My first "real" wearable!

I have made my first wearable! (hats, scarves and fingerless gloves don't count :P). I had been wanting to make a baby shrug for awhile now but had been intimidated by the patterns I found. But I wanted to give Kami something handmade for her first birthday (her other gifts being books) and had already made her plenty of hats and an afghan.

LionBrand's Flutter Baby Top

So I made the pattern on LionBrand's site for the Flutter Baby Top (ravelry link). It took me about 5.5-6 hours to finish, but was pretty easy to make. I imagine if I was making it for a smaller baby it would have taken 4.5-5 hours instead, but I made the 12-24 mos size (I hope it fits her! You never really know without measuring).

You work it up in practically one piece, which is really nice. And I will be using that "style" of making shrugs & sweaters as a foundation for others as well! I imagine you can pick any stitch and work it up in the same way and get some fun shrugs.

I've otherwise been working on some granny squares for Share a Square. I didn't make the first deadline, but will probably send the 15 I have out tomorrow anyway since it seems they're short. :(

A bit of everything...

Wicket making friends with another small dog at the Simi Dog Park

It's been one of those months where I look back and think "What exactly did I DO this month?" and mostly I just remember hanging out with people and taking Wicket to dog parks and such. I know I must have done more since it seems I was so busy, but it's a bit of a blur (and no, I wasn't drinking - much! :P).

I did list some things on ebay, deciding to branch out from just friends/friends of friends & etsy, so there's something.

And I worked on some Monkey hats! I made one intending to give it to my nephew, but then realized he probably already has one and then decided it would be cool to gift to Kami. :) And then I 'had' to make one for Hannah too ('cause, y'know, one cute baby in a monkey hat is great and TWO cute babies in monkey hats is SUPER great!). I also want to make some pacifier plush and intended to send a plush banana with the monkey hat, so I have one of those lying around now, unloved. Will have to do something about that!

Monkey and Banana (and the banana is a rattle!)

Just in case anyone is wondering, I do have this hat up for sale here on Etsy. :)

I have also been working on some designs for other animals because it's really just too fun. Unfortunately, it's not really beanie weather though, as it's now July and 90+ degrees (F). Bah! It's fun coming up with (mostly just drawn out) designs, though. I can't begin to explain just how happy I am that I can not only READ and FOLLOW crochet patterns now, but I can write them too. When I was in my late teens, I was always intimidated by all the abbreviations and terms and didn't even do more than a single crochet stitch and rectangular things. Now, I'm able to visualize what stitches and such work best to create a variety of shapes. :)

Some time has also been spent coming up with baby geekery because I'm really not sure there is ENOUGH baby stuff for the geeks & nerds of the world out there. And that just ain't right.

Oh, that's something else crafty I did this past month! I went through our wedding photos and some other photos and got prints! (it's only been 2 years now...) And I intend to mount some of them on wood and frame the bigger ones (will post how the wood mounting works out!). It was helpful to compare a professional quality 8x10 to a Costco 8x10 too. Costco's are pretty damn good, just FYI. The Bay Photo print looked incredible, but the differences were the type that could 1: be improved by editing just a bit differently and 2: barely discernible without looking for the differences with another photo right beside it. And for the difference in cost (a 20"x30" was $8.99 at Costco... 8"x10" was $1.50 versus $3-4... 4"x6" was $0.13 versus $0.25), I'm not sure how often I'll get the smaller prints anywhere but Costco.

Why are baby's hats so darn fun to make?

I've finally started on the Owl hat my friend wanted for her daughter, inspired by one she found online. I have several photos to go by and am really trying to recreate the hat as best I can. So far, I think I've done pretty darn well! And I'm not sure that it makes sense that people are trying to sell patterns for similarly designed hats for $5-10! IMO, patterns should only be sold if they required a bunch of frogging to design/create because, otherwise, it was easy enough to figure out that most anyone should be able to do it! If one really wants to charge for their pattern and it's pretty easy, make it a couple bucks at most! Or, at least, allow people to sell items they create with the simple pattern if you must charge them $10 for it.

I don't mean to be a tease, but I'll post my pattern (for free) when I am done and can post some photos along with it. Stay tuned!

Also on the agenda, a couple of stegosaurus hats for etsy customers. It's seemingly a hit among moms with boys, despite it being pretty darn cute on little girls too! (if a dinosaur can be blue and orange, why can't it be pink and purple?). I'm working on a green one with dark brown plates (spikes?) and then on to a light green hat with orange plates. Hmm, green seems to be the color of choice.

