Walking Heads

I think I may have mentioned in this space that I spent a great deal of time crocheting this winter. I craved short-term projects that needed some design so the thought process was minimally engaged.

But most of all, I needed to feel yarn in my hands.

There are eight hats here, all of my own creation. They all have their initial impetus in one of the worst crochet patterns I think I've ever found. It's from a booklet I've had tucked away among my crafty stuff for years. It's for a simple hat made of half-double crochet stitches.

I made a prototype from scrap. It was a bomb. But it sparked the idea for these hats. Another book inspired the topknots that decorate these creations.

So I experimented—different-sized needles, different yarns, different combinations of yarns, ways to handle the topknot—and I was off.

The first half dozen of these went to the clothing shelves of our local homeless shelter, the Upper Valley Haven. Ever since, I've called these hats Haven Hats.

I've been waiting all winter for the right combination of snow texture (meaning it would hang together in snowballs) and lighting so I could plop these babies on top of a team of snow people. Yesterday, Jay took the initiative to fashion these heads. It was his idea to add the scarves, and he took the initial pictures of my creations for the cover of a pattern book I'm planning for these simple, versatile head toppers.

I thought his idea really worked, and I'll be outdoors doing more photos this morning because we're getting rain sometime later today which means my walking heads will start to disappear.

But aren't they fun?

A closeup of one of the original Haven hats so you can see the topknot better.

This is the prototype made from scrap yarn following the pattern that eventually inspired
my Haven Hats. Looks like something the Cat in the Hat would make, doesn't it?