September 6 2018

Crochet Hat Goal Met!

I set the goal at the beginning of the year to crochet 36 hats to give away to charity. I met that goal on 8/28/2018 and thought I would share a bit about how setting goals and tracking them has revolutionized my productivity.

Actually, maybe I am just as productive as I ever was, but tracking my goals has made me realize just how much I am capable of accomplishing when I set my mind to it. When I don’t set a goal or track my progress toward a goal, I lose track of just how much I have done and so I am always feeling like I don’t get anything done.

Sometimes when it comes to crocheting the hats I make for donations to charity, all it takes is an idea for a new color scheme or yarn combination and then I want to at least start it so I can see how cool it will look. I hate having more than a couple of things started at once so I try to start and finish the hats during each of my monthly two-hour long crochet/knit group meetings. The knitters are always amazed at how quickly I can turn out a finished hat because apparently knitting takes much longer.

I won’t bore you with all the hats, but here are a select few for you to see how the same basic hat pattern can be infinitely different because of the combinations of yarns I choose to make them with.

Flat and tall on the head.
Folded with extra warmth for ears.

This was a fun experiment with the boa yarn someone was giving away. I paired it with basic black and had to go by feel to hit the stitches, but it turned out amazing. The black and navy combo of the boa yarn was a nice choice.
These were made with thick chunky yarns and trimmed with a variegated yarn. Note how the bands look different when paired with different colors on the top. The band yarn is the same.
Made these using up small balls of variegated yarn paired with a solid, then adding another solid when the ball ran out.
These are made with a light aqua and a peach colored yarn paired with a basic heather gray yarn.
First hat on the right. Second hat on the left. The blue ran out so I finished with gray giving this banded effect.

Not only have I crocheted the 36 hats this year, but I also made  5 small fleece blankets edged with crochet to donate to charity. Then there are the dozen or so soap sacks I made to give to the homeless with new bars of soap in them.

So have you met any of the goals you set for 2018? How do you make sure you meet or exceed the goals? Let us know how you are setting and achieving goals in the comments below.

If you want to support my efforts to crochet or just want to own one of my hats, check the selection available for sale on my Etsy Shop. If you have leftover acrylic yarn and want to have me make it into hats to donate, contact me to make arrangements to send me your leftover yarn stash and I will get right on it!

Happy yarning!

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January 25 2018

2017 Crochet Wrapup

You may remember that my goal was to crochet and donate 26 hats to charity in 2017. Above is the tracker in my bullet journal showing the approximate color schemes of the 52 hats I crocheted. Quite a few of these hats were actually infant hats. The last 8 were 8 or the 10 hats I made for the American Heart Association’s Little Hats Big Hearts Project. See those hats shown below. I am so over solid red hats for the time being. These are all packed up and ready to drop off.

I made these 15 hats using as many bright colors as I could and donated to the church hat tree to be given to students in need at local schools.

I made the star ornament below to test a pattern for the YarnSlingers group.

It took 10 minutes to make the first star, but only 8 minutes to make the second one.

 

Here are some of the other hats I made in 2017

All but a couple of the hats I made were donated to various charities to either help children or the homeless. I love crocheting when I know it will help others. It helps me to de-stress. I almost never actually crochet at home. The secret is to find groups to meet and crochet with. I have three such groups I meet with once a month and I can make a hat during each two-hour meeting. I occasionally miss a meeting but only if I am sick or out of town. I also crochet while we are on our trips. It helps to focus on my hat making while hubby drives and it is a great way to relax on vacation.

I finally got around to packing up the 14 baby hats shown below that I made in 2015 for Click for Babies and getting those mailed off. The requirement for these hats was that they had to be at least 50% purple of any shade. They seemed to be in need of hats for boys which is why I chose to pair the purple yarns with black and gray. They were some of the first hats I made as you can tell by the fact that they are made entirely of single crochet stitch.

Do you set goals for charity crafting? What do you make? Let us know in the comments below.

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June 22 2017

Crochet for Better Mental Health

Have you ever considered learning to knit or crochet? Perhaps you should. It could help your all around mental health.

I have discovered that I like the mind-numbing meditative comfort of knowing I can make the hat pattern I make all the time. I have to focus a bit at the beginning of each hat and count the stitches in each row before moving on, but then I can just crochet and talk to those around me without fear of messing up. It is very relaxing and enjoyable as long as my carpel tunnel doesn’t act up too much.

The fact that most of the hats I make will be given to the homeless and help make them warmer and let them know that someone cares about them only makes it that much better.

I can carry the things I need to make each hat in either a quart or gallon sized slider plastic storage bag. Easy enough to tuck into my tote bag or toss in the trunk so I can always have something constructive to do. Much of the yarn I use to make the hats has been donated to me for this purpose. It is my pleasure to find ways to make almost every hat unique and beautiful. I especially enjoy using variegated yarns because you never know what sort of pattern you will end up with. Note the diagonal striping in the brown hat shown below. I have fun putting different yarns together to see how they will turn out. See some of the photos below to see how pair different solid color yarns with the same variegated yarn can drastically change the way it looks. Here are some of my latest creations. So far, I have made 24 hats in 2017.

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Category: Crochet, Review | 1 Comment on Crochet for Better Mental Health