Hats

 I've been working on some hats for the shop. I love these cute crocheted hats with flowers or other bold designs on them. I am having a hard time photographing in the new house, in the still winter-like light, so I'm not happy enough with the photographs to put these up in the shop yet. It's a lot of work to properly photograph your work to make it look professional! If you're interested in any of these, they are available, just let me know and we can talk.

This one is suuuuuuuper soft. It's like baby angora or something, such a lovely yarn. If you have trouble with sensitivities to wool, try washing it in a lanolin wash (Eucalan) and you just may find that you can wear it. This hat is newborn size. I need to measure it before I list it.

This one is acrylic and a little different with the circles instead of flowers. It has a brim and it looks better on someone than it does just sitting there by itself. Still needs to be measured for size.

 This one fits a baby with a head about the size of my baby. But his head is in the 98th percentile or something like that (Benign familial macrosephaly is what the doctor called it. :)), so it could fit your small headed two year old niece for all I know.

Cute Crocheted Hats

A friend of mine on Facebook suggested I become a fan of her (I'm presuming) friend's  shop, Sparkleberry Crafts. She makes super cute crocheted hats. They're great, but I don't pay for crochet. I must say I did a pretty good job of figuring out a pattern and coming up with some knock-offs on my own. I feel a bit copy cat-ish, but whatever. I haven't been selling them... and they're my patterns anyways, even if they were inspired by someone else's work. I've made two for my daughter's friends' birthdays and two for my friends' newborn/soon to be born daughters. Soo cute. Z and her friend love their hats (we have yet to give the other hat to the other friend: party on Tuesday).

I had to look up how to make crocheted flowers. I could have figured out my own by trial and error, but why do that when there's Ravelry? I found this easy pattern on Ravelry by searching "crochet flowers." I just made up the leaf pattern myself.

Lace Beret

This is a beret I made at the end of last year/beginning of this year. It was my Christmas break project. The lace pattern was a little bit addictive, so it only took me about 3 days. Of course, I have children and a husband and all that, so it wasn't really 3 days, but I do remember putting in a little more than just evenings. It was a mystery knit along pattern called "Meret" found on Ravelry. I didn't knit along, because the knit along was finished by the time I found the pattern.

Here it is being blocked. That's a charger plate it's being blocked on! I was a little worried this would stretch it out too much, but it's bounced back a little bit since and looks quite good. If you could see the other side of the charger plate, you would see that the brim of the hat comes almost to the middle of the plate, so blocking it on the charger plate did not stretch out the brim which is really important. I made 2 extra lace pattern repeats since I wanted a slouchy beret and I had read quite a few reviews that recommended doing 2 extra repeats before finishing off.

This is a great pattern for introducing lace knitting, since it's a pretty easily memorized pattern and fairly easy to see where you are in the pattern. It became quite addictive. I recommend it!

I made this: Olivia's Butterfly

I made this super cute and super easy and super fast crocheted butterfly hat. I'm all about free patterns and Vallieskids has them in spades. She's also got a super generous policy with her patterns, which I love. The true spirit of craft generosity. I made this in about an hour (? I don't usually look at the clock while I crochet). Her instructions are really simple to follow and the simply beautiful design is just lovely. I increased to a chunky yarn and kept the hook size the same, which increased the size enough to fit my big-headed daughter without modifying the pattern.

That's my beautiful girl up there. Wow. I still can't get over how gorgeous she is.

I'm also going to take this opportunity to tell you about Ravelry, which is all kinds of awesome. "Ravelry is a place for knitters, crocheters, designers, spinners, and dyers to keep track of their yarn, tools, and pattern information, and look to others for ideas and inspiration." I mostly use it for searching for patterns and to keep track of the patterns that I want to make or look at again. I think you still need to request an invitation and it takes a day or two to get your invitation, but it's free and it's a great resource. I recommend it.