Kitchen Flowers

For Christmas I wanted to make something more 'sophisticated' for my mom and my boyfriend's parents. They all like to cook and I'd always wanted to try making some potholders, so I scoured Ravelry and found these flower potholders. With the pattern in hand I figured out the color schemes of the kitchens and bought some cotton yarn. FYI: it's important to use 100% cotton yarn for potholders because acrylic melts. Plus cotton is sturdier.

For my mom:

The yellow apparently didn't want to be photogenic.

For my boyfriend's parents:

All together now!

A tip if you want to make them: connect the petals at stitch 9 (counted down from the stitch at the tip of the petal on either side).

I was VERY pleased with how these turned out. They look complicated but are actually very easy.

Sibling Christmas Gifts

I know, I know, it's March. But this semester's been pretty busy, so cut me a little slack.

I made a lot of the Christmas gifts I gave this year. This post will be dedicated to the gifts I made for my boyfriend's siblings and my brother.

First, I decided to try and tackle the gift for my boyfriend's older brother because I had no idea what I wanted to make. Through some "sneaky" question asking during Thanksgiving I confirmed that he was a Zelda fan. Enter the Triforce hat.

I had to add around seven rows to the end of the pattern, and it was a bit tight, but I was pretty pleased with it over all. And he didn't take it off for a couple weeks, so I think I did good.

For my boyfriend's sister I made armwarmers. It took me awhile to decide which colors to use, but ended up using black and white because they will in theory, match more things.

I made my little brother a hat for his favorite sports team that I unfortunately didn't get to take pictures of. The pattern was my own invention, but I'm going to have to modify it some if I want to make it again! New pattern coming?

Baby Gifts Are a Thing Now

I'm getting to that point in my life where people my age are having babies. This past summer I saw that one of my best friends from elementary school was going to be having a baby girl! I haven't seen her for many, many years, but I wanted to make something for her and her little one.

Firstly, I wanted to make a blankie of some sort. I didn't have a whole lot of baby color super soft yarn in my stash, so I wanted something with a lot of texture. After searching through Ravelry, I found this lovely pattern.

Unfortunately, I have a camera from like 2005, so the pictures are not the greatest. Maybe one day I'll be able to afford a new camera! But I really liked how the bobbles turned out. It's just enough texture to make this lovie an exciting, but not overdone piece.

My friend also really like owls. There are so many owl hat patterns out there that I think I looked at about ten before deciding on Sarah Zimmerman's pattern.The last time I tried to make a newborn hat it turned out WAY too small, so I decided to play it safe and make the 3-6 month old size.

I used cotton for the hats because I wanted it to be washable as well as (hopefully) comfortable. I was very pleased with how the baby hat came out that I didn't want Momma to be left out. So I made her a matching hat!

Super cute!

And with that I boxed them up and sent them off in time for Christmas! The baby is here now, quite adorable, and both her and my friend are doing well!

Minion Hat

Every once in awhile I get a PAID commission. And those make me happy, because being a broke college student kind of stinks. What happened was that a friend needed to get a secret Santa gift, but they only thing she knew the girl liked was Despicable Me. So what better to make than a minion hat? I managed to get it done in three evenings, which is pretty good since it was during the last week of class.

I made a couple of modifications to the pattern that I used. I added two additional rows of yellow at the end, and made two black rounds in the eye instead of one black and one brown.

The eye sits a little higher than I'd like. So, if I make this again, I think I will also make one more round of yellow before switching to black.

After crocheting for almost two years, I've decided it's a universal truth that I crochet tighter than patterns expect. There is something fun about experimenting with crochet, but I should probably learn to properly use a gauge!

Batman Hat (Free Pattern)

This is one of those times of the year where I get really busy/ make a lot of crochet Christmas presents. As such, internet, you are about to get A LOT of posts in a short amount of time. First I would like to share the Batman hat that I created for my friend. Louie's Loops has this great Batman bat pattern that I'd been wanting to use for a long time, and this was the perfect chance. The beanie is my own original pattern created with the bat in mind. So here goes!

