Easy Caron Cakes 1 Skein Projects | Crochet Options

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Hello and welcome to Day 2 of my 12 Days of Christmas. Today I’m going to share with you some easy Caron Cakes 1 Skein projects to crochet.

Caron Cakes seems to be the yarn of the season. There is a lot of hype and popularity around this new yarn. So many people were raving about it. They are a Michaels exclusive.

It’s not that cheap but Michaels finally had a good sale on it sometime last fall and I caved and bought a few cakes – 2 purple (because that is one of my favourite colours) and a neutral colourway. I rarely buy yarn without a project in mind, and so these have been sitting in my yarn basket for a while.

Caron Cakes is a lovely, soft yarn.  It is an acrylic and wool blend. It’s not the scratchy kind of wool either, which is nice because you get the warmth without it irritating those with sensitive skin.  As the yarn is hand wash, I consider it a very decadent yarn – something special and not necessarily for children (I don’t have time to hand wash my kids’ stuff) so for me, I wanted to use them for very special projects. There are, however, some lovely children’s patterns out there that use this yarn.

I also thought that it was important that I find the right pattern that not only showcased the colours and the colour changes but that given the price, I wanted small projects that didn’t use too much yarn. How frugal could I be with this yarn? I wanted to get the most out of these skeins.

The answer was one skein projects. One skein projects are great. They are economical and you don’t have to worry about joining yarn. They are usually quite quick and easy to do as well.

Caron Cakes 1 Skein Projects #1 – Desert Winds Scarf

Recently, I’ve had to deal with my mom having some health problems. My mom is the strongest person I know. She has been with me through some difficult times and looking back, I don’t know what I would have done without her. So now, seeing her experience some health problems has been quite challenging for all of us.

Over the past few months, I have had to take time off so that I could be in the hospital with her, as well as for various doctor appointments and tests. So a lot of crocheting went on during that time.

Lucky for me, in addition to having a great and supportive mom, we also have a very supportive church family. Many people are praying for my mom and her health and it really does help me feel better.

Two particular ladies (a mother and a daughter) have always been supportive of me and my family. Last spring, I made the mother a virus shawl in order to show my appreciation. Now it’s time to make something for the daughter. I didn’t want to make the same thing – I wanted something different. I consider a triangle scarf to be a bit more versatile, considering that not everyone likes to put something over their heads.

The Make & Do Crew Blog posted a nice, modern-looking scarf made out of one skein of Caron Cakes. You can find the pattern here. She used the Buttercream colourway, while I had the Boston Cream one. Both are quite similar – neutrals featuring beiges and cream.

The pattern is easy to follow. It has a two-row repeating pattern of DCs. As the pattern advises, I used a 5mm crochet hook for this. Once you know the pattern, it’s one of those things you can do without having to refer to the pattern often. This was an easy pattern for me to work on while sitting in the hospital with my mom.

I wanted to make the scarf look a little more finished, so I just added a tassel on each end.  I simply wound the yarn around an old DVD case and attached it to the scarf ends. I think this adds a nice finishing touch. I made a video on how I made these tassels, along with a different type of tassel coming up.

Caron Cakes 1 Skein Projects # 2 – Puff Stitch Hats

It seems that every fall, there is a popular pattern for a crocheted hat or beanie. This year, it seems to be the puff stitch version.

My mom is great about helping me look after our pup, Barry. On days I don’t take Barry to work with me, I leave him with her. She walks him and feeds him and takes good care of her “grand-dog”. As the weather is cooling down, I thought I would make my mom a hat to wear as she walks Barry. I have toyed with the idea of making her a hat before, but she is very particular about what she wants and up until a year ago, I wasn’t too sure how to give her what she wanted. A year later, I now feel that I have that much more experience and expertise that I can finally give her what she wants.

She doesn’t want a hat too tight and too snug on her head. Tight hats give her headaches and she wants to be warm but doesn’t want to mess up her hair. She also wants to be able to cover her ears to keep warm.

Beanies can be made in a couple of ways. You can simply make a rectangle and sew it together to make a hat. More commonly, however, is to work in the round.

