I finished a hat! Didja see the hat? I spent the weekend staring at its perfect stitches and bright colors, and wishing it was just a smidgen bigger. Well, ok, maybe not the whole weekend. Riding high on the success of my first crocheted hat, I wanted to try something new, something different, and I wanted it right then. So I grabbed more yarn–Lion’s Jiffy, this time–and flipped through The Happy Hooker for a different pattern, and settled on something with a granny square (can’t remember exactly what it was now).
I made it through one round…and gave up. Poop.
For one thing, the Jiffy was totally the wrong choice–it was too thick, I couldn’t get the requisite number of stitches into the ring, and it was so tight I couldn’t tell one stitch from another. Also, I didn’t understand “corner space”. Now that I’ve googled it, I understand a little more what it is (and I realize now that using something as thick as the Jiffy was probably a bad idea), but I’m still not sure what to do with it. Do you work stitches in the space like when you’re doing a ring, or into one of the chain stitches? I don’t believe this was covered in The Happy Hooker. And finally, “slip stitch to the (whatever) stitch”? If I’m understanding that correctly, wouldn’t that thicken some of the stitches more than others? Seriously?
So yes, I gave up. I’m not permanently in the given up state, though; I prefer to blame my failure on the heat of the weekend, and now that I’m googling techniques (and easier patterns), I’ll try again. But it sure did deflate the beanie-high a bit on Saturday. (Not completely, though, ’cause–BEANIE!)