Hat-a-Week, day 5

I am currently working on hat number two!

The yarn: Loops & Threads Impeccable (worsted weight, acrylic) in a sort of bottle green color.

The pattern: I am making it up as I go along! This is called an afghan crochet hook:

It looks like a combination between a regular crochet hook and a knitting needle, and the technique you use is sort of a combination of knitting and crochet. Regular crochet works by making several loops on your hook and working them until only one loop is left. This makes one stitch. With afghan crochet, you pick up a loop from every stitch in the previous row, and then work one stitch at a time (similar to knitting, except instead of transferring it to another needle, you pick up the same stitch on the next row). 

Here's an in-progress shot of the hat:

See how it's curling up at the end? Apparently that's a common problem with the afghan stitch. I didn't want the bottom of my hat to curl up after the hat was finished, so I added a few rows of regular crochet at the bottom, which lies flat.

See the difference? Also, you can tell from this shot that the stitches start to curl as soon as they come off the hook. Without the border the hat would probably curl up halfway to my forehead. Unfortunately, the half-double stitches are a lot wider than the afghan stitches, so this is probably going to be more like a bucket hat when it's all done. We shall see!

Here is a close-up of the afghan stitch. I like it because it kind of looks like a combination of crochet and weaving.