First of all I discovered Meladora's tutorials on YouTube and I was hooked literally. She has a tutorial showing how to make a cotton crochet sunhat for a child, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY4MNClAIcE. I loved the yarn and I loved the flower motifs.About the same time a molecular diagram for buckminster fullerenes and the geometries of spheres was also knocking around in my head! Here is the molecular diagram Diagram of a Buckminster Fullerene The two ideas were bumping around in my head, I wanted to use the geometry of a pentagon surrounded by hexagons to shape the crown of a hat.
I would need six pentagon motifs and ten hexagon motifs to make a hemisphere. At the top of the crown, start with a pentagon motif and attach five hexagon motifs in a circle around it. The curve is beginning to form. In the next circular row of motifs, simply alternate hexagon and pentagon motifs (10 motifs in all, five of each shape) and this forms the hemisphere! For my hat I included two more rows of hexagon motifs (a further 20) to obtain the depth needed.
Here is the link to the instructions for Meladora's crochet flower sunhat I loved the flower, but even then I couldn't just go with her instructions. I had this lovely sunny yellow industrial slub cotton and when I checked it, it exceeded 18 wraps per inch, which would categorise it as a lace, or cobweb yarn. I tried the flower motif with one strand of the yarn and a 1.75mm hook and made the first flower underneath the hat. With two strands and a 3.5mm hook, I produced the second flower. I wanted to assemble the hat as I crocheted (I hate sewing up) so I wanted to modify the petals so that I could sl stitch one motif to the next. This is the instruction for my flower petal. Sc into the nearest ch 5 space to the left then HDC 1, DC 2, TC1, CH1, TC1, HDC 1, SC 1, (where TC is a treble crochet. Note these are American terms, not British. Why are we the only country to use different terminology?) I then produced the final flower, which went to make the hat. To make the pentagon flowers, you simply sc 10 into the starting ring and make five petals instead of six. I also worked down from the top of the crown to the brim.
For the brim, I wouldn't like to give any firm instructions, because I made it up as I went along. I carried on using two strands of cotton and used a 3mm hook. I picked up stitches along the edge of the petals and chained three behind the petal hanging down and ch1 around the join of each motif ( a total of twelve stitches per motif and 120 in the round.) For the next round I increased 1 sc in every third sc. But from there on in I only did increasing rows when I felt the brim was beginning to turn up and I hit upon a formula of an increased st for every row I'd crocheted. (Not very scientific I know, but it worked after a fashion, so if it was the tenth row of the brim, I'd increase on every tenth stitch.) There were 14 rows to my brim and I only finished there because my ball of yarn finished and I couldn't be bothered to rewind another skein!
Now all I need is some sunny weather!
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