Crochet by Miharin

Happy International Granny Square Day! (To better match with the different time zones, I slightly delayed the publish time so it’s already August 16th in Hong Kong).

Let’s start the annual celebration! Here’s the reveal of the bucket hat I mentioned in the last post : )

I’ve never owned or made a bucket hat before but I have to say that I’m officially in love with bucket hats! It’s too bad that summer in Hong Kong is way too hot, even if it’s made of cotton yarn… I’m hoping to put this lovely hat on more often when fall comes : )

I’ve never realised how hard it can be to showcase a crochet hat through photos. Although I spent quite some time, I still couldn’t take one photo that can show the beauty of the hat. I know I’m not talented in photography haha.

You can take a closer look to all four granny squares in the above photo. This photo was taken and used when I was fine tuning the patterns. From top to bottom and left to right, we have an apple, a dinosaur head, a clover and a balloon. The inspiration is from a Korean character series called ‘Joguman’. I’m obsessed with the characters lately and wanted to crochet myself something that can reminds me of them, which led to the birth of this bucket hat design : )

I made the bucket hat design from scratch, literally from the making of the four granny squares pattern. Since I’ve never created any granny square designs before, it was such a huge learning curve. It took me sooooooo long to perfect each of them that I lost count on the number of times for all the frogging and re-doing.

After completing all the four granny square patterns, I started work on the overall consistency. Since they were all gonna be used in a bucket hat pattern, it’s crucial to have matching width and height for better consistency on the total number of stitches on all sides in the end. Comparatively, this part was more straight-forward and less complicated. I simply cross-checked the stitch numbers all 16 sides and slightly amended the patterns. You can see how I marked down the number of stitches on all four sides of each granny square in the above photo. I then crocheted all four squares once more and tested the amended patterns. It took some time too as I still needed to amend the pattern on the go when I encountered any errors. In addition, I made sure to keep the patterns low-sew as I’m definitely not a sewing person haha.

Among all four granny squares, the clover and balloon designs were more challenging to work on. I remember the times when I got so frustrating and I did question myself (for more than once) why am I doing this to myself haha. Honestly, the whole process was super tiring but I’m truly proud of myself for making it to the end!

I was hoping to finish the pattern for the bucket hat part as well but I lost track in the end unfortunately. I’m not sure if I’d want to re-do the whole thing again any time soon either, considering I have other pending new projects piled up in my yarn stash. However, I do plan to film and share the four granny square patterns with you. It might took some time but please bear with me. We’ll get there eventually : )

I know I say this to every item I made, but this bucket hat is definitely my favourite granny square project to this day. It marks another milestone and I believe it’s the perfect chapter from my crochet journey to share with you on this special day.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post, and please do share about your story about granny squares with me! Happy crocheting : )