Eleventh Hour Beanie

Hi, everybody. Welcome to our live crochet event. I'm Brenda K.B. Anderson, and today I'm gonna be showing you how to make the 11th Hour Beanie. So if you haven't already done so, you can go ahead and download the free pattern.

There's a link in the description. So you can find that and you can follow along. Or if you just wanna watch this now, you can certainly download it later. You don't have to download it now. But I'm very excited to teach this because this is kind of my special dedication for those of you who, like me, kind of procrastinate and sort of end up doing things at the last minute before the holidays.

So I mean, I dream big, and I think about all the gazillions of different presents I'm going to make for everybody, and then somehow it's like mid-December and I think, "Wait a minute, how many have I actually finished? Oh. Whoa, I have to get going on this." So this is my special project for those of you who are like me, or also if you're just looking for something fast. Sometimes I like to, actually, often, after I do a very complicated project that takes a lot of thought, I like to have what I call a chaser afterwards where I make a project that is just like easy, it's quick, it's like instant gratification. So this is one of those.

All right. And obviously, this is a live event, so if you guys have questions, if you'd like to just pop in and say hello, tell me where you're crocheting from. You can tell me what you're working on or what you're interested in making in the future. I'd love to hear from you guys. So go ahead and put those comments in the chat box, and I will see them.

And hopefully if there's questions, I'll be able to address them during this live presentation. So let's start by just talking about the materials you're gonna need. So as you can see, here is the hats. So this one actually has a purchased pompom, but I do have description or instructions inside the pattern to make your own pompom here, which is in this sample here. And this is a little baby size.

So these hats are sized from baby to a large adult. So they can fit everyone on your Christmas list. And as you can see, they are made with very thick yarn. So that is how we get away with making these at the last second. And they're still fun to make.

No stress involved, right? So you're gonna need two or three skein of a super bulky weight yarn. The specifics for this yarn are in your pattern, so you can go ahead and look it up. The brand I used, exactly how much yardage you need for your size, all that different information. That is all inside your pattern.

So you can refer to that. But I do wanna mention this. If you're shopping for this at the store and you don't know what a super bulky weight is, 'cause sometimes it's not labeled super bulky weight, you can also look on the label. It should say, a lot of yarns will say CYCA. That means Craft Yarn Council of America.

They came up with a standardization of different weights of yarn, weights meaning how thick the yarn is, really. And this is a number six. So it'll say CYCA and number six somewhere on the label. But having said that, the number six weight yarn, there's kind of a large variety of different sizes. I mean, I know they're all supposed to be about the same size, it goes by wraps per inch, but it can vary a lot.

So if you're substituting with another yarn, just be checking, in the first couple rows of your pattern, just be checking to make sure it's really going to be the circumference that you think it's going to be. Because even if your gauge is a little different from mine, when you're using such super thick yarn like this, just a little bit of a stitch off, that can be, you know, that can add up across the width of your hat, and then all of a sudden your hat's two inches bigger than you thought it was gonna be. But luckily this is such thick yarn that it does not take you very long to do a couple rows in your hat. So this is kind of like the perfect project for gauge cheaters like myself who really don't like doing a gauge swatch. You can certainly do a gauge swatch.

If that is what you normally do, then that's awesome. But if you end up just picking your size and working a couple rows in your hat, you can measure that width to check what the circumference of your hat's gonna be, and then you'll know for sure how that's all gonna add up when you have the correct amount of stitches. All right, so you're gonna need a couple of skeins of a super bulky weight yarn. And I should also mention this is 100% wool, and it is a one-ply yarn. So one ply meaning it isn't a couple of strands of yarn twisted together, it's just one ply.

You can see here. Just one. It's also called roving sometimes. And I am using a P/Q 15-millimeter hook. Very large hook.

But you will use whatever hook you need to in order to get the gauge that you need for this project, to get the correct dimensions of your hat. All right, so let's get started on making our hats. I'm gonna be working on the 20-inch circumference size. That's smack dab right in the middle of the parentheses. Oh, I'm just gonna explain something real quick.

For those of you who are newer to working from a pattern, if you look at your pattern, you will see there's a section that says Abbreviations. It's in a gold box. So that's gonna tell you what all the different abbreviations that you see in the pattern, what those letters stand for, what they stand for. And also, I do have definitions of the stitches that are less common. So like the trinity stitch, which I'll be showing you.

I'll be showing you all of this stuff. But I just wanna make sure that you have that for reference. You know, you can flip over to the special stitches section and read through how to make the trinity stitch and how to make a trinity stitch decrease. But I'll be showing you all that as well, so you don't have to worry about it, if you're more of a visual learner like myself. But also, the other thing, a lot of people have questions about when they're first working from patterns and they're still a little unsure, they get a little confused about what this parentheses business is about.

So if you take a look down here, it'll say chain 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34. So what is that all about? That is just different directions, depending on the size you are working. So if you look at the size section in here, the finished measurements and the sizing, everything in parentheses will be in the same place within those parentheses. So for example, I'm working the middle size in the parentheses.

So let's see. One, two. That's also the third size. So this would be the adult medium underneath the size section, which could also fit a kid. You know, adult medium, it's just sort of a general.

In the size section, it's just sort of a general idea about who it's going to fit, okay? So you should really go off of the finished measurements to choose your own size. But in this, I'll be working the adult medium size, which is 20 inches in circumference. See, that's in the middle of that group of numbers in the parentheses. And then when you get to the instructions, I'm following that middle number as well.

So right here I'll be chaining 30 stitches 'cause it's the number that's in the, you know, the third number in within those parentheses. All right, so let's start out by chaining 30 with our super giant hook. All right, we're gonna make a slip knot. And we'll put that right on our hook. And we're gonna chain 30.

So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, and 30. All right. And we are going to start with a second chain from the hook. So if you take a look at our chain. And we're also gonna be working into the bottom of our chain.

You don't have to work into the bottom of your chain. You can choose to work in it however you normally do. But the reason that I work into the bottom of my chain often is because that edge will look very nice and tidy, and it'll have all these little V's along the edge. And that looks the same as the last row that you worked. So it doesn't really apply to this hat, but I just like how neat and tidy that edge looks.

So I oftentimes choose to work into the bottom of the chain. So if you're gonna work into the bottom of the chain, what that means is if you lay your chain down and you see all those V's that are kind of all stacked up, that's the top of your chain. You're gonna roll it over so that that's facing down onto the table. And then you are going to work underneath these little horizontal dashes. That is the bottom of your chain.

So we're starting in the second chain from the hook. So here's the first one. We're not gonna work there. There's the second one. We're gonna work a single crochet into the stitch.

All right, so we're gonna insert our hook through, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. There's our first stitch of the row. And if you are newer to crochet, I would recommend putting a stitch marker in that first and the last stitch of the row so that way you don't end up skipping a stitch at the end or adding an extra stitch. It's just an easy way to identify where to start and stop at the ends of your row. So I'll put a stitch marker there.

If you, you know, if crocheting is something that you've already been doing for a while, you don't need to worry about marking that. All right, so we started out with one single crochet, and now we are going to work a trinity stitch. So in order to work the trinity stitch, we are going to pull up a loop in three different locations. So the first location is in the same chain that we already worked our single crochet into. So here's our single crochet.

And we're gonna pull up a loop in that very same spot. Then we are going to pull up a loop in the next horizontal dash, and then a loop in the following horizontal dash here. So we're pulling it up from one, two, three locations. So we're gonna insert our hook, yarn over, pull up our loop. Then we're gonna insert our hook in the next stitch, yarn over, pull up a loop.

And insert our hook into the next stitch, yarn over, pull up a loop. Now you should have four loops on your hook, and we're gonna yarn over and pull through all four. And when you do that, kind of pull up a little bit on your hook so that your hook doesn't get stuck in all those loops. So I'm pulling up on my hook to stretch out all those loops so that I can easily slide through all of them. And after you do your trinity stitch, you're gonna do a chain one.

So for every trinity stitch along in this pattern, you're gonna do a chain one right after it, except for the very last stitch. There's a little bit of a modification. So I'll be showing you that when we get to the end of the row. All right, so we have a single crochet, a trinity stitch, and a chain one. Now we are gonna continue doing trinity stitch, chain one, trinity stitch, chain one.

Ooh. That is a hard tongue twister, you guys. Try saying that out loud. Okay, so here's our trinity stitch. We'll insert our hook here, pull up a loop, insert our hook into the next stitch.

Wait, let me back up and do a little review. So there's our trinity stitch. That was the last loop that we pulled up, right there. Excuse me. All right.

Every time you start a trinity stitch, you're always going to be pulling up the first loop in the stitch that you last worked into. So for example, before we worked in our single crochet, and we pulled up a loop from that same single crochet from where we worked our single crochet into. Now we've done a trinity stitch, and there's a chain one up here, we are going to work into that last loop where we made our last, where we pulled up the last loop for our trinity stitch. So we're gonna pull up a loop here, and we're gonna pull up a loop here, and we're gonna pull up a loop here. So every time we make these trinity stitches, we're pulling up three loops.

And the first of those is pulling up a loop from a stitch that's already been worked into. All right, so we're gonna pull up a loop here and the next stitch and the next stitch. We're gonna yarn over and pull through all four loops, and then we'll do a chain one. That's what it looks like. So we're gonna keep repeating that all the way across the row.

So we're gonna insert our hook in the used stitch. So pull up a loop and pull up a loop into each, or from each of the next two chains. One and two. Pull through all four and chain one. So the reason we're always doing that chain one is because what we're actually doing here is we're doing a decrease stitch every time we make a trinity stitch, because we're pulling up loops from two locations that haven't already been worked, and we're working those stitches together.

So we would actually end up with fewer stitches if we did not do that chain one in between. That's to just balance out the stitch count. All right, we're just gonna continue this all the way across. And you'll have a different number of stitches, of course, for the different sizes. We're about halfway there.

This is probably the trickiest row because you have to work into that chain. It's always just a little bit tricky to work into the chain. Make sure that it's not twisting on you and you're pulling up a loop from the correct location on the back of the chain there. Or the bottom of the chain, rather. And every once in a while, you'll wanna stop and check and make sure you're doing those chains in between your trinity stitches.

If you look at the top of this, the top edge of your work, you'll see that the trinity stitches become a little bit elongated, and then the chain ones are just a little shorter. So you'll see longer, shorter, longer, shorter, longer, shorter. So in that way, it makes it easy to tell if you have forgotten a chain one. Because if you do forget one, you're gonna have to go back to that previous row and reduce so that you can get that chain one in there. But like I said before, these stitches are so large, it doesn't take too long to unravel one row of stitches and to redo it, so.

