I never watched baseball growing up. Neither of my brothers played baseball. Where I grew up, there were no professional baseball teams (well, no professional sports teams, period). I was practically a baseball virgin. Then I met my husband who is a big baseball fan. We didn’t frequent games, but traveled a few hours away to see the closest minor league MLB team once in a while. When we lived close to a big city a few years ago, my husband went to an MLB game at least once a month and when we had visitors in town. We even took our little 18-month old twins to see the big city MLB team play.
Living near a big city with professional sports teams does something to you. We didn’t watch much tv, but we would put the local channel on the television whenever they were broadcasting our home team’s MLB games. That big city feel made me really enjoy watching baseball. Now that my family is back in a smaller town without any professional sports teams, I miss being able to watch or attend these events, because they’re a lot of fun. We did find a small summer league that plays baseball in our town, and our kids (who are 4 years old) love going to watch those games. Every weekend they ask if we’re going to watch a baseball game that night.
image via Little Rock Christian Academy
My family was fortunate enough to win some tickets to a super special MLB game that’s happening this weekend. A special field was built and stadium seating erected just for this one game. And in our town! Needless to say, we are ECSTATIC about going. As much as I love watching baseball, I seem to not own a single piece of baseball swag. So, what’s a girl to do? I whipped up a little headband for myself with a 3-tiered flower with the center of the top flower resembling a baseball.
Materials:
Yarn, hook, needle
*I used worsted weight yarn, but you can use whatever you want. Just make sure that your hook corresponds to whatever weight you use.
For the band, using white yarn and the star stitch pattern, I made 3 complete rows of star stitches (the pattern for star stitch is comprised of 2 rows, so I actually made a total of 6 rows). Make this is as long as you want (mine is about 14 inches long), but keep in mind that you’re adding a loop to each of the ends so you can fasten it behind your head.
Once that white band was done, I switched to my red yarn and made my ends. Now, my ends are not clear on directions, nor did I take any notes, but here’s a photo of what I did–just a basic decrease, but when I got down to 5 stitches across, I chained 5, and slip stitched to end of the row (skipping the stitches in the row) so I had a little loop on the end. Do this for both short ends of your white band. Then, when that was all done, I single crocheted around the entire piece making sure to single crochet in the chain space on the ends a decent number of times (8 was the magic number for me). Then using my needle and red yarn, I added the simple ‘V’ shaped stitches down the length of the white band to replicate the stitching on a baseball.
Now for the flower, I used this basic pattern for the flowers, but had to tweak the placement of the first round of petals because of the different size I used for the baseball circle. My baseball center was made with 2 rounds of HDC. The stitching was done by hand with red yarn and my yarn needle. When I was done with the flower, I simply attached it to the band using some yarn and my needle.
The very last thing I did was make a long chain (about twice the length of the headband) and knot each end. This is what I used to thread through the loops on the headband and tie behind my head. I did it this way because I don’t like how crocheted headbands stretch out and don’t fit after wearing them for a while. This way, I could custom size it every time I use it. Hope this helps! Have a great Fourth of July!
After searching good old Google, I came across this lovely simple background. It has good bones and the look I wanted. You can find it 
Chaos & Chop Suey 