You can make a beanie from the top down. You start with a small circle and gradually increase to a certain diameter and then you continue that stitch count until you reach the desired length and then finish it off with a band. You can also make a beanie by starting at the bottom by making the band first. Then you would continue upwards, thereby making a square until you reach the desired length. Then you would gather the top edge in to close it up.

Generally, from my experience, working from the bottom up yields a looser fitting hat as there is no decrease at the top. The gathering at the top edge creates more space and room at the top of the beanie. This is the way I needed to make my mom’s hat. I also made it long – like a slouchy beanie, so that she would have the looseness which would not mess up her hair too much.

For this pattern, I made the band vertically. I got the idea from Vickie Howell’s pattern, the Urban Jungle Crocheted Slouchy Beanie, found here on Ravelry. Her puff stitch consists of 9 loops on the hook. You can also make a puff stitch with just 7 loops on your hook. The more loops, the bigger the puff. Both work well.

I purposely started my caron cake with the darkest colour as I wanted it to get lighter as I worked my way up. I really like the ombre effect of this yarn. Some people don’t like the sudden colour changes – yes, it’s hard to make it blend, but it’s one of those things that usually only the crocheter notices. I like to finish off my beanies with a pom pom. For this style of construction (working from the bottom up), I feel that the pom pom covers up the gathering at the top. The gathering does make a smooth and even top and so the pom pom helps that.

I decided to make myself a matching hat, but personally, I prefer a more fitted hat. For my beanie, I used a free pattern from B Hooked Crochet, which can be found here.  This pattern works from the top down. I will admit that I had to stop and restart this project a number of times in order to get it the way I wanted. I sized down a hook in order to make the puffs closer together. In order to accommodate my hook change, I had to insert a row after row 5 as follows:

Row 5.5 – Make 1 pf stitch in the first 9 ch 1 gap spaces, make 2 pfs in the next space. *Make 1 pf stitch in the next 9 ch 1 gap spaces, make 2 pfs in the next space. Repeat from * and join with a slst. (33 sts)

I wanted to try something different for the band and so I just did rows of sc. I did cheat and skipped to the darkest colour and finished it off with a round of sc in the darkest purple.

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Caron Cakes 1 skein Projects #3 – Granny Square Scarf

I still had a fair amount of yarn left from making the beanies. I used separate cakes for each beanie (because I wanted a certain colour gradient) and so I had 2 partial cakes. I probably could have made both hats out of one skein. I decided that I would make my mom a matching scarf. Like the previous scarf recipient, my mom doesn’t like putting things over her head, so I thought a triangle scarf would be best. I wanted to try something different from the Desert Winds scarf, yet it had to only use one skein or less.

So I thought I would use the granny scarf pattern. The abrupt colour changes seem to be somewhat masked by the pattern. There are a number of patterns out there – I looked at a few and they were pretty much all the same so didn’t really follow a pattern. I added tassels to this one too as I really like the look of added tassels – I think it makes it look more polished.

Caron Cakes 1 skein Projects #4 – Triple Luxe Headband

Looking back, I had some of the buttercream colourway remaining and so I made an ear warmer out of it. I’m not sure if I like the abrupt colour change on something so small, but it did work and I had enough yarn. My go-to pattern for ear warmers is the Triple Luxe Headband on the All About Ami blog which can be found here. I really like the knot in the headband. It’s very easy and quick to make up. I’ve made a few of these headbands out of different yarn, namely Woolspun.

I had to modify the pattern, however, to compensate for the different yarn. I started with a FHDC row of 68 and went on from there. I also had to do more rows in order to get the same finished size.

Personally, I think a solid colour would look better – or at least if it were more than one colour – a decent amount or a more balanced colour scheme would be preferable. That said, it doesn’t look bad and I wanted to try it. It does go nicely with the scarf.

So there you have it – a variety of gifts that use one skein or less of the Caron Cakes yarn. The recipients all enjoy the items so I’m glad that they worked out.

What are some of your favourite 1 skein projects?

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