All right, couple more trinity stitches and we will be at the end of our row. And then I will show you the little variation instead of just a regular chain one at that very end. All right, we have two more stitches left. So we're gonna do one last trinity stitch, and that uses up all of the chains we have. There's our last trinity stitch of the row.

And instead of doing a chain one here, oftentimes a trinity stitch pattern, the pattern will tell you to do a single crochet here. So you'd do a single crochet in the same space as you pulled up that last loop from your trinity stitch. So you just do a single crochet in here. I'll show you what that looks like. Like that.

But what I do not like about this single crochet is this tends to make a big hole here as you're going back and forth. And when I first made this hat, I saw this column of holes and I thought, "Ugh, I don't like that." So I came up with a different way of getting that last stitch at the end of the row where it doesn't leave a big, gaping hole there. So if you take a look at your trinity stitch, you have pulled up these four loops here. Well, this loop was already on your hook, but you pulled up a loop from here, a loop from here, and a loop from here. So that last loop that you pulled up, right here, we are gonna insert our hook through that loop, and then we're just gonna do a slip stitch, all right?

So we'll just insert our hook from right to left through that last leg, that very last loop that we pulled up in the trinity stitch. We'll yarn over, and we'll pull up a loop. And we are going to pull that through the loop that's on the hook. Just like that. So what that does is it kind of pulls this up and it doesn't create a big gap right here.

So that's why I like this better. If you have already worked in the trinity stitch before and you really like doing that last single crochet, you know, you are your own boss of the crochet. You can absolutely do it that way. But I just wanted to show you this little trick because, especially with this very thick yarn, it is kind of noticeable if you have that little gap there. All right, so at the end of the row, we're going to just chain one, and we're gonna turn our work like that.

And now we're looking at the wrong side of our work. And we are going to continue in the same stitch pattern. So we'll insert our hook into that first stitch, yarn over, pull up a loop, and yarn over, pull through two. That is a single crochet. That very first stitch of the row is always gonna be a single crochet.

We start out with a single crochet. Ooh, I should back up and tell you too. All right, here is, yep. So I backed it up to where we did that very last slip stitch there. And we're gonna chain one and turn.

That chain one that we make is never gonna count as a stitch. So we are just using that as a turning chain. We will never work into that chain. Okay, so we're gonna start with the second stitch, really. So this was our turning chain right here, right there, and we are gonna put our single crochet into this stitch right here.

All right, so we'll insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. Okay, so that's our first single crochet of the row. And now we are getting to continue across making the trinity stitch. So we're gonna insert our hook into the same stitch as that single crochet, pull up a loop. Insert our hook under the next stitch, pull up a loop.

Insert our hook under the following stitch, pull up a loop. Yarn over and pull through all four. Then we are going to chain one, just like we did in the previous row. So we're gonna work into the last stitch we already worked in. So pull up a loop there.

One. Pull up a loop in the next stitch. Two. Pull up a loop in the following stitch. Three.

We should have four loops on the hook. Yarn over, pull through four, and chain one. All right, so we're just gonna work that all the way across the row to the end. And one thing you might notice is that those chain ones, they do get a little bit tighter. So you may find that you need to, on purpose, make those chain ones just a little looser than you normally would.

But having a looser trinity stitch and a tighter chain, that actually helps me keep track of how many stitches I did and whether I have a chain between my trinity stitches. And you can feel it. When you insert your hook, this is a little tighter. Pull up a loop. This is a little looser.

This is that trinity stitch. And then the next one is a little tighter stitch. That's the chain one. So you're always going to be starting and ending by pulling up a loop in those tighter spaces. So that helps you keep track of if your stitches are matching up, if you have the correct number of stitches.

All right, so you may have noticed we're running out of yarn here. And I wanted to show you a little trick that I used to add yarn. When it's 100% wool and it is not a superwash, that means it can felt. So we are gonna actually be felting these two pieces together because that way you don't have to weave in ends. Now, if you are using a super bulky yarn that is not a feltable thing, it's okay to weave in your ends.

And I would recommend splitting. You can even split your in half and weave it in in two different directions. It can just be a little bit problematic with these thicker yarns to hide those yarn tails very well. So one thing I like to do is I will spread out. I will pull up maybe like about a quarter or a third of my yarn off for a couple of inches.

Here, I'll show you. So I just ripped off a little section of my yarn just to make it a little thinner. And I'm gonna do the same thing on the opposite side. So this is maybe about a third of the thickness of my yarn, just getting rid of a little bit of it like that. And I like to rip it instead of cutting it because then it makes, if I rip it, it makes this kind of fuzzy end instead of a chopped off end that I have to hide.

And then you can just overlap those two areas, put them right next to each other, and use just a little, tiny dab of water. I have here this cute, little water bowl. So you just dab a little bit of water on there. Some people use their spit. That's fine too.

I'm not gonna judge you. All right, so then it just has to be a little bit damp to help it felt. So you're gonna lay them together, and then put one hand on top of the other and roll them back and forth until they are sticking together. You don't want too much water or they're not gonna stick very well. It just needs to be like slightly damp.

And you can feel it. You want it to be just damp enough to make it almost sticky in your hands, like, so there's a little traction. You can kind of feel it between your hands. And I can feel my hands heating up a little here. And what I'm doing is I'm just felting those two strands together.

And you wanna just make sure there's enough overlap here. You don't wanna just overlap it a little bit. You wanna overlap it at least three, four inches, something like that. And see now we have one continuous strand. We've just joined our yarn so that way we do not have to weave in that end later and find a good spot for it.

