Adventures In One Piece
I’m not really a fan of manga or anime…but my oldest nephew is. Recently, he sent me a picture of a weird crochet hat with what looked like cow spots on it and asked if I’d be able to make it. Apparently, the hat is worn by a character from a Japanese manga called “One Piece.” The character has the evocative name Trafalgar D. Water Law (apparently informally known as Trafalgar Law). Below you can see both the picture my nephew sent me and a picture of the manga character I found online somewhere.
I of course consulted the interwebs immediately, positive that there had to be a pattern somewhere that some smart person had already put together. I found lots of versions, including a hat with a brim (not what the nephew wanted) and beanie-style caps that had been crocheted all in white and then had amorphous black shapes sewn on. No thank you. What I did not find was any pattern that came even close to what the picture showed, so I had to figure out my own pattern.
I decided to customize a crochet hat pattern that I wrote for myself years ago. The hat as made by the original pattern is constructed of all half-double crochet in a bulky yarn, so it goes really fast. I still have one of the hats I made with that pattern. It’s this one, which I think looks a bit like a fur hat. I’ve had the thing for at least 20 years, so the yarns I used to make it were discontinued long ago. But if anyone was interested, you could probably use this yarn in Crystal Quartz for the upper part, and this yarn in black for the bottom folded up part. And if anyone is interested in that original pattern, you can get yourself a copy here.
I started drawing in a sketchbook a random clumping of the shapes I’d try to insert into the hat in black, then transferred that to grid paper, and then made a colorwork chart using my spreadsheet program. That worked a treat. Then I adapted the original hat pattern to use half-double crochet for the crown, but single crochet for the sides and the turned up brim. The beauty of single crochet is that it forms a completely square stitch. It’s so perfectly square that a panel of single crochet stitches can be used as a grid for cross stitch, as one might do for a baby blanket. This particular picture is from a tutorial on that technique which you can find at ThePurplePoncho.com. All of which is to say that since a square grid is necessary for colorwork, single crochet was necessary for the sides of the hat.
You can find the Trafalgar Law Hat pattern here.
Next, I had to decide what kind of yarn to use. I do remember that in a recent post, I extolled the virtues of wool while railing against the dangers of acrylic yarn. But the hat was going to a college boy. No way would he be handwashing anything, so I ended up buying KnitPicks acrylic yarn Brava in bulky weight, two skeins of white and one of black. I don’t feel great about it, but here we are.
I did end up making this hat twice…the first hat was too small, so I adjusted my hook size (and the appropriate notation in the pattern) and tried again with more success. The hat begins with a magic circle, which I’m not going to describe here. If you are unfamiliar with the technique, here’s a short YouTube video tutorial. Into the circle, you make eight half-double crochet stitches, mark the first stitch with a removable marker, and then pull gently on the end of the yarn to mostly close the circle. Continue crocheting around in a spiral according to the pattern instructions until the circle of the crown is complete. Do not forget to move your marker to the new beginning stitch in each new round.
Then start working on the sides. You’ll do two rounds of single crochet before you start the colorwork pattern. The colorwork chart is worked right to left, the same direction that crochet is worked. When I was making these hats, I did consider several ways to do the colorwork. One option is tapestry crochet, which involves working around your project with both colors and encasing whichever one you aren’t using inside the stitches of the color you are using. Here is a YouTube video on the technique, which also helpfully shows how to change colors. However, there were two problems with this technique for my purposes. First, whatever color is being encased almost always shows through somewhat, so the white would always have black showing and black would always have white showing. Also, the fact that a strand of yarn was always being carried along took away a lot of the stretch of the fabric, rending the hat unwearable. I did try this technique but the hat wouldn’t stretch enough and the color peeking through looked terrible. So I tore this part out and went with the intarsia technique instead.
Intarsia as I performed it for this hat still had me carrying a color inside some stitches, but only white yarn carried inside the black. I decided this was acceptable. For the technique, every time I got to a section that needed to be done in black, I’d cut a length of black yarn (helpful hint from someone who found out the hard way…always cut the yarn LONG!), and work however many stitches were required by the pattern while carrying the white yarn along the top of the work so that each black stitch encased it. Once I was done with the black stitches, I’d gently tug on the white yarn to remove any excess bulges and then carry on crocheting with white.
Now, once one round is finished, when you get back around to the place where you need to start working with black again, you will be on the right side of the black spot, but your black yarn will be on the left side, where you left it during the last round. To make this work out, I just decided to thread my black yarn through a tapestry needle, and pass it through the black stitches I’d made on the previous round until it was in the right position for me to work with it again. This technique isn’t super fast, since you’ll be doing it multiple times each row, but it’s not difficult.
Follow the colorwork chart until you’re done, then slip stitch your last single crochet to the (marked) first single crochet of the round, and tie it off. Now, if you look at the inside of your hat, you see that you have a LOT of ends to deal with. Since I wanted this hat to look the same inside as outside (since at least some of the inside would be showing when the brim was turned up), I needed to deal with all those ends as securely and invisibly as possible. So to deal with the ends, turn the hat inside out, and locate both ends for each of those black spots you made. The ends are likely not close to each other, so use a tapestry needle to draw the ends through the work until they are close. Then tie them together like you’re doing a regular granny knot, but instead of wrapping one yarn strand around the other once, wrap it twice. Then finish the knot like usual. This knot is quite secure, so when you use your tapestry needle to weave the ends into the work, you don’t need to worry about them coming loose.
And done! My pattern made bigger (and fewer) spots than the sample picture, but I am done messing with this. I hope the nephew likes it. It can be worn as a slouchy beany or with the brim rolled up. I promise, it does look better on a real person than on my undersized styrofoam head…
In case you missed them in the text above, here are links to the two patterns included in this post:
