they didn't quite make it all the way through to the, to the side of your work. Alright, so you can see we have a sequin and a little space and a sequin and a little space and a sequin and a little space. So that is gonna start dispersing the sequins with a little bit more space in between them. So you're gonna work that round, and then you're gonna do another round of the same thing where you're placing it every other, where you're placing a sequin in every other stitch. But this time, the second round you do of that, it's going to be offset from the first round.

Let me show you what I mean by that. So this shows after working round eight, okay? And round eight you start with an extended single crochet, just without a sequin. And then you place a sequin and do an extended single crochet okay? And then you repeat that.

So your first stitch of the next round is gonna have no sequin, and then the following stitch will have a sequin. So you can tell if you're putting that in the right place. If you take a look here, you can see there's a sequin here and a sequin here. This was the last round. And then in between those two is a sequin from the previous round.

So they should be, you know, interspersed, not stacked up right on in a row, but they should be interspersed evenly basically. Just a little off, each row will be offset from the row before. Alright, so you'll do another round of placing a sequin in every other, in every other stitch. And then after that you're going to be placing a sequin in every fourth stitch okay? So we're gonna take a look at round nine.

We're gonna place a sequin in the first stitch. And then we're gonna extend a single crochet into three stitches without sequins, okay? So we're gonna place that sequin right at the beginning. How do you add sequins after you start your work? Oh, okay, that's a very good question.

I will show you that in just a minute, Debbie. Okay. Alright, so we've placed our sequin, then we're gonna do an extended single crochet, and then we are going to do three extended single crochets without placing a sequin. Let me mark that first stitch. Alright, so we'll do an extended single crochet here.

And in the next stitch. Just keep sliding those sequins down, and in the next stitch. Okay, so we've done, we've placed a sequin and we've done an extended single crochet, and then we've done three extended single crochets without placing a sequin. So it may be easier for you to think about it like you place a sequin and then you do four extended single crochets, if that makes sense. I think of it as that sequin is connected as part of that first extended single crochet.

And then I do three more extended single crochets without placing the sequin. But however, however it makes more sense to you. But basically what you're doing is you're placing a sequin and then you're working four stitches alright? So here's the first, and of course in this round and here after we are not doing any increases. There's the second one, third one, and the fourth one.

Alright, let me show you the back here. So you can see there's bigger spaces now between our sequins. There's a sequin here, right by my stitch marker. There's a sequin here and there's a sequin here. So they are not coming as frequently as they were before okay?

'Cause we're sort of, every time we go around we're gonna have fewer and fewer sequins until we get to the bottom where there's no sequins. Okay, so let's go back to Debbie's question about adding the sequins after you've started. So let's say that, here, I'm gonna just crochet this one sequin in here. Let's say that was the last of our sequins on our strand. Let's just ignore this little pile of sequins here.

Let's just say we ran out, okay? So now it's time to add some more sequins. So all you do is a little ways away from your hook, you're just gonna break your yarn or you can cut your yarn if your yarn is not breakable, that's fine too. And then you're gonna go back to placing that strand of yarn through the thread, just how you did before, like that. And then you're gonna add your sequins on, I only have two sequins left, so we'll just, I'll just be showing you with two sequins.

So you slide your sequins on and then you can pull your needle back off. So now you have one strand that is still connected because you were holding two strands together. You have one strand that's still connected and then one strand that is no longer connected. So all you need to do is you can just start crocheting with this strand. But I'm gonna back up one part of that last stitch, that last yarn over of the last stitch.

So we're just gonna pull that out, and we're gonna pull out the top of the broken piece there. And we're gonna add in the piece that has the new sequins on it. We're just gonna lay that and hold it together with the other strand that was never broken, right? And then we're gonna do a yarn over with those two together, just like that. And don't worry about where these yarn tails are, if they're on the outside of your work, the inside of your work, it doesn't matter 'cause when you weave them in, you can weave them into the inside.

Just don't, don't worry about those. You got enough stuff going on here. So after you've done that last yarn over, then you can continue with your new strand of yarn. I think we are doing three more extended single crochets. So one, two, and three.

