Baby shower fun!

I love babies.  I especially love baby showers.  Even more so now that I can do fun things for them!  A lovely friend of mine just had her baby shower a few weeks ago, and I was so glad she invited me to join in on that fun.  I adore shopping for little baby things (especially when I know what people want), and I've discovered I love making little baby things even more.

One of the fun things I got to make was a beautiful football themed baby hat.  She had a similar one on her registry, and I thought I'd try my hand at it.  Worse that happened was no one ever knew about my failed attempt and that was that.  It turned out so much better than anticipated though.  I'm completely in love with the hat I made.  So much so, I decided to make another smaller one for her too (the first one ended up being much bigger than I anticipated), so the little man will have a football hat for a few months at least.

I may have forgotten to take pics of my own, so here's the one she took.  You should have seen the cute card I made her too!

Isn't it adorably cute?!  The pattern was taken from this site: Football Hat  Obviously, I didn't make the little ear portion, but otherwise, I just followed their pattern.

Now, I cannot wait to meet this new little man in a few weeks, as I think mommy-to-be would agree on!

A co-worker of mine just had their first little man also this week (earlier than anticipated), and I just finished the cute bear hat I wanted to make for him.  I'm pretty happy with this one also, seeing it's the first time I had to make separate parts and sew them together.

A fuzy beat hat.  Cute, huh?

Had to find someone to model it for me ;)  She wasn't happy about it...

 The ears are a bit different in the middle, I need to work on that, but otherwise, I think the fuzz makes it fun and different.  What do you think?

Cheers!

My first hat!!

This is my second post about my recent endeavor in crocheting.  I set out to make my first hat, and it turned out not too awful.  Not quite what I was looking for, but it's nice and warm, and very fun.  Next time, it'll definitely be shorter.  I think that's my main complaint right now, it just looks too long.  The flower was a last minute add on, to help with the length.  I messed up the flower somehow too though.  Hopefully, practice will make perfect, right?  So, here it is!  Be honest, what do we think, people?

On me!

Close up of her...

My funky little flower

Here's the tutorial I used for the beanie/tuque: Crochet a Basic Beanie Tutorial
And the flower is from here: Crocheted Flower Pattern

Cheers!

I like my coffee warm and cozy, please!

As mentioned in post #1, I recently learned to crochet.  A dear friend of mine (*waves*) was telling me about how easy it is and fun, and sure enough, I needed a new hobby, as I'd repeatedly been told by certain people, so away I went to YouTube to learn how to crochet (I used Art of Crochet by Teresa to learn, and it's really great!).

Being me, I looked at the video, tried a couple of times and didn't quite get it.  Then, all of a sudden, I had a couple of rows done.  Woot!  Kept going, and going, and sure enough, I had a weird looking square.  I really should have taken a picture of that first attempt.  It was uneven, and wavey, and odd, but I had done something.  After a while, and more of my weirdly deformed square, I went back to the trusty YouTube video and, wouldn't you know it, I was doing it wrong.  It wasn't supposed to be wavey at all!  And I kept forgetting the last part of the rows, hence why it was always shrinking.  I unravelled the whole thing, and started over, and got a normal quare.  It's nothing exciting, far from it, but it's my first, real, not deformed or wavey square.  We now use it to wipe baby puke. :)  Oh, and still haven't found out what the name of the wavey stitch is.

Then, I started to think, what could I make with my new found hobby.  Off to Pinterest I went, and sure enough, I came upon this Pin.  I read the instructions, sent a message to my friend asking if I understood all the abreviations correctly, and back to YouTube I navigated to try and learn a few more crochet techniques (which I learned a few days ago, I was starting off wrong), and then I made my first item: a Cup Cozy :)  The sizes she used seemed a bit odd to me, so I made a few modifications, but all in all, I think they came out pretty great.  Someone also mentioned that the 29 chain she starts with can be small for a Starbucks cup, the intended cup size of my cozies, so I made them somewhere between 30-35 instead.

I made the Pink one first, and I love it.  It's fun and quite me.  A mommy friend of mine saw it last week and was asking if I got it on Etsy.  That kinda made my day, I have to admit.

I kept at it, for a while, changing up the pattern, how many single crochet rows and double ones.  I switched up my hook, as I broke the first one I got (cheap plastic 5mm), and the new one was a tiny bit bigger (nice bamboo one, but 5.5mm) and it gave much different results.  Then, I got hubby's Christmas gift of a new normal sized hook (Metal, 5mm), and learned how to make a triple crochet stitch and made him his own cozy, the grey one in the back.  It probably looks the best, only cause I learned how to properly start my darn sequence.

The light blue and the purple/blue ones with buttons were made using a 5.5mm hook. The version on the floor (just needs buttons) is with the 5mm hook.  Quite a difference in size up close.

This was made using the same pattern and hook size as the Pink one from above.  LOVE the buttons on here!

This one is made with the 5mm hook, and a different pattern than listed on the original blog.  It's about 4-5 rows of single crochet, then triple crochet for the holes, and another 4-5 of singles.

I am currently working on a new version, using that first 'I'm doing it wrong' technique - cause the wavey pattern is kinda neat! - and should be able post it soon.  Also figured out a different way to make the holes, which was neat.  I don't know why, I've always been good at learning things on my own (at least, until I know the base work properly), so it's nice that I'm figuring certain stitches on my own now too.

So, there we have it!  My start in crochet-ing.  I'm by no means a pro at this, I just like to be crafty, and this is certainly a great venue for that.

Cheers!