The Mother Lode

Crafts and Crochet

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Crochet Hat and Scarf Improvisation Sizing Guide

It’s so great to follow a pattern for crocheting. It takes the guesswork away and it’s less challenging than improvising; however, I LOVE to improvise. Just sitting with the yarn and fiddling around with stitches until I find something I like is so enjoyable. Then, I want to turn it into something! Blankets and dishcloths can pretty much be any size and still be usable, but you can’t just sit down to crochet a hat without some guidelines! I find myself googling over and over again: hat size crochet guide. Which is just plain silly when I have a computer, printer, and laminator!

I’ve created this size guide that you can print, cut, and laminate. If you don’t have a laminator, I suggest you cut them out, glue them together so each chart is on its own side, and put a paper clip on it. Then you can clip it to whatever pattern notes or notebook you like to use! Keep it in your craft supplies and you’ll never need to search out these sizes again. I even strayed from my typical muted colors to make it easier to find in the bottom of your WIP bag!

Grab the PDF here!

Some more suggestions for improvising

In all honesty, I don’t typically block hats. If you are using nice wool yarn for your hat, you may want to block it, in which case you should account for that little bit of extra space you’ll gain in the hat from blocking. For scarves, I do like to block them for a nice drape, so again, think about that when you are improvising a pattern! Commercial yarn skeins often have a little guide on them that tells you how many skeins you need to make a hat, scarf, and sweater. Don’t neglect to use that to help with your creation.

When I’m improvising hats for my own family, I often will make the band first and just keep making them come to me so I can wrap it around their head, haha. Then I go from there to make the rest of the hat. Using real measurements of the person who is going to wear it is always your best bet! (Sidenote: moms of young kids, HOW do you keep tape measures around? Mine keep becoming mysteriously broken………)

The very first project I ever made was actually a scarf! I made it for my mom in 2011. I’m sure there were all kinds of tutorials and patterns on the internet, but for whatever reason I didn’t use one?! It was wonky but I was so proud! I do like to follow patterns, but improvising and designing are just more fun to me! To improvise a scarf, I suggest that you actually write down the stitch count at the beginning. It always seems to me that somehow I added or subtracted a stitch somewhere, and if I don’t know what stitch count I actually started with, it’s much harder to fix.

Grab your favorite stitch book! The one I use the most is called The Crochet Stitch Bible by Betty Barnden. My mom has a good one called The Crochet Stitch Dictionary by Sarah Hazell. These are so useful for providing not only the stitch ideas but they include the stitch multiples, so its much easier to improvise using those versus a YouTube tutorial that just shows how to do the actual stitch.

The most important tip for improvising, of course, is to have FUN. Let yourself enjoy the stitches and if you have to frog, that’s okay. Think of it like an athlete’s training. The crochet version of lifting weights and running on the treadmill!

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All Saints’ Day Activity Pages

I’ve got some other crochet and crafty things coming soon, but for now, one more thing about All Saints’ Day!

My son’s preschool teacher asked the families for ideas to celebrate All Saints’ Day with the children. Of course, I headed to Pinterest as I knew I could find some good saint coloring pages there. I found some to represent the classroom’s patron saint for this year. There are many different saint coloring pages, but not many that are more interactive than coloring, especially not for preschoolers.

So I decided to fire up Canva (the program I use for graphics, printables, and photo tutorials.) I ended up making two similar activity sheets. One is for the children to plan their saint costume. They can add the things they are planning to wear to represent the saint to a plain, haloed face. The second sheet is to imagine what they could do to become a saint. What kinds of things would represent their good works? What would they become a patron of?

All Saints’ Day is a beautiful opportunity to enrich our children’s lives with stories of the saints. Often, though, there are parts of those saints’ lives that are difficult to convey to little children. There are some great books out there to help you, though! Our favorite is Saints on the Go by Chantal Baros. I can’t find it in print anywhere, but you can check the author’s website for other saint books, saint dolls, and coloring pages. Another popular saint book is Saintly Rhymes for Modern Times. I’m debating ordering it myself right now! It has mostly modern saints like Padre Pio, St. Teresa of Calcutta, and St. Gianna Molla. Two other good ones are Girl Saints for Little Ones and Boy Saints for Little Ones by Kimberly Fries.

These two printables have been added to my printable library! Sign up for my email list below to access my library!

I love making my kid’s All Saints’ Day costumes! Do you? Head over to my Costume Guide for All Saints’ Day! It has ideas and tips for DIY and store bought.

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