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Winter Hats

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Welcome to fall! With fall comes, of course, cooler weather. And with cooler weather comes … colds. We’re only a third of the way through fall, which means at least five more months of cooler weather before spring, and my older boys have each been sick twice already. This does not make a mama happy. So I headed over to my local JoAnn store to get some yarn using my half-price coupons to make stocking hats for them to keep their heads warm during the next 5-6 months – until springtime.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I was looking for when I went in, except that I didn’t want a “regular” yarn. I wanted something soft and moderately warm so that it would do its job when turned into a hat. What I found was Sensations brand “Angel Hair” yarn. It’s magnificent. If you knit or crochet, I highly recommend you go to your JoAnn store and buy a skein or two to try out. Even hubby agreed it was wonderful feeling :).

The hats are just a basic beanie. You can find the pattern here. You’ll notice that I didn’t do the stripes in the pattern. That’s because my yarn was already striped, and I loved the way each color looked on its own; I didn’t want to take away from the beauty of the main color by adding those stripes. If the yarn had been a single color, I probably would have given each boy’s hat stripes in the other color. But since it wasn’t, I didn’t, so it’s a moot point :).

Welcoming a New Nephew

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My sister-in-law just had a baby on September 19th (a week after his due date). He’s my second nephew, joining the ranks of 5 nieces (none of whom he’s related to, although he does have loads of girl cousins on his mom’s side of the family – he’s the son of my brother and his wife). My first nephew is also the son of my brother and his wife, ironically enough, which means my mom is blessed with 5 grandsons and no granddaughters.

But enough about the family make-up. A new baby means, of course, a baby gift!

Here’s what I started with:

And here’s what I made:

When it came time to start crocheting, none of the patterns I looked at “floated my boat” so to speak, so I just did a basic one row of single crochet, one row of double crochet, repeat. Even with such basic stitches, I thought it turned out pretty :). Let me know what you think of it.

Cheers!

Polar Bear Blanket for Munchkin

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After finishing the two afghans for the new baby, Seahawk (my 8yo) said he wanted one of his own; Munchkin (my 5yo) said he didn’t. Well, after seeing Seahawk’s blanket coming together, he changed his mind!

I wanted to do a different pattern than the one I’d been using for his, just for a change, so I had him look through a few fairly simple patterns I’d saved over the previous couple of weeks, and he picked this one. The ironic thing is that I didn’t realize until I started reading the pattern and stitching, but it turns out it was the exact same stitch pattern as the blue/blue afghan for Small Fry and the red/blue/green one for Seahawk! This one’s just put together a little bit differently (and done with a smaller hook). It’s a bit small for him, unfortunately, but he loves it all the same :). My plan is to just add additional borders at some point – if he’ll ever let me have it back long enough to do so!

The bear has lovingly been named “Little Quilt Bob.” (Munchkin is just learning the difference between the different kinds of blankets, and since prior to this, all I’ve made are quilts, every blanket I make is a “quilt” now.)

I found the pattern over on the website for Red Heart yarn. Click HERE if you’re interested in making one of your own!

Sun Hats

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My kids both have red hair, which means they’re very fair skinned and sunburn easily. But they both hate having sunscreen on their faces – which actually works okay since I am NOT fair skinned and never burn, therefore forget to slather them *bad mom*. So this year, I decided to try something new in the hopes that we could avoid having them burn too badly: I made them sun hats. I scoured Google for patterns both in crochet and sewing varieties. I tried a fabric one first, but I wasn’t thrilled with the way it turned out, so I scrapped that idea (no pun intended ;)). The next day, I was looking at a video tutorial on YouTube (hadn’t actually started watching it yet) on baby booties when one of the “suggested videos” caught my eye. It was a brimmed hat, which I thought would be perfect for the boys. I had M with me in my little sanctuary, so I had him pick a color from my stash (he chose light blue) and I got to work. Roughly 3 hours later, he had a hat. Next up was A’s. It took him a while to choose the color; in the end, he went with red – which I could have predicted, since that’s his favorite. I only got about half done with his that night, but easily finished it before lunch.

Now comes the hard part: reminding them to wear them every day!!