So then we'll just continue as if that never happened. Whoops, I've gotta pull up one more strand. And so somewhere in there, that's where I had changed from one strand to the next strand, and you can't even tell. It's a little bit of yarn magic. And Sadie E., she says, "Beautiful pattern." Thank you, Sadie.

That was nice of you. All right. So we'll get to the end of the row, and I'll show you one more time that little extra slip stitch at the end. That last stitch of the row. All right, I think we have a couple more trinity stitches.

Maybe three to do. One, and then chain one. Remember to always put those chain ones in between. And every once in a while, kind of stand back and look at it before you do the next row to make sure you actually did it, 'cause it's easy to miss those. And you will always have you, you know, you will always have two stitches left at the end, and you'll work your last trinity stitch, just like now, pulling up a loop here, here.

And in that last stitch, which we marked, yarn over, pull through all four. And even though you've worked all your stitches, don't forget, we're gonna put that one last little chain one at the end. So we're not just doing a regular chain one. We're gonna insert our hook underneath that last loop that we had pulled up right here from right to left, yarn over, pull through, and pull through. So we've made ourself a nice tight, little stitch, and that's where we'll work our single crochet on the next row.

So we'll yarn over, turn our work, and then we're gonna continue working back and forth and back and forth in the same stitch pattern. It's just a one-row repeat. It's so easy. You just have to remember to start with a single crochet, and then do trinity, chain, trinity, chain, trinity, chain. And then remember to do a trinity, and then that extra little slip stitch at the end.

So that's all you're doing back and forth for the specified amount of rows in your pattern. And in this case, it would be nine, but I also wanted to mention here too, this hat, I designed it to be just a little bit tall 'cause I thought it looked cute, but if you wanted a hat that really hugged the top of your head, you wanted a shorter hat, or maybe you have a shorter forehead. I have kind of a taller forehead, so my hats tend to be a little bit taller in general, I think. So, you know, feel free to alter the height of your hat at this point. So you're gonna be working rows, depending on your size, we're gonna be working rows two through nine back and forth in that trinity stitch pattern.

But I'm gonna only work eight here just to make a slightly shorter hat, just for fun, just to change it up a little bit. But I also wanted to show you how to count your rows in the trinity stitch. So I like to count them from, let's see, from the right side of my pattern. Or the right side of my work, I should say. And I look at these stitches as being almost like a little star, like a little flower, poinsettia, something.

Let's find a really clear one. Like right here, here's the center of what I look at as the star. So everything kind of radiates out from this point. We have these lines going up and over to the side and down. So if you can find one of those, that counts for two rows, okay?

So when you do the the first row, you're making the bottom of that. And then the second row, it makes the top of that. So you can count these in groups of two. So there's one, two, three, four. There's four rows here, but they're counted in groups of two.

So you would count two, four, six, eight, all right? so that means we have eight rows here. And that's where we're gonna stop before we do the decrease row. And you guys, there's only one decrease row in this entire hat. So easy.

This is probably the quickest design that I've ever designed, I'm pretty sure. It's very fast and fun. All right, so I've worked eight rows, but if you were working this size and you were following the directions, you would wanna work one more row. Well, I'm not telling you what you want. You may want to work two through nine.

That's what I suggested for this hat that's a little bit taller, as you can see. But I'm gonna make a little bit shorter one just for fun. So I'm gonna chain one and turn, and then I'm gonna work the decrease row. So you can see here, it even says in here the decrease row. So this is very similar to what we've already done.

Oh, and Elaine is saying that these types of tips are so helpful. Oh, thank you. That was so nice for you to say. I always like to explain all the little things in my head, and sometimes I wonder if I'm just overexplaining everything. So thank you.

Okay, so I've worked my eight rows, and now I'm gonna do a decrease row. And the decrease row starts out just like any other row. Okay, we've already done our turning chain, and then we're gonna do a single crochet in that first stitch. There's our single crochet. And now we're going to to work a decrease trinity stitch.

All right, so in order to do that, we are going to be inserting our hook just like before in that same stitch as a single crochet. So we'll grab a loop there, and then we'll grab a loop from the next place and grab a loop from the next stitch as well. And if we yarned over and pulled through, that would be a normal trinity stitch, like how we've been doing. But we're gonna go two steps further. Okay?

So we're gonna get two more loops. We're gonna go to the next stitch, grab a loop, and we're going to go to the following stitch, which again is a chain one. We're always ending on that chain one. And pulling up a loop from there. Now, you can see I have six loops on my hook, and we're gonna yarn over and pull through all of them.

One, two, three, four, five, six. And then we're gonna chain one here, just like that. So you can see it's similar to the regular trinity stitch. It just has a few more legs radiating out here. And what we've essentially done is we've just decreased our stitch count, including that one chain that balances things out.

But we've still decreased it by two stitches. All right, so we're gonna do that again. So we're gonna insert our hook in the same space as we pulled up our last loop to do the next trinity decrease. Insert your hook, pull up a loop, and then you're gonna pull up a loop again until you have six loops on your hook. One from each of the next four stitches.

So we've got six loops on our hook. Yarn over, pull through all six loops. Then we're gonna do a chain one. That's what it looks like. And we're gonna continue that, pulling up loops, making sure you have six on your hook before you do your last yarn over, pull through.

