Showing restraint

It might not sound significant, but as a baby my daughter was born with a full head of hair, most of which disappeared within a few weeks, leaving her with a few sparse wisps over her adorable little head. This was not a problem. My daughter grew into a hat wearer.

M wearing a hat made by Mummy.

Hair styling has never been my forte. Hair styling, when the hair in question is extremely fine, thin and belongs to someone who cannot stand still for more than a few minutes at a time, has proved a challenge. Like most mothers, I’ve resorted to time honoured methods for keeping my little one’s hair in check. I’ve tried braids, but M doesn’t like to wait as I complete the task. I’ve tried alice bands, but they slip off, rarely staying in place for more than a few minutes. Pigtails were popular for a while, but as M’s hair continued to grow in length but not in body, they turned into lethal weapons on either side of her head. M took great delight in swinging her head from side to side, hair whipping her face with alternate strikes across her cheeks. These days, the mainstay of hair restraint for M is the good old fashioned ponytail. I wanted a child sized hair tie that would stay in place, wasn’t slippery and wasn’t too big because it assumed you had a lot of hair. I made something. This was an experiment. I’ve never made a hair accessory before and couldn’t find anything that was just right on Ravelry, so I improvised. I tied some left over 8 core elastic into a loop, then crocheted over it to give me a base. I then added a simple chain mesh, until it had some substance. And here we have it, a child sized lace scrunchie.

A simple crochet mesh scrunchie.

A simple crochet mesh scrunchie with hair.

This scrunchie is worked in a standard crochet thread (size 10) on a 2mm hook. Guage doesn’t matter in this case, it was more important to use a hook that worked well with the thread.

Method:- I put a foundation row of dc in multiples of 5 stitches around a piece of elastic, covering it. I then worked a 5 stitch chain mesh into this row, as follows. R1 - ch5, skip 4 dc, dc in next dc, repeat until end of round. R2 - ch5, dc in next 5ch space of previous row, ch5, dc in same space, repeat until end of round. R3 - ch5, dc in next 5ch space of previous row; repeat until end of round. R4 - increase in alternate spaces. R5 - as for R3. M likes it. Enough said.