I have been a busy crocheting fool!

I started crotching a couple years ago after a visit at my brothers house.  His wife,  my sister-in-law had recently started crotching and watching her do it I decided I would give it a try. I got really good at the simple things: blankets,  headbands, simple hats,  scarves and my favorite: baby Barefoot Sandals. Then I moved back to NY last summer and pretty much stopped crotching all together. 

Recently,  after a few friends had babies (or grandbabies), I decided I would start making baby g gift sets again (see other posts). In the last couple of months is become almost an obsession. It all stated with a gift set for my honorary niece (see Zebra baby post) and has since spiraled out of control. 

Since March,  I have made: a christening set, a little camo/Hunter set,  lots of headbands, and have started dislodging any pattern I see that I like and giving it a shot. I am even starting to venture into apparel! I have reopened my etsy shop, 

  , and am getting ready to start a Facebook page to sell and promote my stuff. 

So last night,  when my 13 year old son says to me "I need a crazy hat! Tomorrow is crazy hat day. "! I did not tell him "sorry,  your out of luck". I said " well, let's see what we can find for me to make". After an hour of searching through various patterns, he settled on this one from yarnspirations; http://www.yarnspirations.com/pattern/crochet/crochet-tripod-hat

 and he went in my yarn box and chose his 3 colors.  

I didn't pay attention when he chose the pattern,  so I ended up downloading a pattern for 12 months-4 years (little moment of panic), but then I decided I would just add stitches to make it work. 

So,  here it is 8 o'clock at night, and I am just starting this hat that I have to partially figure out on my own, that needs to be done by 6:45am! It ended up not being too big of a deal to figure out how many more stitches and rows I would need. I did mess up one part of it,  

so the yellow point is large than the other two. By 2am I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer.  I had to go to bed. I had just 1 point to finish and I to sew it all together.

I had 3 1/2 hours that I could sleep before my alarm would go off to get up and start getting him around. I crashed. When the alarm went off at 5:30 I pulled myself out of bed,  determined to finish this hat before he had to leave.  I managed to get it done with 5 minutes to spare. It may not look exactly like it should,  but I think it looks pretty darn good for being 1/2 asleep, never using this patten before and for having to add to the pattern.  He absolutely loves it! I even got a "your the best mom ever!"

  

 You can find the pattern here: Http://www.yarnspirations.com/pattern/crochet/crochet-tripod-hat 

Show me those summer toes!

Barefoot sandals are my favorite thing to make, although I am still not sure where, other than the beach, you can wear them (as an adult), but I think they are the coolest things ever! So a couple weeks ago I started looking for patterns for adult ones. I have found a couple I want to try, but so far these are the only ones I've made. After making the adult size for my daughter and her friend, the little girl upstairs saw them and wanted a pair so I adjusted the pattern a little (only did 2 hearts instead of 3) and, vola, a child size version of the adult ones. 

Heart barefootsandals: http://www.crochetrochelle.com/2012/08/hearts-barefoot-sandals.html

Flower Power

Flowers. I love, love, LOVE making flowers. There are so many things you can do with flowers. You can add them to anything. I always embellish my headbands and hats with a flower (if its for a girl). I make them BIG and I can make them small. I can make a number of different types of flowers, and like to learn how to make new ones!

My daughter recently had her 1st band concert. I had found this beautiful sea foam green soft yarn that matched her dress to a T. So I decided to make her a flower clip to go in her hair for that night. It turned out gorgeous!

flower: http://www.crochet-patterns-free.com/2012/02/easy-baby-hat-crochet-pattern-free.html

Now all her friends went flowers for their hair too! 

Visit my etsy shop to purchase any of my creations. More will be added soon AND I am going to start making jewelry so keep an eye out for that!

DADDY'S LITTLE HUNTING BUDDY crochet set

DADDY'S LITTLE HUNTING BUDDY

Living in Upstate NY, hunting is an undeniable pasttime for many men (and some women). So when one of my friends found out she was having a baby boy, she had to have something "hunter/camo" themed for him. And being that it is summer (and yes we do have some pretty hot summer days) I went for a trusty diaper cover, ball cap and booties (newborns feet always feel cold to me).

I have never used "camo" (actually Red Heart Super Saver "Woodsey") so I was a little nervous about how it would look. I must say I absolutely LOVE the set. I love it so much I have listed it on my Etsy site: daddys little hunter set

Below are the links to the patterns I used. 

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/spring-training-cap

These are the booties. This was my first time being successful with making booties, so I am super excited to post them! They were super easy and quick to make.

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/cute-baby-boots-crochet-pattern

I have made a ton of diaper covers. I love them. This is one of my favorites. I added the "bear paw" buttons instead of just plain buttons to make it more "hunter" like.

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/baby-panda-outfit

4th of July Crochet

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!

With the 4th of July right around the corner I thought it was a great idea to start finding some neat red/white/blue patriotic things to make. 

In found this really neat wreath idea (I love haging stuff on my door for whatever holiday it is). I took the basic idea from RedHeart and revamped it to what I wanted.  You can pretty much do these however you want using whatever you want.  I chose to wrap my Styrofoam wreath in red,  white and a little blue red heart super saver yarn. I broke out the hot glue gun to make sure the yarn stayed attached to the wreaths (I only used a little bit of glue on the beginning and end of each section of color). Once I had that done,  I decided what embellishments I wanted to put on it.  I chose to do 3 simple one round stars on the blue and made crochet letters that say USA in blue.  To hang it I took 

red, white and blue yarn and chain stitched them together. This created a real neat looking rope to hang it with. 

 You can find the stiny star pattern at http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/tiny-one-round-stars

i  found the letter pattern at: http://www.redheart.com/free-patterns/pattern-correction-z-crochet

I 

had already made this cute little boy 4 th of july outfit last spring,

 

 so I decided to figure out something for a girl. I found this super cute ruffled skirt pattern and thought it was perfect! Just playing around i decided to make a cute little triangle motif bikini top to go with it.  

skirt: http://horsetownhooker.blogspot.com/2012/04/hey-there-yall-im-back-with-another.html

And off course I HAD to make some patriotic barefoot sandals to go with the outfit, after all no outfit is complete with out the shoes! These baby star barefoot 

Sandals are the perfect accessory!

star barefoot sandals: http://www.craftown.com/Baby-Star-Barefoot-Sandals.html

No outfit is complete with out some hair bling! I had made some small red/white/blue flowers that I thought I was going to use on something else. My daughter needed something for her hair in red and white so I grabbed some bobby pins and pinned these cute little flowers into her hair. Perfect quick hair accessory.

flowers: http://www.crochetaddictuk.com/2012/03/monday-morning-free-pattern.html

This is a quick triple layer flower, that you can make in any color you want. I love the way it turned out with the red/white/blue. I simply attached it to a cute mesh headband (you can really use any headband pattern you want) and vola....cute headband for the 4th of July.

flower: http://attic24.typepad.com/weblog/triple-layer-flower.html%20

headband: http://mymerrymessylife.com/2012/03/crochet-baby-girl-mesh-headband-free-pattern.html

  

You can visit my etsy shop to purchase these and many more cute creations!