The eagerly awaited moment has come and gone. My niece and nephew have received their goodies! Both of them really like their blankets. I have yet to ask my sister in law if I can post a photo of the kids with their faces showing on my blog. I do have a photo that has no face showing so I’ll post that. My nephew was already suffering from Christmas gift overload when he received my blanket so his reaction was a bit lack luster. Later in the evening the family was leaving and he grabbed his new blanket to snuggle with in the car which squelched any doubt in my mind that he might not like it as much as I had anticipated. My niece showed her enthusiasm right when she opened it, yay. I’ve never given gifts that involved so much work on my end and it was quite satisfying.
The kids also received the little elf shoes. The ones for my nephew didn’t fit even in the slightest way but my niece seemed to fit fine in the ones I made for her. I had assumed that because I was able to squeeze my foot into one of hers when I made it. They didn’t get worn though, which I should have known; they aren’t big on wearing shoes or socks.
I also owe you a photo of my sister’s hat/scarf set so here it is: 
I’ve been a bit quiet but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been crocheting. I am feeling a serious addiction to crochet at the moment and I can’t sit in front of the TV without wanting to crochet something. That desire has lead to a couple things that didn’t develop into anything usable. I tried to make up my own pattern for 2 hats without success and attempted to make a crocheted gift box which looks quite sad. Some things that went well are the granny square slippers from The Purl Bee. I decided to make them in red for my niece and nephew. Those kids are getting a lot of crocheted things this Christmas, LOL. I even added a bell to the tips which makes them officially “Elf Slippers.” Now I just hope they fit! They are darned cute though.
I also made a hat and scarf set for my sister. I used the Divine pattern for the hat and Simply Soft yarn. It was a little more light weight yarn than I realized but it certainly is soft. Then I grabbed some fleece yarn I’ve had for years and made a scarf to match the hat. I bought the fleece yarn years ago with the intention of making a scarf for my sister and I’m happy that’s what it was used for eventually. I had a skein of white and one of variegated white/blue. The yarn was hard to work with because it’s fuzzy and the base of the yarn is a tiny string with the fuzz coming off it. The scarf is about 6ft long and I tried not to make it too wide since the current fashion is skinny scarves. The scarf is snuggly and I hope she likes it. I don’t have a photo yet and my camera battery died so it’s getting revived at this moment. I’ll add a photo later.
After my exploration into the world of hats last weekend I found myself totally addicted. I cranked out 5 other hats this week. I tried making hats back in 2005 when I first started teaching myself crochet but I didn’t get very far. I first tried going around in just a circle but ended up with a strange triangular funnel shape which I turned into a toy mouse. I believe that the mouse has since ‘died’ after a couple years of playtime. Last summer a friend gave me a crochet book from which I learned how to crochet a coaster which was successful! I then tried a hat from the same book but it was a strange hat-like disc too large and too shallow to actually function as a hat, or anything else for that matter. I was again defeated by hats. Between then and now I made a baby hat successfully so I was grasping something. I’m glad my crochet knowledge and understanding has grown enough to make sense of patterns without disastrous results.
The Week of Hats
- Monday: Maroon Divine Hat for myself with yarn received from a fellow Freecycler (so I have no idea what it was exactly aside from soft).
- Tuesday: Easy Double Crochet hat with left over fuzzy orange yarn. Pulled out a fore mentioned pink hat-like disc and made my own variation of Easy Double Crochet hat with fpdc & bpdc.
- Wednesday: Attempted 2 hats in red, neither a success. Started an Easy Double Crochet Hat in red.
- Thursday: Finished Easy Double Crochet hat in red with variation of fpdc. Started Crochet Head Hugger.
- Friday: Finished Crochet Head Hugger with variation of one puff stitch instead of one double crochet to add more fullness to the hat.
(Sorry the image is so small, I’m having issues with the image display squishing the picture completely)
I’m not sure yet what’s next in my crochet adventures. I was speaking with my husband and he said it sounds like I need to work on another blanket. LOL. I will donate most of these hats to the Mitten Trees at school. I looked up crochet mitten patterns but have decided against that. I don’t know yet if I’ll make any scarves, maybe. I think I want to make a nice hat for my sister in Portland, OR. She moved there from Atlanta, Georgia so she might need a couple cute hats.
I received a lot of compliments at work on my maroon Divine hat. It matches wonderfully with my red scarf, which at least 2 people noticed and complimented. You could nearly hear another person’s jaw hit the floor when I told them that I made the hat. This is what I was looking for when I searched for crochet hat patterns. I wanted something that when done right didn’t look like a home made hat (kind of like the pink and red hats I made this week). For the maroon hat I used a smaller hook to get a tighter feel and less holes; it worked out well.
Christmas will be arriving shortly in our home so I don’t know how much crochet will be done this weekend.
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