Birthday Present for a One Year Old

My nephew turned one this past week and I was trying to think of something fun to make him and I found lots of patterns for finger puppets. I thought that might be good for a little kid and decided to try to do farm animals. Those seem to be good for learning sounds and so I thought they would be good for a one year old who is just learning to talk. I started with a pattern that I found and they were HUGE. Like so big that I stopped a couple of rows early and it was as long as my finger and really big around. My nephew is a tiny little kid and I decided that wasn't going to work. I still wanted to do it so I decided to just make up my own patterns and make them smaller. I used a pattern for the horse because I didn't  want to try to figure out the horse head. The rest I just made a body that I thought was a good size (big enough to fit my fingers snugly, small enough that they wouldn't be huge on a child's fingers) and then made the ears, beaks, etc. to make them look like each animal. 

 I decided 5 was a good number since that would be a whole hand worth. I made the sheep out of fuzzy yarn to make it more sheep-like. I wanted a little bag to put them in so I made a little drawstring bag that looked like a barn. It is shown above open with all of the animals out, and below closed with the animals inside. It was really quick and easy to make and my kids really liked it, I might have to make another for them to keep.

I have made a lot of other things for Christmas and Birthdays but I am really bad about taking pictures so since most of them have already been given away I probably won't be writing about all of them here. 

Headband Pattern

I got several requests for the pattern I used for the headbands in the last post. I can't share the pattern itself but I can tell you where to find it. It is a PDF pattern for sale on Etsy http://www.etsy.com/listing/62740627/pdf-pattern-crochet-flower-headband. I looked all over for a crochet headband pattern that I liked and they were really hard to find, usually I try to find free patterns online, but I just couldn't find any good ones out there. I would highly recommend this pattern, it is really easy to make, I had the pattern memorized after the first couple, and it works up really fast. The other good thing about this pattern is that 10% of the proceeds go to charity. I believe she might also have other styles of headbands but this is the only one I have tried. Hopefully that will help those of you looking for a pattern, if I ever find a good free pattern I will post it but so far this is the best I have found.
Also, for anyone interested in making a smaller one, I made 2 that fit my two year old by following the pattern exactly but changing the yarn and hook sizes. The original pattern uses an I hook and worsted weight yarn, my first attempt to make it smaller I used sport weight yarn and an H hook. It fit fine but seemed really thin so I tried another using worsted weight yarn and a G hook, it turned out almost exactly the same size as the other but was much thicker so as an earwarmer I liked the second a lot better. I want to try one for a little girl, about 6 years old, but haven't yet. I think that worsted weight with an H hook might work for that size.

Headbands, Headbands, and More Headbands

I have made several flower headband/earwarmers over the past couple of weeks. These are pictures of the latest batch that I just finished. These ones are for my mom and a friend of hers. 

 The first ones that I made were a green one and a red one for my little sisters Christmas presents, everyone really liked them and wanted me to make more.

I just used some yarn that I had on hand and some big wooden buttons that my mom had given me. They are the type you are supposed to paint or something but I just used them plain and they worked perfectly.

Then I had requests to make purple and blue ones so I bought a skein of purple and my mom had a couple of shades of blue that I used. I ended up making a total of 8 adult size and I made 2 smaller ones that fit my two year old.

I think that they turned out pretty nice and I thought the colors were all so pretty together. Because I was able to use what I already had I only spent $2.10 on the purple yarn (40% off coupons are so nice). Not bad for $2.10 if you ask me.

Snowflakes

For Christmas this year my family is doing an ornament exchange. I thought it might be fun to make some crocheted snowflakes to give in the exchange. I have never tried snowflakes before and pretty much the only thread crochet I have done is edging hemstitched stuff. It was something different and fun to try. 

All of the snowflakes that I made were from snowcatcher.blogspot.com. She has a ton of free snowflake patterns in all sorts of styles. I tried to choose a few that were more open and some that were a little more solid. This was the first time that I have crocheted something that needed to be blocked and stiffened. I think that they turned out pretty good, maybe not as good as the pictures but not bad for a first time.

Sewing

I haven't found time to do a lot of sewing but here are a few of the little things that I have managed to get done. 

The little bunny was from a really old baby pattern that I had, it had some outfits but they seemed pretty dated but I thought that the little bunny toy would be really quick and easy to make and cute to stick in with a baby gift. It was super simple and I made it in just a few minutes. It is just two bunny shaped pieces sewn, turned, stuffed and embroidered with a simple face. 

I wanted to make some bibs and somewhere I had seen some made from jeans. I had an old pair of jeans with a hole in the knee but the backs of the legs were hardly worn at all. I cut a couple of bibs by tracing one that I had (I made the neck slightly bigger because my baby has a fat neck and the one I used as a pattern doesn't quite fit) and adding some scraps of ribbon for embellishment and a coordinating back. I finished it off with some topstitching and a little piece of velcro. Super simple and quick to make. 

