Here’s a fun little project that I’ve been tackling the last few days. The inspiration for this hat came this past Saturday from my table neighbor at the November Cleveland Craft Coalition Bazaar. She had a beautiful scarf crocheted in a variegated fall color way using a crochet stitch that I had never seen before called the crocodile stitch. Since I love learning new techniques, I decided that I had to teach myself how to make this stitch.
The process of learning the technique was fairly easy with the internet. All I had to do was google “crochet crocodile stitch” and I got tons of results. I started with learning the basics from this video on YouTube. After I learned the basics of the stitch I was ready to put it to use.
Though I think a scarf is a great application for this highly textured stitch, I wanted to try a hat, which is how I found this free crocodile stitch hat pattern. What’s interesting about this pattern is that it’s worked from the bottom up, which is opposite from the way I am used to crocheting. Along with becoming very familiar with the crocodile stitch by making this hat, I also needed to learn how to make a half double crochet foundation row, for which I used this YouTube video. Unlike a regular chain stitch foundation row, the half double one allows for much more stretch.
As soon as I saw the pattern online I knew right away that I wanted to make my hat look like an artichoke. I mean this stitch just screams ARTICHOKE to me! Luckily, I had nearly an entire skein of Caron Simply Soft yarn in Dark Sage from the shamrock garland I made last March.
It was very easy to adapt the before-mentioned pattern to look more artichoke-like. All I needed to do was create a stem on top to complete the look. Easy!
Have you made something recently that utilizes a new technique? I’d love to hear about it, or better yet see it! You can post a photo of a finished project using a new technique that you learned on the zween facebook page, or just tell me the story of a project in the comments below.