And then you're just gonna slide that sequin up. And then you would do your, that's your extended single crochet with the sequin. And then you do three more extended single crochets without sequins, okay, on this round. So basically all you need to do is you just break your yarn, but give yourself enough of a tail that you can weave it in, and then you thread it on just like how you did at the very beginning of the whole project. And then you just add that yarn back in.

It's just like when you run out of yarn as you're working on any other project, you just have to add in a new strand of yarn. But that was a very good question. Thank you for asking that Debbie. I meant to explain that and I got a little sidetracked, so I'm glad you brought that up. See, this is why I really appreciate you guys putting your questions in the chat because you can keep me on track.

Alright, so after you go all the way around, spacing your sequin out, so you'll be placing a sequin, extended single crocheting for four stitches. You do that all the way around, and then you're gonna do kind of this a similar thing on the next round when you are placing one sequin and doing extended single crochets in between your sequins, there's gonna be four of 'em again on the next round. But they're gonna be offset just like we did before when we went every other stitch with a sequin. This time we are going to be crocheting around so that, you know, your sequin will end up in the middle of, of where the previous round had been. So let's take a look here.

Alright, so the last round that we were working on that I was showing you, let me get to the end of my strand here. Alright, the last round that we were working on was this round here. You can see there's a sequin, a long space with no sequins, a sequin, okay? Then on the following round, your sequins should end up in between those two sequins all the way around okay? And then after you do that round, and don't worry if this, you know, the pattern will tell you exactly where to place your sequins.

So you don't have to remember all of this stuff. That's why we have a pattern. So you can check it out. But I just wanna explain these things to you just so that you can check and make sure things are turning out how they're supposed to. Alright, so after you finish that second round where you space them every four stitches, then you're gonna do a round where you make absolutely no sequins in it at all.

So you're just gonna do a round of extended single crochet. And then you're gonna do another round of placing the sequin you know, between every four stitches again. So that will match the first round of that that you did. So you can see here's a sequin here from that first round of spacing it every four stitches apart. And then we did the second one, we did a round of just plain extended single crochet.

Now we're back to the placement of where the first, the first round of those sequins placed every four stitches apart. Okay, and so depending on the size that you're making, you might do, you might repeat that again. So just follow your pattern. For the baby size, we only work a total of four rounds of the sequin every four stitches pattern. After that you're gonna do one round of just plain old extended single crochet.

So let's see. Okay. Alright, Debbie says, thank you for your answer. I am glad that that helped out. Yes, and I'm so glad you asked that.

Okay, so at the end of the crown of the hat, the top of the hat, everybody is going to end up with one round where there's no sequins placed whatsoever, where it's just an extended single crochet round and then you just fasten of okay? And then you're gonna make the second part of the hat, which is the ribbing. So the ribbing looks like this. This might look super wide for a baby size, but it is going to get folded up like that. So let's begin.

Let's see, I'll just use this yarn. I'm gonna show you how to work in this stitch pattern. This is just half double crochet, worked through the back loop only. And if you've never heard of that before, that is totally fine, I'm gonna show you how to do it. Again, we are using the same hook and we are holding our yarn together.

This time we don't need any sequins, there's no sequins at all in the ribbed band. So that makes it go way faster. Alright so you're gonna chain however many stitches your pattern tells you to. I think for mine it's chain 21, either 21, 23, 25, 27, or 29. For just the purposes of showing you this stitch pattern I'm just gonna chain, I don't know, maybe like 10 or so, just so you can get a feel for what this looks like.

So you'll make your chain and then that includes one chain that's going to count as basically a turning chain. We're gonna start with the second chain from the hook and we're gonna work half double crochets across. Now I like to work into the bottom of my chain. This what we're looking at here with all those Vs on it, that's the top of the chain. And that's normally where we slide our hook under.

Some people slide it under the back loop or the front loop, under both loops. But I pretty much always like to work underneath the back bump. So those are the horizontal dashes. If you roll your chain over so it's sitting on the table upside down with the Vs flat down onto the table, all these little horizontal dashes, those are the places where I insert my hook underneath when I tell you to crochet into the bottom or the bottom bump. Some people call this the back bump.

Some people even call it the back loop, which I think is confusing 'cause this I think is the back loop. But in crochet there's lots of different terms for the same thing and it can be very confusing. Alright, so we're gonna start in the second chain from the hook. So that's the first one, there's the second one, and we're gonna do a half double crochet. So we're gonna yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through three stitches.

