It's been snowing for three days here, at my home.  Well, today's just flurries.  The light, consistent snow makes it feel like I'm living in a house inside a snow globe!  The heavy blanket of snow has insulated our home and created a peaceful calm about our property.  It's so lovely!  Sweet little icicles are forming on our eves and the snow continues to gently fall.  

Makes it a great day to sit down and write a post!  The fire is going and I have my tea in hand.  I'm prepared!

Today I'm introducing the double crochet in my video tutorials.  The double crochet is just about the next simple crochet stitch you can learn.  In my mind there's one in between the single crochet and double crochet called the half double crochet, but I neglected to make a video for that stitch.  So, you'll get it another day!

The double crochet is often abbreviated as 'dc' which makes it pretty simple to identify.  It's a taller stitch than the single crochet.  I find the double crochet nice, because it allows you to work vertically faster than you would with the single crochet.  You can also combine the double crochet with the single (and other simple stitches not introduced yet) to make some pretty awesome patterns and textures!

One type of items that I have previously been scared of making are hats.  At first, all I knew how to do was knit, and I didn't have a set of circular needles or double pointed needles.  I didn't know how to crochet either!  Working in a round is so easy now that I know how.  So, I thought I couldn't make hats or anything round, really without a seam.

Because of that fear, I've been on a quest to find a variety of hats that use a variety of methods.  I'll admit, my first hats were pretty sketchy.  The fit, they worked fine, but they didn't look awesome in my mind.  I knew what I wanted to see, but the outcome definitely wasn't it! 

I guess it all goes back to Orville's checklist from 'The Rescuers,' "If at first you don't succeed, try try again."  While he's not the first one to have been documented to give that 'advice'  this context rings better with me!  :)  My husband and I love this movie, a better time in cartoon movie history in my opinion.  But I digress.

I tried and tried and tried.  Eventually, I found a pattern that I absolutely love and well loves me back!  I'm sure I'll still have duds in the future, but I'm very happy with the results I received from this pattern.  The pattern is for a knit baby hat which does have a seam in the back, but doesn't detract from the beauty of the hat.  I plan to develop some with embellishments and neat color combos, as well as adult sizes.  For now, here's the baby/toddler ones I've already made up!

Pretty gorgeous right?  It looks so warm, soft, and comforting for baby's head.  Awww.  Just think about how awesome adult sizes will be!  My creativity juices are almost eeping out of my head right now.  Haha, gross?  Ah, oh well.  Below is sort of a 'timeline'  of my hat 'development.'  They all are drastically different as I honed my hat making skills and educated myself more in how to knit and crochet.  I think I actually have more than the ones shown, but can't seem to find where I put them since they were just prototypes and I didn't store them with my shop items.  ...I dream of the day I get to build my own office!

I started to teach myself to knit a few years ago when I found my grandmother's old needles, or at least one pair of them.  Yeah, I thought it would be super awesome to have knitting as a domestic skill and make my own scarves and what not.  ... I do have an obsession with winter scarves ...  So, I looked up how to knit in a book and the knit stitch was the first that I learned.

I'll be honest, I had a VERY hard time learning this  stitch.  I suppose it had to do with the holding of the needles, holding the thread, not knitting too tight, my  and well being impatient overall.  I wanted to learn to knit and NOW.  Haha, yeah, that wasn't going to happen.  

Now, don't keep my follies from your wanting to learn to knit.  With simple guiding and lots of practice, you'll get there probably quicker than I did!  Visuals are very helpful to me and of course is why I'm making videos for you!

The first thing you need to do before you begin knitting is to cast-on the number of stitches you want.  (Others would probably say figure out your gauge, size of needles you need/want, type of yarn you want, ect.)  Those are important, yes, but that's not the purpose of this post at the moment.  The number of stitches you cast-on determines the width of your work.  Below I have my video on how to do the long tail cast-on.  I feel it's the easiest and fastest cast-on, so it won't take much time to learn.  

The second video is, as you've guessed, the knit stitch video.  It's pretty simple once you get the hang of it.  By using the knit stitch in every row you knit you will get what is called a 'garter stitch.'  I have also seen it called 'plain knitting.'  It's a simple horizontal ridged design that isn't very flashy, but is soft and comforting in my opinion.  

Before you watch the videos, I wanted to mention that I do not hold the yarn in a traditional manner.  I usually work the needles with my two hands and let the yarn hang, picking it up each time to wrap it around the needle.  Yeah, it probably takes longer in the long run, but I like my hands to be free and have become comfortable with this 'style.'  You can find the two most popular ways of holding the yarn and knitting here and here, if you're curious.  :)

This past week there's been lots of snow around the country.  My family and friends in Minnesota are having a much needed snow day!  I'm sure you on the East coast are still snowed in as well.   Here, well, it's just windy.  Windy and cold.  In fact, the old front door on our house kept blowing open in the night.  So, we had to  close it shut with a chair.  YEAH, we need a new door.  :-/

Anyway, in the midst of your cozy snow or wind you can sit in front of a warm fire and learn this fun stitch.  I know it as the 'bobble stitch,' but I have also seen it characterized as the 'raspberry stitch' and the 'popcorn stitch.'  However you call it, it makes a cute bumped design.  

You can crochet it in a row like I've done, or use it as an accent stitch in a larger project -- make designs with the bumps!  It's fast and easy, too.  I hope you like it! ;)