May the Force be with you!

How are you doing on this Friday Night? Here's a little something that I've made before Christmas (I had already posted a little teaser on my brandnew Facebook-Page): Star Wars fans should recognize it at once (I hope): it's an R2D2-hat:

Some weeks before Christmas, a friend of my sister-in-law asked me if I could make this hat for her son, who is a huge Star Wars fan. She (the mother of the boy) gave me her son's Star Wars craft's book for kids with the written pattern for the hat in it, and I thought, well, that should be all easy-peasy...

For the basic pattern I had to make alternating rounds of single crochet and double crochet stitches. It didn't take long to figure out, that everytime the pattern said "single crochet stitch", they actually meant a chain stitch (easy to see: every dc-round started with three sc's...). It took a little longer to find out, that everytime they wrote "half-double crochet", they actually meant single crochet. Now you might wonder, if I just confused the British and the American crochet terminology, but no - the pattern was written in German!! But I guess it was due to a bad translation of the original pattern, that those mistakes occured - it's just sad, that the pattern wasn't tested (or even looked at) by a crocheter before they published this book...

Funnily, every other row started with something like this: "yarn over, make a stitch..." (which one??), "yarn over, make a stitch in the same stitch..." (okaaaayyy....) "yarn over twice, make a stitch, starting in the same stitch, ending in the next stitch" - WTF??? Honestly, I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, or how it would make an essential difference to the pattern (at the start of the row, which is the backside of the hat) and so I didn't even give it a try!

On we go: next came the big blue field for the camera, which was supposed to be worked in as you go, just changing from grey to blue at the right position in every round. In the end it looked liked a distorted trapezoid. I was disgusted.

Next came the little blue boxes/lines/windows. Although I had exactly the number of stitches that was written in brackets at the end of every round, the pattern didn't work. Not - at - all. In the first pattern round, I still had too many grey stitches left, in the following rounds their stitch count didn't come close to what I've made, and so I had to improvise and use the pictures of the finished hat as a help.

When I was finally finished, the hat was way too short, the form was somehow weird (a little pointy at the top), the fabric was too tight and not flexible (with lots of sc-rounds) and overall it was more than ugly. I didn't mind too much, though, because I had already decided to make another one when the big blue field turned out the way it did, and I just wanted to see where else I would have to make some adjustments.

I started a new try (the one you see here), and made all the necessary adaptions: I adjusted the shape at the top of the hat, making it flat. I've worked mainly with dc-rounds and switched to sc's only where the color-pattern required it, this made the hat more flexible. I didn't crochet the big blue field in, but made it separately and sewed it on afterwards. I improvised with the blue boxes/lines/windows rounds, using the pictures in the book to guide me. Instead of just crocheting little circles (representing cameras and light bulbs) and sewing it on, I added some buttons here and there for a more original look: e.g. the big black camera on R2D2's head was supposed to be a flat black circle only, but I added two black buttons to the circle, a huge one with a smaller one sewed on top - I think this part looks really cool, and very camera-like :)

Luckily, my younger nephew is a friend of the boy I made this hat for, and so I could use him as a model, to see if the hat fits - and it did (and I've heard that it fits the new owner, too)!

I'll be back soon, maybe next time with some more Wedding News - on Sunday we're going to a wedding exhibition with fashion show, that should be fun! :)