I can’t quite figure out yet how much yarn to buy when embarking on a new project. I’d bought way too much yarn for my keyboard scarf, so I had enough white yarn to do another scarf and a hat. I decided my next crochet project would be for Minnie, and since she didn’t have any specific requests, I took the opportunity to experiment.

Behold the paddle wheel:

Using a motif/patchwork pattern from my mother’s book as inspiration, I made a bunch of these and stitched them together into a scarf. It’s an unusual looking scarf. Take any two adjoining paddle wheels, and they look almost like a bra. So it’s either a scarf or an over-the-shoulder boulder holder for a 15-boobed alien. I’m almost aghast at the thought of actually sending this to Minnie lest she look upon it like it was a three-sleeved sweater.

But I made a matching hat for it, and it sort of makes up for the oddity. Here’s the hat:

Again, I used the paddle wheel pattern as a base, and then I just sort of winged it from there, hoping it would come out looking like a hat. I actually had to frog it (undo the stitches) twice because I made it too small each time, and after I finally got it to the right size, I was too scared to fasten off the end in case I changed my mind and had to frog it all over again. I left it that way for the longest time while I worked on other things, letting it sit until I didn’t have a big bun on my head so that I could try it on myself to make sure it would fit an adult-sized noggin, but I did like how the top turned out:

So today, I did away with the big bun, gave myself some pigtails, and tried on the hat. For those of you still obsessed with my hair and occasionally writing me to ask about it, the braids go down to mid-thigh in this style. It’s still all the way down to mid-calf when wet and not braided, so I think that’s the longest it’ll ever get.

Slightly off-topic, the barista at Starbucks asked me today what I thought was a joke question: “How do you make your hair that long?” I really thought she was joking, but she was quite serious.

I told her, “Um, I stopped cutting my hair.”

But anyway, here’s me, trying on the hat (photo made black and white because of the ghastly yellow cast brought on by the energy-saving fluorescent lighting in my bathroom):

And once I could assure myself that the hat could fit a head, I finally fastened off the hat, folded up the scarf, and tucked the bundled scarf inside the hat. Voila.

I’m still not sure the scarf will be a hit with Minnie, so in order to have a back up crocheted gift I’ve started experimenting with my leftover teal yarn. I’m making a matching scarf and hat with a starburst pattern—again, totally experimental, following no grand pattern whatsoever, just a blind trust to luck that it won’t end up with three sleeves.

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