And then we're gonna chain one. So I think different sizes, for different sizes, you may end up having a regular trinity stitch at the end of your row, depending on the size that you're working. It may just work out that you can decrease all the way across. But if you are left with only those two stitches left and you don't have enough for a decrease, then you just do a regular trinity stitch at the end of the row. I'll show you what I mean when I get there.

Here, we've got six. Chain one. And let's see. Chain one. For this size, I will have enough to just do decreases all the way across.

But if you ended up with only two stitches left, say your piece ended here, you would just do a regular trinity stitch. I mean, this is all in your directions. I'm just letting you know. Just depending on the size that you're working, it may look a little bit different than mine. All right, so we've done our last decrease.

And instead of doing a chain one here at this point, we are going to do the same thing we've been doing. You're just gonna put your hook underneath that last loop that you pulled up, yarn over, pull up a loop, and pull through the loop on your hook. And we're gonna chain one and turn. See how we have kind of scooched our hat in a little bit? This will help us later when we finish off the top of our hat.

We won't have quite so many stitches to pull together. So we're gonna do one last row of trinity stitches. Now, we're not doing decreases anymore. We're just doing the regular trinity stitches. And hi to Rachel.

And also Mary says she is new to crochet, and I'm making the instructions clear enough that she could make this. Awesome. I'm so happy to hear that. Oops, I missed my stitch. There we go.

So remember, we're just pulling up loops until we have four on the hook this time, remember, 'cause we're not doing a decrease row on this very last row. All right. Chain one. Another trinity stitch. I think I have one more trinity stitch to do, maybe two, and then we'll be ready to finish up our hat.

There we go. Here's our last trinity stitch. Yarn over, pull through four. Remember to go through that last loop. Yarn over, pull up a loop, and pull through that loop on the hook.

And then we are gonna fasten off with a long enough yarn tail so that we can gather the top of our hat, and we can sew the edges together, 'cause it's gonna be seamed right here. And normally I like to make my hats in the round so I don't have to do a seam, but this stitch just seemed too confusing to me to do it in the round. 'Cause then you'd have to join and turn. Ugh, I just wanted this to be a very simple, very easy hat. And I was happy when I stitched that seam in it.

It's really not that noticeable. Here, I'll show it to you. So it's right here, that seam, but it's really not that, it's not so noticeable. Unless you made it yourself, you probably wouldn't even notice that it's there. All right, so when we have chopped off our yarn, I'm leaving like, I don't know, I have a pretty high tolerance for working with long yarn tails.

Maybe this is too long. I've got probably like a yard and a half almost here. I don't think we really need that much, but I would say maybe a yard would be good. You can draw that through to fasten it off. And then we are going to thread our needle, and then we're gonna close the top of the hat.

Let's see. Oh, Nancy's wondering if I have a pattern for my sweater. Actually, I bought this sweater. I feel like a cheater. But I am working on a sweater that's very similar to the sweater right now.

That's actually why I bought the sweater. Sometimes I like to call it sweater research when I buy sweaters because I like to see how they fit on my body and what the proportions look like. And then sometimes I base designs. I don't copy what I've already had, but like, there are elements of it that sometimes I will take and Frankenstein my own pattern out of. So I bought this because of the collar.

That's funny that you liked how the neckline is too. But yeah, I don't have a pattern for it yet. But something with this collar will be coming in the future. Okay, so, oh, let me talk a little bit about threading the needle. So for me, I have a yarn needle with a pretty large-size eye.

A large-size hole there. So it's not too hard for me to get my yarn through. But if you don't happen to have a, you know, a larger needle like that, let's see, I'm gonna pick a smaller one. If you have a smaller one and you are trying to get your big, fat yarn through there, don't worry, I have a trick for you. If you take a little scrap of worsted weight yarn, which, ooh, and I forgot to tell you guys, you do need a little bit of worsted weight yarn.

Like, maybe like two yards or a little bit less for making the pompom. If you're doing a handmade pompom, you're gonna need some worsted weight yarn to tie your pompom together, which we'll get to in a minute. But if you have a little scrap of roasted weight yarn, you can fold it in half, and then push that little, folded bit right through your needle like that. And then you can thread your yarn, your thicker yarn, through there. And you can use this yarn to, here, let me try to make this a little more clear, what I'm doing here.

Then you just have to loop that through. So it's long enough. It's not gonna come out. And then you can just pull on your yarn and pull it through. Let's see.

Hopefully it'll go. You can do it. Ooh, this eye might be just a little too small for this trick. Actually, I did this earlier, but I used a piece of thread instead of yarn, and I think that's the difference. So if you have like a button thread, a thicker thread, it would be thin enough to pull it through.

But this eye is just a little too short. Let me see if I can get it through this way, though. If you fold your yarn, you probably could get it through. Oh, maybe not. All right, I guess you guys are gonna have to get a needle with a larger yarn.

Or you could try doing this trick, but with a piece of thicker thread, which I did have success with earlier. Believe it or not, I did test this out before this live event here, and I could do it. I did do it pretty easily with a piece of thread. I think it's just that the doubled yarn is just a little too thick to get through the eye of my needle there. All right.

Now, the other thing I wanted to mention about this yarn is that it's a one ply, so it's got, you know, a twist. It's twisted up, and as you work with it, it can kind of come untwisted. And when you untwist a one ply, especially a one ply, if I untwist this here, then it gets much weaker and you can pull. You can break your yarn much more easily than if, let's see, let me twist it up here. If it's twisted really tight and you try to break it, it's really hard.

