Viking Hat

I finished a project on one of my "Why Haven't I Made This Yet?" posts. What a great feeling. Seriously. I have zero use for this as I have no children and the ones I know are girls. Still love this hat. It's adorable.

Another reason for needing to find a baby I can borrow...

This is clearly not Jasmine's best look. Not sure I could ever replace her. She is a faithful model. She probably just needs to get a slightly bigger head. Instead of digging out my old Barbie styling head, I just searched for more stuffed animals.

Meeko also doesn't have a big enough head. He is too busy eating anyways.

Clearly my family HATES Disney. As evidenced by all the old stuffed animals and dolls and Disney references. I was thinking while I was taking all these pictures I should figure out how to make a little hat with a tiara attached to go along with this.

Overall, I think this is a great hat and I love how it turned out! Maybe there will a pattern to follow.

Crochet Market Bag

I started this market bag quite some time ago. I put it in one of the forbidden baskets of half finished projects. I really have been focusing on finishing all of the projects that I start so I have been trying to pick up some half finished projects. I picked this project up because the idea of a market bag is always nice because they can be used for so many things, including a beach bag :) It made me feel like I may need a beach bag soon so I should get to finishing this. I also love the diamond shaped pattern in this bag. It so far looks beautiful!

I am a little unsure of the large increases right at the beginning. It doesn't seem like the bag will lay out the way I thought it would at the bottom. I suppose it will look differently once everything is finished and as you can see, I haven't gotten all that far.

Simple Crochet Flower

Here is one of the crochet flowers I previous posted the pattern for here. I just love how these flowers look even by themselves! You could add them to almost any knit item. Including purses headband or even scarves.

I put this flower up on etsy as well, here.

Stash Basket

I found this really quick pattern for a stash basket and decided Sunday night I needed to find a quick project to break up some of my bigger projects. I decided on this. I loved the idea of this little basket. There is also a medium sized one. It's very easy to customize different shapes and sizes to get the look you want. Only took me a few short hours while watching a movie to finish this.

I posted this on etsy if anyone is interested. I posted it with different pictures so check it out here.

I anyone wants the pattern click here.

Enjoy

Loop' N Lace Blanket Pattern

I have previously posted pictures of the baby blanket for Baby Carter. It was the Michigan color themed blanket but can be made in any colors. I have even thought of doing some double stitching for logos on the squares. At any rate, here is now I did the original blanket.

First I made the 16 squares.

Size 8 needles. I used circular but that's simply a preference.

Cast on 30 stitches.

Row 1: K to end

Continue in row 1 till you have a perfect square. What I did instead of counting rows was simply pull the corner of the cast on edge up to the opposite corner. If everything lined up correctly then I would cast off.

This square is obviously not a complete square. But that's the very technical way I used to tell if it was a square haha.

Easy so far right?? Here comes the fun part!

Now you have to take all 16 squares (or however many you choose to do this pattern allows for a lot of customization) and crochet around the squares.

I started by making a simple chart of where the squares where going to go on the blanket because depending on what square depends on how you crochet. Also a very technical way to do this. Sharpie and a scrap piece of paper gets the job done!

Squares 6, 7, 10, 11. Start with a slip stitch in one of the corners. Chain 15. Slip stitch back into square. Chain 10. Slip stitch back into square. Continue all the way around the squares and tie off at the end.

You want all of your squares to line up with the rows and columns facing the same way so after doing the middle squares I did the corners.

Squares 1: Only ch 10 across the top and the left side of the square. Alternate between ch 15 and ch 10 on the other two sides (just like you alternate in the middle squares).

Square 4: Only ch 10 across the top and the right side of the square. Alternate between ch 15 and ch 10 on the other two sides

Square 13: Only ch 10 across the bottom and the left side of the square. Alternate between ch 15 and ch 10 on the other two sides

Square 16:Only ch 10 across the bottom and the right side of the square. Alternate between ch 15 and ch 10 on the other two sides

Square 2, 3: Only ch 10 across the top. Alternate between ch 15 and ch 10 on the other three sides

Square 5, 9: Only ch 10 across the left side. Alternate between ch 15 and ch 10 on the other three sides

Square 8, 12: Only ch 10 across the right side. Alternate between ch 15 and ch 10 on the other three sides

Square 14, 15: Only ch 10 across the bottom. Alternate between ch 15 and ch 10 on the other three sides

Now you need to loop n' lace everything together! I will have a tutorial about how to do the loop n' lace in an upcoming post!

Crochet Flower

I have a few people ask for the crochet flower that I used with my headband. It is a very easy crochet flower I whipped together very quickly. Doing the multiple DC in the same ch 1 creates your standard shell stitch. Basically all I did for this pattern take a basic crochet stitch and use a tapestry needle in order to sew it together.

Flower

I used a sz J hook

Chain: 17

Row 1: DC in 5th ch from hook *ch 1, skip next ch, in next ch following skipped ch DC, ch, DC* Repeat till end of row

Row 2: Ch 3, turn. DC 5 in ch 1 space *SC in the ch 1 sp, 6 DC in next ch 1 space* Repeat till end of row.

Leave a long tail at the end in order to have enough yarn to attach the flower properly.

If you click on the header it will take you to the google docs page where you can easily print!

Hope you enjoy this! Let me know if there are any questions.

Joining Squares

Sorry for the hideous picture quality. I took this on my phone. This is how i originally planned on joining my squares for the baby blanket. However, I hated it. As I had said before I ripped out all the seaming on Thursday night when the shower was Saturday. I didn't want to give someone something that I hated so I had to think of something new. I came across an idea called Loop n Lace. Wonderful, love it, but takes a long time.

This is a simple slip stitch. Which is quick and easy and allows for two colors to be shown in joining squares. Useful just not what I was looking for.

Winter Cowl

I decided to make a cowl to match the Flower headband I had made. I just took a simple pattern from LionBrand.com (click on heading to get to pattern). I made this cowl with Lion Brand chunky weight yarn. I used a sz P crochet hook. It didn't take long at all to make this cute cowl that will match the other winter gear I have been making!

I haven't quite finished this but the pattern is simple. Single crochet one row and double crochet the next. The only catch it to make sure that you are connecting your rows by having the first stitch be a slip stitch!

I used a size P hook and bulky Lion Brand yarn.

Christmas Afghan

This was the afghan I made my mom for Christmas. I used four strand of homespun Christmas yarn. The blanket ended up being about the size of a lap blanket. It is used more as a decorative throw. I got this pattern from Michaels.com. However I do not think that it is available anymore. This afghan was crocheted with a speed hook.