ST Fall Cyber Crop LO (plus a new hat)

This was for the Graveyard Grunge challenge at storytellers club. We had to distress at least 75% of the elements of the LO. So I tore, "sanded" (used an emery board on the edges of all the photos), and inked everything.
The patterned paper is Recollections, the orange cardstock is SEI and the green is Bazzill. The cuttlebug folder I used on the photo mat was from the Give a Hoot Cricut Companion Collection. The alphabet stamps I've had for eons and can't remember where I got them, staples are just staples and I used a green Creative Memories pen for the journaling.
SO happy - this is the first layout I've done since late July!!

 



This was my 4th and final Frankenstein hat!!  This went to Utah for my nephew - his mom's request is what got me started on these to begin with.
I've done three sizes and ended up writing my own pattern based on one I found on pinterest to get the original 3/6 month size hat to fit 6 & 10 year old heads (because once he found out I was making them for his 6 yo brother and  6 yo cousin, my 10 yo wanted one too...and ended up with the first one because it was two big for the younger boys).
I'll post pictures of the other ones later.



Little Froggie (and revised pumpkin head)

I saw a frog hat on pinterest and thought it was so cute - but there was no pattern with it. So, between 3 pictures, 4 patterns and my own idea, I created this cute little froggie hat.
I see hats with these braided ties all over the place so wanted to give one a try. I used Simply Soft Pistachio (I think) for most of it, and then some random white and Red Heart black for the rest of it.
I wrote down most of what I did.
Now I need to finish it and then try it again to see if it works :)
This one is for the craft fair.

Reluctant model again...but I got a couple better pictures of my Pumpkin Head :)
She stretched it out so badly the first time she wore it, that it fell over her face. I asked my crochet expert (my grandma) and she said I could do a single crochet decrease around the bottom and that should make it fit better, and keep her from stretching it so easily.
So, yesterday evening sitting at a soccer game, I did just that - and it fits perfectly now and hasn't stretched out much (even when she used it for a bag to carry Duplo blocks in this evening.) I wrote down this pattern too, but need to do it again to see if I missed anything.
Now, I need to finish the Frankenstein hats that got me started on this...and finish some scrapbook layouts, and do some new layouts, oh yeah, and housework...and write a talk for Church on Sunday...it never ends :)

Pumpkin Head

I've been calling Grace that for ages :) And now she really is one. I adapted a Frankenstein Hat pattern and changed things, etc. and made a jack o'lantern hat. (Frankenstein ones are in progress). I used simply soft pistachio for the stem and red heart pumpkin (left over from Nathaniel's scarf) for the main part of the hat. And then felt cut outs for the facial features (I guess jack o'lanterns have faces). Grace loves it, but I wish I'd taken a picture when I first finished it and put it on her because she stretched it out so badly. Gotta' figure out how to fix that.

Another hat and a couple of layouts

 

I made this hat to go with a sweater my grandma knit for Grace for her birthday. I loved the colors...and I have fabric to make a dress for her that has flecks of of orange in it and will be nice and fallish with this hat and the sweater.

I knew what kind of hat I wanted to go with the sweater, but I had to find a pattern...preferably a free one. I finally found this one on Pinterest. The bow didn't work with what I had in mind, I wanted a pom pom on top (I think I'm going to go back and make a little bigger one though). I ended up making two...i thought this one was just too big for Grace, but the smaller one I made was too small. I looked at the original picture again and saw that it is really designed to pull down over the ears...tried it again and it's a little big, but it works :)

This was a really fun pattern - I love when I learn new stitches or something (I learned how to do two hdc together to decrease and a popcorn stitch...fun!)

The yarn is actually from my great grandmother's stash that my grandma has...old Dazzleaire - soft and fuzzy and fun!

 

These two layouts are for Nathaniel's baby book. I did them in July, but just finally had a chance to get out my Cricut and alphabet stickers and finish them up with titles.

The BROTHER'S KEEPER layout used bazzil CS, costco CS, the Zoo Day Cricut Cart. alphabet, CM journaling block & pen...and i can't remember the plaid paper -I've had it for ages.