Batman Beanie

Materials:
I hook
Red Heart with Love in Daffodil and Black
Tapestry needle

Note: repeat instructions in **
         ch counts as 1 dc throughout pattern

In black
1) Make a magic circle, ch 3 (counts as 1st dc), 9 dc in magic circle, join with sl st to chain (10)
2) Ch 3, dc in same st, *2 dc in ea st* around, join with sl st (20)
3) Ch 3, dc in same st, 1 dc in next st, *2 dc in st, 1 dc in next st* around, join with sl st (30)
4) Ch 3, dc in same st, 1 dc in next 2 sts, *2 dc in st, 1 dc in next 2 sts* around, join with sl st (40)
5) Ch 3, dc in same st, 1 dc in next 3 sts, *2 dc in st, 1 dc in next 3 sts* around, join with sl st (50)
6) Ch 3, dc in same st, 1 dc in next 4 sts, *2 dc in st, 1 dc in next 4 sts* around, join with sl st (60)
7-11) Ch 3, *dc in ea st* around, join with sl st (60)

In yellow
12-16) Ch 3, *dc in ea st* around, join with sl st (60)

In black
17) Ch 1, *sc in each st* around, join with sl st, FO (60)

All that's left is to sew in the ends, create the bat, and sew it onto the yellow stripe of the hat!

Christmas Presents, Part 2

As promised, here are the last items for my grandmothers!

This is the second hat. I made this with a super chunky weight yarn. Because of this I ended up using 50 stitches in a round rather than 60, which was plenty.

The first scarf! Again, I used the infinity scarf pattern. Even with a chunky yarn I used the pattern exactly (except for using a J hook), but I made the scarf shorter than the scarves I've made with medium weight yarn.

This is the second scarf. Instead of four shells in a row I used to three, which worked out surprisingly well. I also used an N hook.

Even with slightly different construction, the scarves ended up being about the same thickness. I'm very pleased with how they turned out, especially because I needed to make modifications to the patterns I used. I even found a model!

Now that I'm all done with Christmas presents I can look ahead to other projects! Yay!

Christmas Presents

This was my first Christmas while knowing how to crochet, and so needless to say I put this skill to good use!

Above is what I made for my mother. 

The scarf is the same infinity scarf pattern I had used before because while I was making the first scarf my mom commented how much she loved it. I really like the yarn I used for this set. I found it in a local yarn shop in a small town about 30 minutes from where I live. My only complaint is that they tied to pieces of yarn together in the middle of the skein! UGH! You can see the awful red to suddenly purple transition in the picture. Luckily you can hardly tell when it's worn.

I used about one and a half skeins for the scarf and so decided to make this headband with the extra. Turns out I had the perfect amount! I created this by using a double crochet stitch with an I hook. It was very quick and easy.

This next set is what I made for a gift exchange at a family Christmas gathering. The rules were that it had to be a unisex gift, so neon orange and neon green totally work, right?

Matching hat and scarf! As you can see, I didn't exactly finish before my family had to leave... However, I did manage to barely get it done in time. Whew!

I was tired of making an equal size stripe pattern (plus I had less green than orange) so I decided to try out stripes of different sizes, and I really like how it turned out. Double crochet stitch with an I hook.

Lastly I am making a hat and scarf for each of my grandmas! Below is the hat I have finished.

This was the first time I worked with chunky weight yarn and I didn't realize how much quicker projects take when you use it. Too bad it's more expensive. I used my hat pattern from a previous post, same number of stitches in a round and everything. This made a looser hat, which was my goal.

And because it was Christmas, I had to include a picture with the tree! :)

Infinity scarf post: http://linz-craftingadventures.blogspot.com/2012/11/infinity-scarf-surprise.html
Hat pattern post: http://linz-craftingadventures.blogspot.com/2012/10/neon-green-beanie.html