When I'm done with these, I'm totally itching to come up with some more! I want to make a bee hat and a flower hat, but will likely need to start focusing more on just bunny hats first. Fortunately, baby hats work up pretty quickly (2-3 hours for me, generally), but I still need to figure out colors and such! I also imagine that most people would prefer natural fibers to acrylic (honestly, I would LOVE to be able to  work basically solely with fibers like bamboo and silk, but it's just too $$$ :( ), so I will probably look into at least getting some more Peaches & Creme yarn in colors other than ombres and white & ecru.

Speaking of cotton yarn - anyone out there have any luck dying it? A few months ago, I wanted to see about naturally dying cotton yarn with things like dandelions & strawberries, but never got around to trying it.

Also, how about "tarn" (yarn made from t-shirts)? I have a rotary cutter and a self-healing mat and am itching to try to make some, but don't really have any shirts I want to cut up! (unfortunately, we've donated quite a few of my husband's old t-shirts over the years!) I guess I need to hit up some garage sales and thrift stores to find some...

Kami's Stegosaurus Hat

And the pink stegosaurus hat I made for my friend's daughter, Kami! :)

For this hat, I used Lion Brand Pound of Love in "Bubblegum" and Joann Sensations in a purple-pink gradient and a 5.0mm hook.

Hat:
1: 12 hdc into a magic circle
2: *1 hdc into st, 2 hdc into next, rep from * - 18 sts
3: *2 hdc into st, 2 hdc into next, rep from * - 24 sts
4: *3 hdc into st, 2 hdc into next, rep from * - 30 sts
5: *4 hdc into st, 2 hdc into next, rep from * - 36 sts
6-? Increase until diameter is the size you want. I increased to 48 sts at row 7 for a hat approx 3-6mos
?-12 (more if you're making the hat a bigger size, less if smaller size): hdc around all sts.

Plates:
1: 6sc into a magic circle
2: sc around - 6 sts
3: 2 sc, 2sc in next st, rep - 8 sts
4: 3 sc, 2sc in next st, rep - 10 sts
5: 4 sc, 2sc in next st, rep - 12 sts
(6: continue inc until desired size)

I'm now, officially, an aunt!

Caron Simply Soft Collection Autumn Maize and Eco Ocean

And so, now, I am making all sorts of things for my nephew (my sister-in-law's infant son), Orion Augustus.

I made him a ribbed hat that was striped with Caron's Simply Soft Collection Yarn: "Autumn Maize" and their Eco "Ocean" that was for a 3-6mos old rather than a newborn. I made some before for my friend's newborn and little Kami grew out of them within about 2 weeks, so I'm likely to err on the side of older from now on! I modified this pattern to be 30 FSC instead of a ch of 25 and then did 36 rows (17.5").

Orion's Stegosaurus Hat,
also available on my Etsy Page

The other two hats I made him were inspired-by that I just played around with until I got it how I wanted it. One was a newsboy cap made with cotton yarn and a wooden button from my collection. The other a stegosaurus earflap beanie, a bit of a test run for the hat I intend to make little Kami. It was my friend Sarah who showed me a photo of someone else's hat and gushed over it that inspired me there. :)

I've been busier on Etsy lately for some reason! Unfortunately, not necessarily a lot of crochet orders, but many, many origami lucky star & lucky star strip orders. I have, however, had a lot of interest in my Castle Crashers beanie and the animal orbs, which is great! Love spreading the Castle Crashers love!

One thing that has also kept me busy (besides my adorable shih tzu, Wicket, and my other crafting!) has been the starghan I made for another friend's baby shower. Everyone knows I love stars plus it's a more interesting and unique afghan than many I've seen, so I have decided that is going to be my standard baby shower gift, haha. I've already given 3 away so far! This one was fun because it actually went with the nursery theme - "Starry Night". I made it with pastel blue, yellow and white and put a "cloud"/shell border along the edge.

GlassEyesOnline and Hello Kitty

My order from GEO was shipped 8 hours after I ordered and arrived a couple of days after that! I think I've found myself a new place to buy from. :)

Upon receiving my eyes and noses, I made a little 3.5" Hello Kitty using this pattern (that's a ravelry link, just fyi).

TMNT Mikey Bib

Mikey Bib, originally uploaded by SykoSam.

This is the first of a set of TMNT baby bibs

I will update with the pattern once I get it typed up!