Fishy Boy's Stars & Stripes Kippah
By Karla Hailer-Fidelman

After the tragedy of September 11, my nine year old son wanted to find a way to express his gratitude that his aunt in Washington and his cousin in the Marines were safe as well as show his pride in a country that didn't care what religion he was. He asked me if I could make him a flag kippa to wear. I checked some of the old books on how to crochet a kippa I had, but there were no designs that had the type of patriotic sense he wanted.

Grabbing my pencil and some graph paper, I drafted a star pattern I could use. I dug out my old steel crochet hook and bought some red, white and blue cotton crochet thread and set to work. It can be easily varied for different sizes.

If you've never crocheted a kippa before, books such as The Jewish Catalog and The Complete Guide to Yarmulka Design have more complete instructions on how to get started.

You need:

• 1 size 11 steel crochet hook
• 1 ball of thread, such as Knit-Cro-Sheen, each in red, white and blue.

Instructions:

• Using a size 11 crochet hook, start with the white and chain six stitches then connect into a ring. In the ring, double crochet two stitches in every chain for a total of 12 and join to the first stitch. *Chain up two and double crochet in each stitch, increasing as needed to keep the work flat, but not regularly (ie every five stitches) or you will end up with points.* Repeat between the stars until the crown is the desired size (approximately 3" for a child, 4.5" for an adult).
• Change color to blue for your chain up and crochet two rows of blue, increasing as necessary.
• Change color to red for your chain up and crochet one row of red before starting pattern. Make sure this is a diameter you like as there should be no increasing after this point.

For the pattern, follow the diagram:

row 1       x
row 2       x
row 3      xxx
row 4   xxxxxxxxx
row 5    xxxxxxx
row 6     xxxxx
row 7     xx xx
row 8     x   x
       12345678901

NOTE: The overall pattern is 11 stitches wide by 8 stitches long, the first and last stitch of each row is red while the star pattern itself is worked in white. You can make as many stars as you'd like that fit around the row.

• Finish with at least one row of solid red, tie off the end and crochet the end along the bottom row.

Karla Hailer-Fidelman is a columnist for Jewish.com and Community Newspapers who learned to crochet at her grandmother's knee. She is a member of Congregation Dorshei Tzedek in Newton and may be reached at khailer@aol.com