Crochet Cloche Progress

As promised here's how its going with the crochet cloche I am making for my friend's mom. Below is a picture of the design from Handmade Cottage

Green Flapper Cloche, Designed by Diane McGettigan.  My friend Adriann received her copy of the design in the mail on Tuesday and she handed me her yarn, button, and copy of the pattern on Wednesday. I decided to bring it along with me to my knit-nite and give it a try.  Well of course it was trial and error, my crochet skills were a little rusty and it was taking me some time to get used to using a hook again.  After knitting for the last 4 years the feel of it in my hands was a bit awkward.  I kept fumbling and dropping it as well as not really remembering the stitches.  The pattern called for the following: Single Crochet (sc) which I easily remembered, Half Double Crochet (hdc - couldn't remember it so I knew I would have to look it up), Front Post Half Double Crochet (fphdc - which was new to me, I had to go online to get a diagram of how to do the stitch), and decrease hdc - again had to look this up as well.  In all my years of crocheting I never did any decreasing, but I also only made afghans so there really wasn't any call for decreasing.

So it was slow going initially, I had to keep pulling it apart and starting over but this was where I left it the first night:

Using Berocco Comfort Chunky in black and size K hook

The crochet project went back in the bag within 45 minutes after starting leaving off on row 4 because row 5 called for hdc's in each sc and I didn't bring my crochet handbook with me and I didn't have access to the internet so I couldn't look up how to do a hdc.  For the rest of knit-nite I went back to working on a knitting project I already had in progress.  It was after 9:00 p.m. by the time I left my knitting group and was way too tired to go online to look up how to do a half double crochet (hdc), so as you can see from the picture above I hadn't gotten very far, but I wasn't discouraged, quite the opposite, I was learning something new on a skill that I hadn't used in a long time and I was pretty impressed with my progress, considering I hadn't crochet anything in over 10 years!

Day 2: I brought it to work with me to hook-away at it during my lunch break.  I looked up the stitches I didn't understand or couldn't remember and then was eager to get back to it.

Day 2: crown is taking shape

Once I got started again the part of my brain that stores the mechanics of what to do seemed to kick in and my hands remembered what they were supposed to do and it didn't feel as awkward as it did the night before and I actually was on a roll.  The crown of the hat was beginning to take shape and I was really impressed with the way it was looking, although I felt it was a bit on the small side.

close-up of crown (flattened out)

But my lunch is only an hour and I had to put it away to work on it later at home, but I was looking forward to it and couldn't wait for my work day to end. 

Day 2, that evening: So I settled in for the night and while enjoying a glass of birthday champagne (It was my 40th birthday on the 13th and my boss gifted me with a bottle of champagne - she says everyone should have a bottle of bubbly on their 40th!) and watching the Van Helsing movie with the ever gorgeous Hugh Jackman; I continued working on the cloche.

Yummy - Hugh Jackman!

Sorry, I digress, got distracted by the gorgeousness of Hugh Jackman (look at him - can you blame me?).  As I was saying, I continued working on the cloche and was finished with it in no time at all.

Side view

Frontal view

Around midnight it was complete, because of course once I started I couldn't stop.  Then I began working on the embellishment, (the cute little flower shown in the first picture above on the Green Flapper Cloche).



Begins similar to the hat

The flower embellishment basically begins the same way as the hat so I got going on it and am already on row 10. It continues with rows of sc's and as I keep going the edges will curl in on their own and I will pinch the ring so that it will create the flower, sew a couple stitches in it so it will keep it's shape and then sew it onto the hat with a button.

Day 3: Added the embellishment to the side of the hat. The yarn became stiff as I continued to single crochet each row and therefore difficult to pull it into the shape of the flower, but I persevered and pulled the yarn tight to get the shape as close to the diagram as possible and this is the result:

Antique style gold & black button
adds to the beauty of the hat

Another Cloche in Burgundy with
another beautiful matching button