Trying to Catch Up

Lately I've had the best problem! I don't have enough time to get all my custom orders done! Between updating my shop, taking care of my kids & my house, and my part-time job, it's been a crazy time! I'm so excited about all the amazing hats my customers have been requesting. It's true that I make them, but they pick the colors which is one of my favorite things to do! I LOVE working with people to make them a hat that is personal for them!

I've just been so busy lately that I haven't had much time to blog or get my website more organized. I'm trying to create a 'page' on my site where you can buy my hats & patterns direct, instead of going through Etsy, where a lot of my fans don't have an account. It'll be an easier checkout process and you can still order fully custom hats! I'll keep you updated and let you know when I'm ready to launch it!

In the meantime, here are a few of my recent orders & new photos for my shop:

New Photography:

    

                      

     

Custom Orders:

  

  

Varie-hated

Ok, maybe hate is too strong a word, but I'm talking about variegated yarn here. You know that familiar feeling when you walk into a yarn store - your hearts starts beating when you see all the amazing colors and different textures. Out of the corner of your eye, you see an amazing color combination and it's all contained in one skein! That's variegated yarn. But then you get home and start to use this perfect yarn with the perfect pattern, expecting to get a fabulous mix of colors. What you get instead is a finished product that has a distinct color pattern, exactly what you didn't want!

Well, maybe it's never happened to you, or maybe I'm just a yarn snob, but I tend to shy away from commercial variegated yarn. I'm not talking about the delicious hand-dyed stuff that's so good you should be required to get a prescription to buy it. Nope, I'm focused on the big name, usually crunchy-feeling 3-4 color yarn. Variegated yarn, by it's nature almost always gives you some pattern, just because the color repeats itself in fixed intervals. But knitted items made from this yarn usually turn out pretty cool looking. No one ever thinks of us hookers who want to achieve that same look.

 

(Neither one of these items were made by me, by the way. They're just examples of the color patterns)

Alas, I am working on a custom order right now for a kid's camo hat, I can pick the design, it just has to be camouflage colors. First of all, that's a pretty big range of color palettes, but I narrowed it down and and started searching the 3 places in my little town where I can buy yarn (Walmart, the high-end LYS, and a modest little craft store). Instead of buying 4 solid-colored skeins (most of which would not be used in the hat and I'd have a lot of yarn in colors I don't normally work with) I broke my rule.

I settled on a skein of surprisingly soft commercial yarn from the craft store (not Red Heart!!!!!) and got to work. I knew I couldn't bring myself to do a simple hdc or dc hat because I'd end up with exactly what I'm trying to avoid. Sometimes I like that variegated pattern, it's just not what I was looking for this time. I tried alternated rounds of hdc and sc. It was working for a while, but soon, a pattern started to emerge. It wasn't as obvious as the all-one-stitch hat would be, but I wasn't happy with it. Aside for the fact that I'm making this hat for my boss's kid, I knew I could create something much much better. The frogging began (frogging = ripping out your work. rip-it, rip-it, get it?).

I remembered an interesting stitch texture I saw once and thought, I could do that. It's called a 'basket weave stitch". basically it's a sc hat, but you work a ch between each sc and on the next round, work into the ch-space. Here's what resulted. There's still a pattern, but it's a little more subdue with a little more texture.In the end, I'm happy with it.

HAPPY HOOKING!

YAY HALLOWEEN!

I didn't do anything for the spookiest holiday last year so I wanted to start early this year. My husband's already talking about 80's punks & mohawks while I'm thinking of going Madonna-Like-a-Virgin style. You remember in the 80's when she was cooler than Lady Gaga is now? (Sorry Gaga fans, but I ♡ the 80's!).

Through all my decoration scheming and costume planning I had my Etsy shop in mind. I wanted to make some Halloween hats that were cool enough to fit the rest of my shop (that's right, I said my shop was cool). The design process led me to modify two of the designs I already have listed in my shop to create some of the awesomest (it's a word...) Halloween hats on the block! So take a look!

I took my Avalanche Beanie and turned it into this Spiderweb Halloween hat. I can make it in ANY size and change the colors to whatever YOU want.

For this Candy Corn Hat I used my Woodland Hat without the earflaps. It's a simple hat, but it's yummy!

Celebrate Halloween with me for the whole month of October!! And let me know what size your melon is so I can get started making you a custom Playin' Hooky design.

HAPPY HOOKING!!

It's been crazy

I know it's been FOREVER since I've written last, but my life has been a little nuts lately. My mom came for a visit, I sprained my wrist halting my crocheting, my daughter started pre-school, I started a new position at work, I reached my 100th Etsy sale and my 400th Twitter follower, I got a red ribbon (second place) at the CO State Fair, and I got a haircut. Ok, well, the haircut thing wasn't that crazy, but I thought it was worth mentioning. (Sorry, I'm in a weird mood).

The biggest thing that happened is that I sprained my wrist doing yard work. I couldn't move it for about two weeks, which means I had to put all my crocheting & designing on hold. I'd been close to finishing my wholesale strawberry hat order when it happened which was just plain frustrating. I literally tried on every single wrist brace in my little mountain town trying to find the one that was small enough for my tiny wrists. I finally found one and I'm happy to say that my wrist doesn't hurt at all anymore! So now I've reassumed my mission to finish the strawberry hats (only 6 left!!!) and taken on a few custom orders in the process! I plan on finishing a few more designs and finished hats to get ready for the Farmer's Market on October 9th where I hope to have hats & hand-dyed yarn. I hope to have my next "INSPIRATION MONDAY" installment next week where you can see more of what makes this hooker tick. I promise to write more often. Shameless Self-Promotion:

Pick any 3 Hooky patterns for a discounted price

HAPPY HOOKING!