January: Tunisian crochet

In my last post, I told about my goal for this year: every month I choose a technique I want to learn or learn more about, or working on a technique I did years ago and became a bit on the background.
For January it would be Tunisian crochet.
I like this technique, but I don't like the long needles or cables: the needles are heavy in your hands, and the cables swish around, which I find annoying. So I did a lot of entrelac, which has the advantage that it can be done with a regular crochet hook.
Here an example:

I also did some Tunisian crochet in the round. The nice part of that is, that there are possibilities for working with different colors that you don't have when working flat.
You can use a cable with a crochet hook on both ends, like circular knitting needles, but I don't like them. I prefer a short needle with a hook on both sides:

Working in the round is not very difficult: you need two colors of yarn (or the in- and outside of a cake when you work with one color). Start with the number of chains that you need and join in the round. Then pick up loops until your needle is full. Turn your work and pull the second thread through the loops, just like you would do with regular Tunisian crochet. I always leave one or two loops on my needle for a better result. Then turn your work again and repeat. It's worked in spirals, so you don't have to close the rounds.
That's all...

Now back to my goal.
My starting point was this book with 25 different tunisian stitches:

Those examples are all worked flat,  but I was curious how it would be in the round.
I started practicing some stitches I didn't know working flat,and also tried how to make need decreases. Then I picked some stitches I liked for working in the round to make hats for charity.
Although I like to "play", I prefer making something useful if it's even possible. So I sewed the little samples into mini hats, also for charity. Innocent, producer of juice and smoothies, gives the small bottles hats during winter. Those hats are made by volunteers. From every sold bottle they donate some money to an organization that does good work for lonely elderly people.

Well, here are the results:

The mini hats are all worked flat, the big hats are worked in the round. Sometimes the results were surprisingly nice!
But I also worked on a had that would be beautiful if you like a circus on your hat, so I frogged that one.  Actually  it's a pity that I didn't picture it...