Knitting Looms

So I have some new toys.  I've never been one much for yarn crafts.  My mother tried to teach me to crochet many years ago and it was a spectacular failure.  My rows kept getting shorter and tighter.  I finally gave up.  Now that I am getting back into crafting, I've been thinking about trying yarn crafts again.  A coworker was kind enough to give me two round knitting looms she had laying around after I saw them online and mentioned how I wanted to try it.  What is a knitting loom you ask?  The round ones look like this:

The green is an adult size if you're making a hat.  The red is for children.  They make smaller and larger sizes, but these were the two my coworker had, and I wouldn't turn down free.  I won't go into how to use the looms.  There are a million and one videos online about how to use them that do a better job than I ever could.  I recommend you check them out.  It is dead simple to do.  Unfortunately she didn't have the hook that comes with them so I had to MacGuyver one for myself.  The pic below shows the one I made next to a real one:

So I had some $0.99 mystery yarn from the Goodwill that I decided to mess around with and try out the looms.  Basic acrylic yarn (I think) of medium thickness.  I discovered two things: 1) It truly was as easy as it looked and 2) one strand of yarn of the medium thickness is not thick enough to make an effective hat.  They came out really floppy and the weave looked really open.  The one on the left is the adult size made with the green loom and the one on the right is the child size made with the red loom.

Using a kind gift of additional yarn from another coworker, I tried doubling up to two strands.  I had some yellow left so I mixed in a sage color.  I only made one in the child size to see how it came out.  This was definitely better.  The two strands together provided more stability and the weave was tighter with the extra bulk.

My mother also gave me a lot of yarns.  One in particular was a bulky purple yarn that looks only slightly narrower than a pencil if not pulled tight.  I decided to see how that one loomed up since its bulk would make good winter weight items.  Again I did a child size being unsure of whether I had enough yarn.  Of course now the remainder is too small to make anything else with.  No clue what to do with it.

One of my coworkers has agreed to take the purple hat home to test on one of her grandchildren for fit.  I haven't been keeping track of the rows except for the last one. The purple hat is 14 rows folded in half for the brim and 19 rows from the brim to the top.  We'll see if that is good or if I need to adjust.

Not having children of appropriate age in my family at the moment, all the hats except for the purple one are being donated to a domestic violence shelter in the local area.  As I experiment with different yarns and such, the finished products will go there if I don't have a recipient in mind.