The advantage of not making any new year’s resolutions is that you have no promises to keep– not to yourself or anyone else. So it was without the slightest twinge of guilt that I grabbed some pink yarn and started to work on the base of a crochet troll hat as a piece of a somewhat larger project I have in mind.

When I was a child, I loved to play with “troll dolls.”

Their back stories were not as elaborate as those of the Kiddle dolls I also loved, but they still had a story to tell–along with brightly colored hair that stood on end–and I was more than willing to tell their stories, all the while wishing I too could have hair like that.

And in the world we live in today, children can have “hair like that,” or at least, they can have “hair like that” attached to their winter hats, and I, for one, see that as a huge step forward for mankind.

So it was with that childhood desire in mind that I got out a 4.0 mm hook, some pink worsted weight yarn, and using Nicki Mahon’s troll hat crochet pattern, I went to work. In what felt like both no time and forever, I had the base of the hat tentatively finished:

Using the same hook, I then tried my hand at a crochet ear, and got something that looks workable:

I then put the pieces side-by-side to see if I could envision the finished hat, and while I’m not there yet, it is beginning to take shape in my head:

This year I have not set any crochet intentions nor have I made any crochet resolutions, but I do resolve to continue forward, one stitch at a time.