Okay so that's our first half of double crochet. Let's do that again. Yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, pull through three, yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, pull through three. Okay, so we're just gonna continue making half double crochet stitches all the way across into each of those back bumps or the bottom, the bottom of the chain until you get to the end. And I made this hat in two pieces, which is kind of unusual for me.

I oftentimes like to make things all in one piece if I can. But the reason I did that was because I thought it might make things a little easier for fitting the hat. Because it is so hard to tell as you're, because you do all those increases at the very beginning of the hat, it is hard to tell exactly what size your hat is going to be unless of course you've done a gauge swatch, which I highly recommend, but I know that there's going to be people out there who are gonna skip that anyway. And I wanted to make this a little easier on them. So the ribbing, you can, you're gonna make this back and forth and turn rows and you can make this to whatever length you need to to have it fit on your head.

And then you sew it to the top part of the hat. So that, this is the part, you know, of your hat that really matters what size it is. It needs to be smaller than your head size so it can fit really nicely. It can stretch to fit. So this way you can kind of adjust things as you, as you're working on it at this point.

Alright, so I've worked a half double crochet into each stitch across. I've gotten to the end. Your piece will be much wider, this is just a sample. And then we are going to chain two. And I like to chain these tightly.

A chain one would also work here too. I used to do a chain one, but I feel like my chain, tight chain twos look a little neater and tidier so I like to do it that way. Then you're gonna yarn over and then you're gonna insert your hook underneath the back loop only. So if you take a look at this, here's your two chains that we just made, those two tight little chains, this is the stitch where we would be working into. I'm gonna insert my hook under just the back loop, which is right here okay.

So this is where we normally put our hook right there underneath both loops of the V, we're gonna put it under just the back loop. So we're gonna yarn over place our hook in the back loop, yarn over, pull up the loop, yarn over, pull through all three. And we're gonna continue that working through just that back loop all the way across. And this, you know, working through the back loop that allows it to have a little more stretch. It also gives it that sort of, you know, the horizontal stripes in it that are characteristic of a ribbing.

So that's why we're working it through that back loop. It just, it helps the fabric be a little more stretchy and it looks like ribbing there. And when you've gotten to the end, oh and I would recommend if you're newer to crochet, keep a stitch marker in the first and the last stitch of each row. Your turning chain does not count as a stitch in this. So when you make your turning chain, think of your turning chain as just being a ladder.

You're never gonna work into those, into those chains again. You're just using them to get up to the next level like this. So you'll chain two, we're not gonna work into those. We turn our work, we're skipping those turning chains, but we're working right into that back loop of the first stitch. Okay so each, each row is the same.

We're just working across half double crochets through that back loop. Okay, and you can start to see how we're getting that, sort of, that sort of striping going on here. The ribbing texture, like that. And you're gonna work back and forth and back and forth until you've worked the proper amount of rows that your pattern calls for. And for the baby size it would look like this, okay?

And we'll put our hook back in here. So that would be, this would be the last, we are looking at the side that we have just worked. We've just worked across here. And now we are going to chain one and turn our work just like we're gonna work another row. But this time we are gonna take our foundation chain, which is here, and we're gonna place it on top of, in front of that last row that we worked.

Now we are going to work slip stitches through. We're gonna slide our hook through a little part of each stitch. We're only going through the back loop of the, the row in front and the back loop of the row behind. So we're gonna insert our hook underneath that back loop and then underneath the back loop of the row behind. To connect them together we're gonna yarn over, pull through and pull through the loop on the hook.

So we're do gonna do that again. Insert your hook through the back loop and through the back loop of the row behind and pull through. And we're gonna work this all the way across. And if you don't particularly like doing this step, you could certainly just fasten off and you could stitch the two shorter ends together with a tapestry needle. That would be perfectly fine.

I find that this blends in pretty well and it's a little faster for me to do. So I like to do it this way. Also I think that most times it gives the ribbing just a little bit more stretch. You don't really have to worry about stretch in this direction too much, but you know, it doesn't, sometimes when you sew that up you can, if you're not careful you might be constricting your stitches just a little bit and you can kind of see, you can kind of see that. Alright, we've almost worked across the whole thing and we're gonna end at the top.

