Knit and crochet designer Vickie Howell has recently come out with her eighth book, a book of ten crochet hat patterns. I got my hands on a copy for review and had the chance to try a couple of patterns for myself.
Superiore 10 Crocheted Hats
Vickie Howell has compiled ten different crochet hat patterns in this booklet. Each of the patterns is designed to work with her Sheep(ish) yarn line. Most of them are crochet patterns that can be easily worked up in a day or two. Many of them will work as unisex designs for men or women. This new crochet pattern booklet is available exclusively at Jo-Ann Craft Stores. Learn more about it from Vickie.
My Crochet Hats
I completed two of the crochet hat patterns in this book.
The crochet hat that you see above is one I’m actually really excited about it. It’s the first time that I’ve crocheted a hat with a brim, which I’ve wanted to try for awhile. And it’s a hat rich in post stitches, which I think are fun to work. This hat pattern is called the Brimming Over pattern and it’s designed to be a unisex hat; in Vickie’s book it’s shown as a grey hat on a male model.
I personally didn’t do as great of a job with Vickie’s pattern for the Magenta Lane slouchy crochet hat pattern. First of all, my gauge was off and I didn’t fix it (bad crocheter!) so my hat came out a little too big. And then I realized halfway through that I’d be running out of pink yarn so I decided to add a cream brim and I didn’t end up liking the result. That said, I think the hat pattern itself is cute. It has a unique shape to it that is created by actually closing up the top of the hat as the last step of the process, so that was something new to try. And the stitch pattern is cute:
If you look at the book cover shown above you’ll see that there’s a purple hat on the right bottom cover; that’s what Vickie’s version of this magenta slouch hat looks like.
The Other Crochet Hat Patterns
In addition to these two crochet hats, Vickie Howell’s new book has two different styles of slouchy crochet hats, one earflap cap, one crochet hat with buttons, one granny square motif hat, a wide crochet headband and a couple of more basic crochet hats with pretty stitch patterns. Something fun about this book is that at the end there is a set of more than thirty photos showing the models wearing the crochet hats in different styles and angles, so you can get a good sense of what these hats look like in real life.