I’ve included at the bottom of this post the video tutorial for the hats if you’re interested in making one of your own. It’s very easy, and I definitely recommend trying it if you’re in the market for anything even remotely similar. Doesn’t take too much yarn, either, which is always a plus. One thing I encountered that you should be aware of should you make one (or more!) of these hats: it takes on a taco-shell-like shape for the first several rows. Once you get to around row 10, though, it evens out and finds its place as a hat.

If you prefer written instructions rather than a video, click HERE for the link to the Crochet Geek blog. Her instructions are clear and concise. If you know even the basics of crochet, you shouldn’t have any trouble following them.

Happy stitching!!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ5fgRt8DK0&feature=relmfu]

Afghan for Seahawk

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As mentioned before, this pattern is one of my most used. My eldest son, after seeing the blue/blue blanket for his future-brother, wanted one of his own, so he selected the colors and I put in the work. I’m not going to post the tutorial video again since it’s the same one. Just look at the “Afghan 2 for the New Baby” post to find it.

Afghan 2 for Small Fry

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After finishing two fairly major projects, I was feeling confident enough to try something completely new, so I found a tutorial video for this pattern. It’s become one of my go-to patterns now. This one is smaller than the beige one; my thinking was that it could be used for “out and about” once Son #3 is here–it’s big enough to cover a carseat (or a baby in a carseat) completely, but small enough that it will be convenient.

It’s not perfectly clear in the picture, but it’s royal blue and sky blue (not white). The colors compliment each other beautifully :).

Here’s the tutorial video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sABuxJXYts&feature=sh_e_se&list=SL]

Afghan 1 for Small Fry

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I’ve always been afraid of crochet; my first two experiences with it weren’t exactly positive. The first was when I was pregnant with my oldest son. My late mother-in-law taught me a basic stitch so that I could make a baby blanket. The project took me most of the pregnancy, so I didn’t keep up with it – I’m an “instant gratification” kind of girl. When I got pregnant with my second son, I had an urge to make a similar blanket for him, so I did – my second major project. That one didn’t go any quicker than the first, so I dropped the hobby yet again.

When I stopped writing around December 2011/January 2012, my husband noticed that I seemed “aimless,” so he suggested I learn to knit. In his opinion, it would be a good hobby that I could do nearly anywhere. I thought, “What the heck,” and picked up some yarn and knitting needles from our local Jo-Ann store. Well, it turns out that knitting was even harder than crocheting! I tried for hours with YouTube videos and couldn’t get anything to stay on the needles, so the next day I went back to Jo-Ann and bought a set of crochet hooks instead – even if it was slow, at least I already knew how to do it. I had two skeins of yarn to use up, after all. My “first” project was a purse (essentially a piece of crochet “fabric” about 12×19 folded in half and sewn up the sides to make a pocket with a 3×36 strap). I was able to finish the entire thing (including a zippered liner sewn into the crocheted shell) in about 3 days. Talk about encouraging! I’d never been able to crochet that fast before. That took one full skein of yarn, but I still had one more. I headed back to YouTube to find a pattern I liked for a baby blanket. This was the one I came up with. We found out we were having another boy shortly before I finished this, so I added a royal blue border when I was done, and voilà! A baby blanket that didn’t take the entire pregnancy to complete!

Here’s the video I used for making this one:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBWx_QXfX_M&list=PL608EA64FF1FB88F7&index=2&feature=plpp_video]

Knight Quilts

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We recently redecorated my sons’ bedroom, and they chose a “Knights in Shining Armor” theme, so of course I had to make them new quilts to go with the new theme! I made the appliques from clip art images, and let each kid choose his own color for the background of the pictures. They both chose blue, but in different shades, so I used the leftovers from one’s for the sashing on the other’s. These took a bit of math, too, because their beds aren’t a standard American size. I planned them carefully so that they would be approximately the size of the beds. I love sneaking in on them while they’re sleeping and seeing the matching quilts keeping them warm!

Christmas Present Joe

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This little guy was a Christmas gift that my oldest son (8) chose to make for his little brother (5) in 2011. Daddy took the younger out for the afternoon while I stayed home with the elder and worked on the bear that has earned first place in my son’s life – I’ve even had to repair him twice already, and he’s only 4 months old! It’s gratifying to know that something I made (er, helped make) is so loved.

As a side note, he’s sitting on a quilt that I made in 2009. It’s the most elaborate one I’ve ever done with over 900 individual pieces, and took over a month to complete.