This is going to be the top section of our ribbing here, but actually the top or the bottom doesn't really matter. The only reason that it's the top is because that's where our yarn tail is going to be. So it makes it a little bit easier to sew the top of the ribbing to the hat if we have that big long yarn tail. But if you find that one side of your ribbing looks much better than the other, then you know you can switch that around. That doesn't really matter.

Alright, so we're gonna cut our yarn, yarn over and pull through leaving a nice long yarn tail. And then you can block your two pieces. You can do, if you made it out of acrylic, you can do a little steam block. You can also steam block wool if you like. I like to wet block my wool usually, give it a little chance to, to dry after you do that.

And then at this point we're gonna sew the, the top to the ribbing. So let me just get this yarn out of the way here. So now we have two long strands to choose from, which is great 'cause just in case we run out. I'm gonna tuck this strand underneath here. You could weave it in.

It might seem strange that I am leaving the, the slip stitch seam that we just made on the outside of the hat. But the reason that I'm doing that is because it will really end up being hidden when we fold the brim up. So that's why, that's why it's just staying there on the outside. And it does not matter exactly where you match up the hat. I'm just gonna match up my, my ending tail with my beginning tail here and I'm gonna sew in this direction.

And then if I run outta yarn, I can sew in the opposite direction with the other strand of yarn. So in order to get these two to match up, you can see if we kind of walk our pieces along each other, the hat is actually larger up here than the ribbing. I wanted the ribbing to have to stretch to fit on the head. And this should just pretty much fit. So you are going to have to do a little bit of easing.

So you can take a pin and, or you can use stitch markers for this if that makes it easier. And you're gonna attach your hat together at this point. And then you can find if you put that on one end and fold your piece flat. And fold your other piece flat, you can connect these two together. Even though this is longer up here compared to this, that's okay.

You're just gonna place the two together. You're just butting up the two edges. Alright and then, so now you've got those two connected and you can just sort of stretch your ribbing out just a little and see where it wants to fit. And for the baby size, you really only need to probably, you really only need to pin this in about four places, but feel free to pin it all the way around if that's helpful to you. But for a larger size, you know, the adult sizes, you probably will wanna add some more, throw a few more pins in there.

And just be careful that you're not pinning the two sides of it together. Like you should still be able to put your hand in here. Make sure that it's not pinned through to the opposite side by accident. Alright, so now to sew them together. You can choose whether you wanna be looking at the right side or if you wanna be looking at the wrong side.

I like to sew mine together looking at the right side, and I'm just gonna do a whip stitch between the two of them leaving these two edges kind of butted up next to each other. You can see there's a little gap there where my finger is. You're just going to catch a stitch here and then catch part of the side of a stitch here and pull that through. So I made sure that I went through each stitch from the top part of the hat, and then just wherever it seems to connect to the bottom, that's where my needle comes out. You don't need to worry about, it's not gonna match up one stitch per one stitch.

It's just not, it's not gonna match up. So don't try to match it up that way. Just, just go from one stitch, make sure you're catching each of these stitches, and then wherever it lands on the other side is fine. Alright, so I'm getting pretty close to the end, so if you guys have any questions, anything you're wondering about with this hat or if you have anything else that you think I might be able to answer, then you can drop your questions in the chat box so that I can see that you need something answered. And I'm just gonna continue stitching these two together.

Oh, like I was saying before, you can block each section of this first if that makes it easier for you. Or if your pieces seem to be pretty uneven, it might be a good idea to block them first so that you can match them up nicely and not worry about, you know, if your pieces are pretty uneven it would really help to block the each piece separately first before you put them together. But if they look pretty okay to you, I would recommend just sewing them together like this and then blocking them once your hat is already a complete. That's what I did on, on my hat up here and it was fine. And I did a little test to see because I wanted to recommend steam blocking acrylics because if you're using an acrylic yarn, it makes a huge difference to steam block.

Wet blocking doesn't really do that much for acrylic in my opinion. And I did not wanna recommend that without, you know, without testing whether the steam would have problems with the, I mean whether the sequins would have problems with the steam, but it seemed to be okay. I steamed my sequins and they didn't seem to change color or bleed or melt or anything like that. You don't, definitely do not want to touch your iron to your work. You don't wanna, I mean you don't wanna touch it to your yarn anyway, but certainly don't touch it to your sequins 'cause they'll probably just melt right onto your iron.