I can't even break that. So that is gonna make a huge difference when you sew this thing together. You just have to make sure, I'm gonna trim this down a little. I was a little excessive in my yarn tail here. Okay.

So you just wanna make sure that you're keeping your yarn twisted. I'm just twisting my needle here to make that yarn have a lot of twist in it so that we don't lose the twist as we're sewing. Whoop. All right, so we are going to bring these two ends together. And the first thing we're gonna do is we're just gonna slide our needle through all of these and pull them tight, and then we are going to stitch down our opening.

So I just like to go underneath that... Oh, let's take a look. Okay, so I'm looking at the wrong side. You know, the right side and the wrong side, I did label that in your pattern directions. And the only reason I specified a difference between the right and the wrong side is because I liked how this bottom edge looked from this side better than from this side.

So, you know, if you are like, "Yeah, Brenda, I don't like that side as much as I like this side," then this is your right side. You can be in charge of your own crochet, so do it however you like. The right side, wrong side thing was just so that I would get this edge to be on the outside every time. All right, so we are going to begin by just pushing our needle underneath that first stitch. And I'm right-handed, so I wanna go around this way instead of just going around that way, 'cause I want my needle to be facing in this direction.

So I'm just going to be putting my needle underneath just the front loop. Just like that. You could do it under both loops if you have a fluffy enough yarn, but I tried that, actually, and it seemed a little too thick. You're trying to condense twice as many loops into the space. And then I got a little, tiny hole in the middle, and I did not like that.

So we're just gonna be going underneath that front loop. Whoops. Okay, so we're down to the last two stitches. And we've made it to the last loop. And now we're just going to pull tight to close that top till it all disappears.

And then I like to go around a second time. So meaning I like to just slide my needle through all of those loops. I'm just going right through that very middle. Pop out every once in a while to pull on your yarn. And make sure that your yarn is staying twisted, nice and tight.

Every once in a while you can just stop and twist your yarn, because if you let your guard down and your yarn untwists, it might break on you. Another thing you can do for the very top of the hat, if you're having trouble, is you can also use a sturdy worsted weight yarn to close that. But I find that it looks the best for sewing this seam if you're using the same yarn as you crocheted it with. It just will show less. So I really recommend just keeping it nice and twisted working with it.

And if it does break, you can always add another strand. So let's see. I'm gonna see if I can put something beneath here so you guys can see the edge of this a little better. So you may notice that this has a little bit of zigzagging going on. So it kind of goes out for a bump.

In, out, out, in, out, in, out. It's like a little zigzag, but it's like a puzzle piece. It matches up with the opposite side. So where it goes in here, it goes out here. So that's how you know if you're lining your piece up correctly.

You just kind of fit it together. It's like little teeth, jaws. They kind of just fit together. And you can go ahead and pin that if you want. Here, I'll stick a pin in it to show you how I would pin it.

When you're pinning things, you wanna pin like you're sewing. So you'll go in and out, and then leave your pin there. You never just kind of slide your pin in because it's just gonna come back out. All right, and I'll pull this back out of here so I don't actually sew my hat to my skein of yarn, which I could definitely see myself doing. This is a little bit more art than science.

You just kind of go under a little bit of a loop and a little loop from the other side and pull on your yarn. And you can go in the opposite direction as well. Like, I just turn my needle this way, and then I'm turning my needle this way. So I'm kind of doing these sort of loops. Basically, what I'm doing is going this way, going a little bit this way, going this way.

If I take a whole step this way, turn my needle and go a half a step that way, come down, go a whole step this way, that seems to work really well for this hat. But basically, you're just looking for little areas where you can dig your needle in. You wanna avoid the bigger loops like this one because that, might end up with just a hole there. But if you can find the smaller, like, little tighter, almost like a knot kind of feeling and put your needle through there, then you'll have a little bit more success. And you don't have to go backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards.

That's just something that I found helpful so that I could get all those little bits to line up. So I kind of am passing through twice, basically. I get two chances to catch all those little pieces. All those little knots at the end of my rows. If you just snake it through one time, you don't have the chance, then, to kind of fill in.

If there's any larger gaps or spaces, then you won't be able to fix that quite as easily. Oh, and Peggy has a suggestion. If you don't pull the top of the hat tightly, you can use it for ponytail. Yes, you definitely could make one of those messy bun hats out of this if you don't pull it all the way closed. It'd be very cute.

And if you're gonna do that, then you definitely wanna make a shorter hat so that your bun can actually come out, so that it's not, Because the way that it is now, it sits a little bit up off the top of my head. But this hat I think will kind of hug the top of my head. All right. And thank you for the compliment, Teddy. They're saying it's a very pretty design.

Thank you for your doable, last-minute gift idea. Yes. I make a lot of last-minute gifts. As I was saying earlier, I always think I'm going to have time to do all these elaborate things, but, you know, sometimes life just kind of messes up with your plans a little bit, and you end up with not a lot of time for some things. But this is a really, it's a really fun project, and, you know, the person you're giving it to, they're not gonna look at it and be like, "Did you only spend an hour on my hat?

I mean, what about last year's hat that you made me that took you three days to make?" You know, they're just gonna look at it and be like, "Oh, what a super cute hat," and put it on. And they're just gonna love it. All right, so here's my seam. Looks pretty good. And we've made it all the way to the edge.

