I finished the body of that open air shrug the first day of waiting. Day two my mom kept complaining that she forgot a belt for her pants so I whipped one up with the extra skein in my bag that I wasn't using. It was the Nature Spun, worsted weight wool in "Fanciful Blue" that I got from Hill Country Weavers. It is made by the Brown Sheep Company in Nebraska.
I looked around the internet for a pattern and decided to do a riff off of this Bow Belt by Love City. I used her base pattern which is pretty simple. I had my mom use a piece of yarn to measure her waist then chained the appropriate number of chains to equal that length. Then I used her idea of alternating single and double crochet all the way across. At the end you turn and alternate back stacking the single on top of a double and a double on top of a single. You repeat that till it is a thickness you like. I really liked that idea because since you are not creating flat tops to your rows the belt resists just folding over in half. Once it was the length and thickness we liked I wove tassels into the each end for her to use to tie it closed. It took about an hour to make. It functioned pretty well as an actual belt keeping her pants in place, so I was happy, and she could focus on looking after my brother.
After the belt was done I had maybe half the skein left and decided to make it into a earwarmer. Well it turned out that I did not have quite enough so instead it turned out to be more of a head band. I made the pattern up as I went along and I will share it here as I remember it. I didn't write it out. I made it to have a larger forehead area and thinner around the back of the head.
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| Finished head band on my lovely model! |
Chain 81, turn and sc 80 across. Slip stitch into the first to form a large loop. This should fit snugly around your head. Add more or take some away if needed.
Row 2 and 3: sc 30, hdc 20, sc 30 (80)
Row 4 and 5: sc 30, dc 20, sc 30 (80)
At this point yarn was dwindling and I thought I should start wrapping this thing up. Otherwise I might have done at least 4 more rows of this for the thickness to cover ears.
Row 6: sc 30, hdc 20, sc 30 (80)
At this point I noticed I was really running out or I would have done another row of hdc I think.
Row 7: sc 80 around
Bind off.
I had just a tiny bit left after that and decided to make up a flower embellishment to add to it. I used this flower pattern by skip to my lou that I had saved in my Evernote, but did the entire thing in the same blue color of the headband. I then sewed it on to the band at the end of the larger section. This took about one hour as well and just as I finished my brothers girlfriend came and decided to wear it. :)
So there you go. Hospital visits are great places to work on crochet projects, planned or otherwise.
