Crochet hat, scarf, and handwarmer set.

I actually finished this set over a week ago, but had packed it away in the closet, waiting for cool weather. I took it out to show it to the ladies at the crochet (and other crafts) group I belong to last night.

I used this yarn:  "I Love This Yarn - Stripe. Colorway - Somulant"  from Hobby Lobby. It's your basic budget acrylic worsted yarn, but feels a little nicer and softer than other budget acrylics I've worked with. I had seen this particular colorway and thought that lavender, along with orange, and then the brown and tan, was really unusual. Since unusual color combinations can go either way, I just bought one skein to play around with, figuring that if nothing else it'd be great practice yarn. I started crocheting with it and realized that I really liked what I was seeing, so I went back to the store and got the other two skeins that were in the same dye lot. The hook was a size I, and everything in the set is double crochet.

The hat is a basic beret/tam formula. You simply start with a magic ring, 15 dc into the ring to start your first round,  and make your increases like you were making a flat round coaster. And then when it's as wide as you want it, you stop increases and just double crochet around and around, building up the sides of the hat. When it's as deep as you want, you start decreasing to bring it in to the size of your head. To finish with, I did a couple rows of single crochet to stabilize it.

The hand warmers are simply rectangles, wide enough to wrap around my hands, and tall enough to span from my wrist to just above my knuckles. Then I stitched up the sides, figuring out how big and where to place the thumb hole. To get the thumb hole, you just mark it with a couple of pins, and stitch leaving the space between the pins open.

The scarf is nothing but row after row of double crochet. I had used up one and about a third of a skein making the hat and hand warmers, and I used what was left over from the second skein to start the scarf. Once I finished up the second skein, I took the third skein and cut off enough yarn to make fringe for both sides. Then I kept crocheting with that third skein until I ran out of yarn. So, three skeins in total for the entire set.

It was a simple, and fast project, and a nice way to add a fun and funky color accent to my basic brown sweaters. I've always loved "off" colors, and clashing color combinations, so this set is one of my favorite needlework projects so far.