Crochet Baby Hat fits a Real Baby!

Ah I am so happy, at Easter the other weekend I got to see if my crochet baby hat would actually fit a real baby. And to my surprise it does! My poor cousin's baby had to look like a dag for a while while I took him around to show off that I could make a hat that fit. Everyone was yelling at me to take it off that it made the poor baby boy look poofy. I think if he was a girl their reaction would have been different but anyhow. So here is a photo of baby Lukas modeling the crochet cap.

Maybe I can make him a nice blue one without the trimmings oh and without the flower hehehehe.

Doing it Old School, First Step: Wash Fleece

My house mate and I are back at it, that is making felt from ABSOLUTE scratch! and all by hand. I got some more fleece from my uncle's farm, this time the fleece is from a ram, which my uncle says is better quality. One thing it is is cleaner than the last stuff we got which I can now see was like D grade. We haven't done much else other than wash some of it, we have to get the carder back from the Steiner school and rent a whole heap of DVD's to watch while we spend hours carding the fleece.

Drying in the sun. Oh how Australian!

I haven't actually made anything for myself as yet but this time round I would really like to dry felt some little mice like I saw on another blog. Please forgive me I have forgotten which blog the image came from but I acknowledge that these mice are someone else's idea that I would like to copy for myself and not commercial reasons.

Are they not the cutest things you'd ever seen?! I want to put little glasses on mine and make three like the three blind mice.

It's Willow Time!

Ah finally I have made a Willow block made famous by many a Flicker groups which are dedicated to making bags and what-nots using this block. I fell in love with this block the first time I saw it on Granny Along and after searching the web for the pattern and asking others I finally found the book it came from and quickly snapped it up on Amazon.com, as they say, the rest is history.

I have had enough of looking at blue yarn and all the other projects I've made are in natural earthly colours so for this project I've gone for a more candy palette lots of colourful fun for the senses. I saw another bag on Flicker where the crafter used purple and mint green to make a German crochet bag using two different squares, one similar to the willow and the other a normal granny. I have chosen to do something similar but with different colours and a different block pattern. I wish I could remember what the crafters name was but this is a photo of the 'inspiration' bag. If anyone knows who made it please let me know.

And here are the first two bocks from my bag to be. I've used hot pink, jade green, orange and light pink for the border. I don't think mine will look as elegant as the other one, which is just amazingly beautiful and elegant but I hope it will look like a fun casual bag to do the shopping with in Germany because they don't have plastic bags at the supermarket you have to take your own.

What Do You Do When You've Stuffed Your Back...?

Oh dear the last few days have literally been a pain in the back! I was bending down to put the dishes in the dishwasher and bam I pulled my lower back out of place. I couldn't bend down, lift my left leg up or do much at all really. The chiropractor was closed so I couldn't even get in to have my back looked at. All I could really do, without creating the kind of pain that makes you want to scream and cry, was to lay on my back with an ice pack. And what does one do when they can only lay down like this? Try their hand at a new crochet pattern of course!

So there I lay Wednesday night with baby wool and a size 2 crochet needle oh and of course a really poorly written pattern off the web. I soon realised that the patterned needed thin crocheting cotton and not yarn and that even though I had 4 ply yarn it was going to turn out HUGE if I continued with the pattern. So as one does I altered the pattern and made my own very plain version of a baby bonnet. ( I have since bought the crochet cotton and will do a 'take two' of the pattern)

Here are a few pics of the finished baby hat.

We don't have a baby to model the hat for you but this teddy bear was kind enough to fill in. As you can see my first attempt at crocheting something other than a granny square has produced a very daggy item indeed.