Baby blankets and hats

I have two first cousins. They are both younger than I am - around the ages of my two youngest sister. They were both expecting babies this summer - yay more babies in the family!!  One cousin was expecting her 3rd daughter and her sister was expecting her first baby - a little boy!

 

The little girl arrived in early July...this is her blanket. I used a pattern I'd seen in a JoAnns' flyer a year or so ago and had just been waiting to try it out. I made the border on it white instead of the same color of the blanket as the pattern said. I like the contrast much better. I can't even remember if the pattern had a name, but I called it the Heart Blanket because the stitches are a cross over double crochet and that made it look like little hearts :) The yarn was some my grandma had given me years ago and I finally put it to use :)

I've been on a hat kick lately - and with the great niece and nephew that arrived in March, I started doing hats to send with the blankets I make (because I have too many patterns to make them all for Grace, poor girl would have to wear 2 hats a day)
So I decided for my cousin, to make matching hats for her three daughters. At least matching in colors and hat pattern - I made each flower different. The pattern is one that I got from a designer in New Zealand I think (one of my few not free patterns, but it was so worth the $4! I love it!)

A1 - she's 5 years old

A2 - she is 2 years old

A3 - the new baby

All my cousin's girls have names that start with A and they are so cute!!! I've only met A1 in person - when she was two and they came out for my youngest sister's wedding. There are a lot of states between us in California and them in Tennessee, sadly.

 

My other cousin's little boy came into the world in mid-August. Such a cutie!  I had a hard time with his blanket, though. I wanted to use this yarn so much...but every pattern I tried (3 knit ones and 2 crochet ones, I think), just didn't work with this busy Simply Soft yarn. But I was not going to find a different yarn. This was the one I was going to do! Brian kept saying, "Do the same pattern as the pink one, that's a nice one." Well, I wanted to do something different, I have so many patterns that I want to try, I didn't want to do a repeat so soon. Plus, I didn't want to do the same blankets for these new little first cousins. Finally, after a month and a half, I tried that JoAnns' pattern and wow - did I love the results. So glad I thought of that :) And, in this busier multi-colored yarn, the "hearts" don't show up and it looks very masculine and doesn't look like the pink blanket. So I was happy. I think the body of the blanket was done in Driftwood and the border was done in Bone - both Simply Soft by Caron.

And then, of course, the hat. Now this little boy's dad wears hats a lot - it's how we find him when he's on TV with the band he plays with ('cause I know nothing about guitars and couldn't tell what was a bass and what was whatever the others are called for anything). So I knew when I came across this pattern right after we learned my cousin was expecting, that if she had a boy, this was the hat I'd make. I found this pattern on pinterest and online somewhere for free. It was newborn size, but I just used a bigger hook to make it a little larger since he's now almost 2 months old and I just finished it last week.
The tweedy yarn is more stuff that my grandma gave me years back..it split a lot, but it was the perfect color and texture for this little newsie hat. The button was from my scrapbooking stash.
Now, I just need to find a box to put these in and send them off to Tennesse!