The baby shoes were made using the Stardust shoes pattern. It was pretty simple, I didn't love the pattern and I don't know that I will make it again, but that's just me. I have a chunky baby and they seemed like they would be too tight to fit where the opening is for the foot to go into. I have a couple other shoe patterns I would like to try,  we'll see if there is another pattern out there that I like better.

Baby Crochet

I would say that of everything that I make baby things are probably my favorite. I don't know if it is their small size and therefore quick finish that I like so much or that there are so many things you can do. Whatever it is, I really enjoy making baby stuff. Besides it is always nice to have on hand for when you need a quick baby gift. 

My sister had a couple of hemstitched burp cloths that she didn't want so she gave then to me. I finished them up pretty quickly with a simple picot edging. The pattern I used did just one round of crochet, the picot round, but I decided that I liked it better with one round of single crochet and then a second round with the picots. I didn't want to do anything too fancy since they are both boy prints. I think that they turned out cute and it's always good to have some boy stuff stashed away, I always seem to have more girl stuff. 

Speaking of girl stuff, the rest of the baby projects that I have crocheted are pretty girly. The pictured just above and below show some of those projects. Hats and booties up above and sweaters below. The pink and green hats were made from the Best Baby Cloche pattern on www.aestheticnest.com. I just noticed 

that she now has a bigger girl version as well as a lace and picot cloche that I want to try out. The yellow hat is a bigger size and made from a Bernat Yarns pattern but the flower is from the other pattern. It is a little messed up especially the edging because I got kind of confused with the pattern. The green bootie pattern was from a book that I have, not an online pattern. When I made the yellow booties I was trying to find a cute and easy mary-jane style bootie. I would personally not recommend this pattern. I thought that they turned out looking kind of messy and funny shaped, maybe if you went around the edges with a single crochet they would look more finished but I don't know how that would affect the size or fit of the bootie. I will say that they were very easy to make, I just didn't really care for the look of the finished project. It could just be that I did something wrong but I don't know, I followed the pattern exactly and just didn't care for them. 

I am not a huge fan of crocheting baby sweaters for a couple of reasons. Number one, I don't particularly love the look of crocheted sweaters and, number2, they take longer to finish that a hat or pair of booties so I am usually ready to be done long before I actually am. The first one that I made, the green one, I thought turned out surprisingly well. I still don't love it but it does actually look like it would fit a baby. The yellow one however, turned out kind of funny shaped. It seems to me to be really short and wide. I was going to link to the patterns since they were both made from free ones that I found online but I can't find them right now. As soon as I do I will add the links.
I really enjoy making baby stuff and have enjoyed these crochet projects. Some I like more than others but I enjoyed making all of them and now I have a drawer full of baby stuff when I need a quick gift.

Crocheted Toys

my recently finished crochet projects 

Lately I have been doing a lot of crocheting. It is not my favorite craft as far as the look of it, but there are a lot of things that I like about crocheting. I like the fact that I can do it anywhere, I am not tied to one place like I am with sewing. I can do it while watching a movie with my husband or while nursing my baby, though the baby is getting to the reaching and grabbing stage so that's not working quite as well lately, or I can take it with me if I am going somewhere away from home. The other thing I like about crochet is that most projects work up pretty quick. I like projects that I can finish quickly, if they take to long I start to get bored with them. For instance, I like the look of knitted baby sweaters better than crocheted but it takes me forever to knit anything so I prefer crocheting.
When I first decided to crochet a little I saw a crochet dinosaur amigirumi pattern. I had never made amigirumi before but I found that I really enjoyed it. My first three projects were the baby triceratops, the octopus, and the little duckie. I really liked the little triceratops, the only thing that I didn't do was the eyebrows because I couldn't figure out how to put them on and I thought he was cute without them. The octopus legs were supposed to be knitted but I just crocheted long tubes instead. I embroidered the eyes on both instead of using safety eyes since I didn't want to buy the eyes and since they are kids toys I figured that the embroidery was safe, it couldn't be pulled off like buttons or something.

I enjoyed making the toys so I decided to make a few more. I found a couple of websites that have lots of cute free patterns. I like lionbrand.com though you do have to register in order to get the patterns. I thought they had a lot of cute patterns. Another website that has a ton of patterns is crochetpatterncentral.com. They have a lot but they don't have pictures so you may have to look at a lot that you don't like before finding what you do. The caterpillar, the frog prince and the dog in the picture are all lion brand patterns. The yellow bear was from a free pattern that I picked up from Michaels, the little tiny bear pattern and the turtle pattern I found through crochet pattern central. Though all of the patterns called for worsted weight yarn all of the toys in the second picture except the turtle are made with sport weight since that is what I had the most of. I just followed the pattern using a smaller hook so that the stitches would still be tight.