And now I just wanted to do one last little thing to kind of hook these two together and make it look really nice. I'm gonna go underneath this loop right here, or you could go under this. Let's see. I think that'll be okay. This is only just like a little part of a stitch.

We'll go under here. If you wanted it to be a little tighter, you could go under here. That would pull it a little tighter. We'll try this one first. We're gonna go underneath those two loops, and then we're gonna come back up from the back of this stitch.

It got a little fuzzy from me kind of messing with it earlier. But we're gonna come up through here. And see how that makes that edge look a little bit nicer? And we're gonna go back down the same place, just like that. So it makes the edge look very clean.

And then we're gonna weave in our ends. And we're gonna talk a little bit about that. I really like to split my yarns when I weave an end. So what that means is instead of going underneath little loops here and there and going in between all the yarns, I will actually go under a couple of loops here and there, and then I will use my needle to slice through the yarn. You can see it's going right through the middle of this yarn.

And that will give it a little bit more traction, and it'll keep it from popping out so easily. And actually, sometimes I will use, not on this project 'cause this yarn is so thick, but when I'm weaving in ends, normally I will use a needle that isn't even a yarn needle. Like, I'll use a chenille needle that has a sharper tip and a fairly large eye, and I will just weave it through, you know, basically sewing it into the thickness of the fabric instead of just kind of using your needle to go in between all those strands of yarn. All right, so we've switched directions a couple of times to confuse our yarn so it can't find its way out. And we would weave in this end as well.

Any other ends that you end up with, you'll weave them in. And then we are gonna talk a little bit about the pompom. All right. Okay, here we go. So if you're making your own pompom, actually, I wanna say something else about the pompoms.

If you're purchasing a pompom, I didn't really talk about a specific size or anything in the pattern 'cause I just made the directions for making your own yarn pompom. But I thought about this last night, and I was like, "Oh, people might wanna order a pompom." And what I found was that when you are purchasing a pompom, especially if you order one online, it'll say something like four inches wide. And it sounds really big. And this actually is like 3.5, maybe a little bit bigger. And it might seem like, oh, it'll look about the same size.

But if you look at the two of these, this is a six-inch pompom, okay? But I think what they're measuring is the little wispiness that sticks out here for those six inches. 'Cause there's no way. The bulk of the pompom, that is not six inches. So it kind of has the same, a six-inch purchased pompom will have a similar proportion to the pompom that I designed here.

So just if you were thinking about ordering a pompom or using a pompom, I didn't want you to be disappointed if you got a regular size, like a four inch, like a normal-size pompom. When it comes, it would look a lot smaller on this hat than this does. Not to say that there's anything wrong with a smaller pompom. That's completely fine. For this particular project, because the yarn is so hefty and thick and chunky, I really wanted a big pompom.

A big, meaty pompom on my hat. And so I was not gonna be satisfied by one of those little, four-inch, wimpy pompoms. All right, so that's my two cents about ordering a pompom. But if you're gonna make a pompom, we will cut a strand of your arm. You don't have to measure this, but I actually did put measurements in the pattern just to help you visualize.

But you can cut a strand of yarn that's about 12 or 16 inches, and then one that's about double that. And have those ready to go. And so that needs to be a yarn that is not breakable. You don't wanna use, you can't just rely on twisting the yarn to make this work. Your pompom will probably fall apart, and it'll be a sad day.

So make sure you get a nice sturdy yarn. I'm sure you have some worsted weight acrylic yarn in your stash, like most crocheters do. And that would be perfect for this project. It doesn't even have to be an exact match. Like, I'm using gray here, but you could just use something that's a similar tone.

That would be perfectly fine. This is a 3.5-inch cardboard. If you want a bigger pompom, you can use a wider piece of cardboard. And we're gonna wrap this about 40 to 50 times. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.

Whoops. I've gotta wrap that back up. I just undid my wraps. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40. We're almost at the end, so I'm just gonna wrap a few more times and cut it off.

All right. And then this is the part where you get to, if you have a buddy at your house when you're working on this, you can ask them to help you hold this. But if you don't have a buddy, I'll give you a little tip. You're going to be sliding the shorter piece that you set aside underneath all those loops. So you're just using your finger.

Ooh, I kind of lost it for a second there. Okay. Sliding that underneath all your loops, and then you're gonna tie a really tight knot. Okay, so you're gonna tie it right in the middle, like this. Tie it as tight as you can.

And then if you don't have a buddy, you're going to just use your fingers to twist this around upside down. That, for some reason, it helps me hold this so much better than if I don't do that. And then you're gonna tie the other part of the knot. And we have a nice sturdy knot. Okay?

And then we're gonna flip it over, and we're gonna do the same thing on the other side with our doubled piece of yarn. We're gonna hold it doubled. This is gonna make it extra sturdy 'cause this is the yarn that we're gonna use to sew it onto our hat. So we're tying it right in the middle. And Cindy Wolf is telling me to have a wonderful holiday.

Thank you, Cindy. That's so sweet. I hope that you guys all have really awesome holidays and make lots of excellent handmade things. Whether they're for someone else or you're just at home crocheting away for yourself, that sounds lovely either way. All right.

All right, so I tied a nice sturdy knot on that side. And now we can slide the loops off of our crochet. Our crochet. Whew. Off of our cardboard.

Anything that starts with a C is just gonna be called crochet today, apparently. And you can see, so I tied, this is the side where I tied that double strand, so I'm gonna flip it over so we can see the other side. Doesn't really matter where these go. They're just kind of there to hold our loops until we get this part done. And now where you're going to again tie in the same spot.

