Back when I had Covid 19 I watched a season or so of Project Runway, then later I caught the most recent season of The Great British Sewing Bee. I also watch a few crafty YouTubers. All of these seemed to be telling me that crochet is back in fashion.

So when I needed to replace the collar on the grey jacket, I immediately thought of crochet. I had been planning to knit it, but not that my Denise set is kaput it meant going out and buying a long circular needle. So I dug out the yarn and my hooks, and got to work. I like the result. It occurred to me then that for crochet you just need a set of hooks, not multiple sizes of different kinds of needles. Handy. And economical.

I also found an hour of crochet a day was doable without much hand or back pain. You can get a lot done in and hour a day. Maybe even an entire granny square blanket. Or a jumper. Maybe a granny square jumper. I went looking for patterns on Ravelry. Turns out I hadn’t updated my projects in a year or so. After I did that, I browsed crochet patterns to get a feel for what I might make next. I was determined not to buy any new yarn. Second hand was ok, but only to add to an existing project. So what I made had to come mostly from the stash.

Start small, I thought, so I picked a granny square beret pattern.

One of the things I’ve always loved about crochet is how adaptable it is. The pattern called for aran yarn and the yarns I picked are thinnish 8ply/dk alpaca, but it doesn’t matter! It’s a circle, so I just have to add more rounds until it’s the right size. Of course, working out how to increase without the circle warping was a bit trickier than it seemed, but once again the internet came to the rescue.

Being mostly alpaca (turns out the green yarn is 50% wool) it’s more slouchy than the beret in the pattern photo, but I prefer my berets slouchy.