You have a big mess. But I did end up, I wet blocked this hat, the blue hat here, and that worked really well for me. I actually like to block my hats over balloons sometimes, especially if they have a lot of gathering up at the top, like this kind of hat where you do all of your increases pretty much right at the start. It really helps to not have your hat flat on a table or, you know, if you're blocking it flat, it works, it works fine to block it flat, but you just don't wanna intentionally block creases into the sides of your hat. So I find it as a little bit easier to block things if I can put it on something round.

So if you are wet blocking something, you can take a balloon and blow it up and place your hat on top of the balloon and let it dry in a mug, just kind of balanced in a mug. That is one of my favorite ways to block hats. And that really makes the top of your hat look really nice. You just don't want to inflate your balloon so much that it's going to be larger than the head. You don't wanna stretch out your yarn I guess is what I'm trying to say.

You don't wanna stretch out your hat at all, you just wanna make sure that it's gently draped over a small balloon. Alright, so I'm running out of yarn here on this side, so I'm just going to weave that in here. And then I'm gonna use the other side to go the opposite way on the hat. And this way, I mean you can, you know if you just, if you forget to leave a yarn tail on one of them, if you remember by the second piece that you do to make a very long yarn tail, you should be able to stitch these together with your long yarn tail. But sometimes long, extra long yarn tails could be kind of cumbersome.

So that's why I like to kind of do it in two sections like that. See we've made it almost all the way around the hat. We just have a little bit more to stitch up here. And then we will talk about the pompom for a minute. And you could, I used, I really liked how the faux fur pompoms look, but you could certainly make your own pompom if you wanted to make it in a matching color, that would be fine too.

I just have a few more stitches left to do, remembering to catch each stitch from the top of the hat. Here we go. And then after you've gotten this all together, you know, you could, you block your hat, you're gonna block it. You can block it with the, the ribbing unfolded or you can also block it with the ribbing folded up. If you block it with the ribbing folded up, then it will probably maintain that crease a little bit better.

But if you're gonna block it on a balloon like I did, it might be hard to block it like that if it's a damp hat. So you could block it twice, you could block it once with the, with the ribbing extended like how this is, and then later go in, fold up the ribbing and just give it a little shot of steam or something to help it wanna crease in that place. Alright, so then we would weave in our ends. And every time I weave in my ends I like to kind of split yarns a little to make it stay better and go in at least two different directions, 'cause that helps it stay in place. But you can use whatever your method is for weaving in your end here.

I cut this off. Alright, here's our cute little baby hat. And you can see these are some pretty pronounced, you know, dips here. But once you block it, you can get some smaller little gathers. It won't look quite so, I don't know, bumpy and uneven.

Once you block it, it'll get like a smaller sort of gathered look. More like that. Alright, so then when you wanna add the pompom, you can, I just wanna show you this real quick. This pompom that I have in the, with a link in the pattern, it comes with an extra, it comes with a snap. So there's a snap already stitched onto your pompom and then there's a snap that you sew onto your hat.

So all you need to do is sew that on, you snap it together, your pompom is on your hat. There's another kind of pompom that's pretty common, which is this one. This has an elastic loop like this. So you can either sew that directly onto your hat, you can pull it through to the inside of your hat and then whip stitch it down. Or another method I like to use is you can sew a button to the inside of your hat and leave a little bit of a gap here.

So you can see I just opened up that hole from the beginning adjustable loop, so that way you can pull the loop through and button it around the button and you can take that off if you want to. Like say you wanted to wash the hat, but you didn't wanna wash the pompom, that's a nice way to have a removable pompom. So there, that's what it would look like if we stitched our little pompom on. Isn't that super cute? Such a cute little baby hat.

Alright, well this was a super fun project for me. I know that it seems like it takes a long time to do all these sequins, but this is a, you know, after you do all those increases at the beginning, you don't have to think so hard about where everything goes. This is a good project for watching a movie, placing those sequins. You just have to give yourself a little, know ahead of time that it is going to take some extra time, but it's not a hard thing to do. And I hope you guys really enjoy making this hat.

Thank you so much for joining me.