This might seem like a lot of tying, but it's really worth it because it's gonna help hold your pompom nice and tight. You don't want these things to slip out. Oof. All right, I'm gonna do one more knot, just for fun. And then you're gonna hang onto these two strands.

You can clip the other two that we had used. The other two worsted weight strands, you can just cut them down to about an inch or so. Might as well just leave a little bit there. That's not gonna show once you fluff up your pompom. All right, and this is the part I always love the most about making pompoms, is you get to cut it open.

So you're gonna just be looking at the side and using your scissors to just slice right down those little loops. You can free all the little strands and just try to keep your scissors in the middle. You know, you don't wanna be cutting over here 'cause then you're gonna get short strands over here and long strands on the other side. Just try and find the middle, and then do a little hunt and see if there's any little loops that you missed. There's a couple more.

All right. And so you might notice this is a crazy-looking pompom, right? We've got some long, weird ones there and some shorter ones. So you're gonna trim it all down to the shortest spot, right? To match that, you're gonna trim it into a nice round sphere.

I like to call it giving your pompom a haircut, and it'll look so much better. So on the adult sizes, the medium, really, and the large, unless your gauge is really spot on with mine and you're using the same yarn, you may find yourself having a little bit less yarn for the pompom than I specify. If you're very careful about your gauge and you're using the same, you shouldn't need to worry. But I wanted to show you that purchased pompom as a backup plan if you're like, "Ugh, I don't wanna buy a third skein of yarn just so I can have enough yarn for a pompom." And in that case, if you did, you know, if you make up your hat and you don't feel like your pompom would have quite enough, you know, enough strands in it, then you can always add that purchased pompom. Or maybe you just like how purchased pompoms look better, but.

I mean, I do like the purchased pompoms, but I also really enjoy making pompoms too. So any excuse I get to make a pompom. All right. So that looks pretty round. You can always trim some more off later if you're looking at it and you're like, "Ooh, kind of missed a spot there." It's just like getting a haircut, right?

Maybe you guys are all getting perfect haircuts, but sometimes there's a little extra trimming at our house that happens after the haircuts. Okay, so now we're going to send the yarn through two different paths through the top of your hat. So if you look at the very top, where you've closed it in, all those little loops are pointing to the inside or pointing into the very center. You're gonna put one strand through here on this side of the center and one strand through here. Just opposite each other.

It doesn't really matter where they go. They could go here and here, here and here. You just don't wanna put them directly through that center because then your pompom will be you have to tie it to itself on the inside, and you want it to be centered over that. All right, so I pulled it through, and it's in my hand right now on the inside. And I'm just gonna let it rest for a second.

I'm gonna thread the other side through my needle. And there it is. So directly opposite that, we're gonna send it through. And then we will just tie these two together. A nice tight knot.

And you can send these back through the hat and just trim them off. As long as they're shorter than the pompom, they probably won't show if it's a similar color. Or you can weave them in like I'm doing here so that you don't have to worry about anybody seeing those unsightly ends of yarn sticking out. All right, weave it in a couple different directions. And it should be fine 'cause it's, you know, you knotted it to the other half.

So it shouldn't be going anywhere. You're just kind of keeping those yarn tails hidden. And I'm gonna weave this end in too. And oh, you know, I forgot to talk about blocking. So before you add the pompom, you can block your hat.

You can also block it after the pompom if you wanna just steam block the hat. If you accidentally got too excited and you just put the pompom on, and then you thought, "Whoops, I didn't block it, but I wanna block it." So you can just do a little steam blocking at that point. You can also, you know, you can hand wash this hat, even when it has the pompom on it, but I wouldn't. I mean, even if you are using a washable yarn, I still would not recommend throwing a big pompom like this into the laundry, even if the yarn is safe to wash. I would still hand wash it.

But you can block it by getting it wet. But I would try and keep the pompom out of the water if you're gonna soak it and then block it, and you've already stitched your pompom on. Just because it'll keep your pompom nice and fluffy that way for the first wear. So this hat I actually just steam blocked. I didn't soak it.

And I think this hat, I sprayed it with water, and then just let it dry over a balloon, which is another way that I like to block things to give it a nice round shape. And it really didn't seem to make too much of a difference with the texture either way. So I'm just gonna check in here and see if I missed anything. Oh, some more awesome compliments from you guys. You guys are so sweet.

Let's see. Mary Sage says, "Loop your yarn twice. The first time tightened down, it will not get loose. It's called a surgeon's knot." Oh, okay. I'll have to look into that.

So that's for tying the knot. Okay. Oh, okay. And Susan does the double cardboards, and then she wraps, and then she ties in the ridge when she does her pompoms, I'm assuming, right? Susan, her previous comment that I just read about the scissors traveling in the ridge, that was in all caps.

She said, "Sorry, I hit the caps lock by accident. I wasn't yelling." Don't yell at me about making your pompom, Susan. Thank you for clarifying. Okay. All right.

And that's it. So you guys, thank you so much for being here. I always love doing these lives. I love it when you guys are making comments, and I know that you're out there. And if anybody is a gold member, I will be doing another live in about a little less than half an hour now to make up a pair of socks.

So please join me for that if you are a member, a gold member. Otherwise, I'm sure I will see you sometime in January. So thank you so much for joining me. I hope everybody has a really great holiday season. Take care.

Bye.