DADDY'S BOY is done on some embossed brown CS (can't remember that either), some blue CM CS, the star punch is CM as are the little blue alphabet stickers (which I outlined in brown). The brown alpha stickers are Storyteller's Club.

The fiber is some I've had for awhile too...hopefully in the next week or so I'll get the other LOs I did in July finished up.

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!



More butterfly hats...

This one turned out infant size...I did it with the same size hook as I did the white one (G or H, I can't remember now) but it's a finer yarn. Going to try this with a different stitch for the body of the hat above the butterfly.

I did a little variation on this one..I did a cross-over or twist stitch on the body of the hat above the butterfly (you can kind of see it in the picture) and then used a contrasting color for the last row and the center of the butterfly. This one would probably fit Grace, but if I tried it on her she'd decide it was hers and it's really for the craft fair/gift/sell bag.

I've been wanting to see if this looked nice in just plain white, and it does. Again, this is probably the same size as the purple one, but I can't have Grace model it until she understands that not every hat is hers :)

Another hat...

Here's another hat...this one was going to be for the craft fair collection, but Grace decided differently. She likes the flower :)

I made it from this http://www.etsy.com/listing/62815194/crochet-hat-pattern-flower-power-cap

pattern.

My flower looked like I had sewn it on higher on the hat at first, but when I got finished I realized that it had slipped...but she doesn't care a bit :)

I made two more of the butterfly hats in the past few days...used the same size hook for both of them, but different weight/size yarn and one is about Grace's size and the other is infant size.

I'm enjoying making hats!

Other craft projects from recent months

I've been doing some crocheting recently...baby blankets and some hats. 
Brian's nephew and his wife had twins in March. A little boy and a little girl!  I had a little boy blanket all finished up :), and I made this cute little "newsie" hat to go wtih it. Then I had to make a little girl blanket and hat, too.

I tried a new ripple wave pattern for the little girl's blanket and it came out cute...I adapted a ruffle hat to make it tinier for her.

Here are some other projects I've done over the past few months, knit, crochet and sewing:

At church they were collecting hats and scarves for various charities this spring...I knit this one with two strands of yarn...my first adult hat.

This is a game I found on someone's blog...probably via pinterest. Using scraps of fabric, make squares, back them with some batting between the two layers and make a matching game. Grace loves this.  Especially when she recognzies fabrics from other things (like her butterfly dress).

This was just a fun scarf that I knit with a "fun" yarn (black, purple blue and turquoise) and a regular turquoise yarn...I loved it, but have enough scarves...so it went into my finshed bag for gift or craft fair. I ended up sending it to a friend from my MTC district whose husband has Crohn's like Brian and had to have a major emergency resection in March. I couldn't give her a hug in person, so I sent her a scarf instead :)

This is a crocheted scarf...or actually three scarves - each a different pattern. Then you braid them together and attach the ends with pom-poms. This was fun!!  It went into the bag for a craft fair or something in the fall. I want to do one in the high school colors, and other variations too, when I get a chance.

This was my big Christmas project this year - a crocheted floor checkerboard for the boys. And I managed to do it without either of them having a clue...I was up late finishing the last few checkers, but it was done and under the tree Christmas morning and they love it...though Joshua has put in a request for chess pieces. I found a pattern on line for crocheting those...as well as patterns for making them out of felt...I think I'll be opting for the felt ones :)

This was Nathaniel's Christmas present. He wanted a knit scarf in his favorite color like Joshua has. Joshua's was made by one of his great-grandma's. I tried to replicated the pattern, but didn't do so well (this was while Brian was in the hospital), so I ripped it all out and did a different pattern that I'd done before and was easy. He also insisted it have a fringe, like Joshua's has...the pattern didn't call for it, but I added it. I started it in July, but pushed it aside to do some other projects...but it did get finished for Christmas too.

This was Grace's present for her 2nd birthday...it was from a pattern my mom has had since the early 80s. It turned out cute...but not as durable as I'd hoped...but she can't use it to climb up on to get into other things like she'd be able to do with my old wooden doll cradle that is waiting to get refurbished for her down the road :)

I started this awhile back...my first cable knit project...loved doing cables! It is also two strands...two different shades of purple. This one is mine! It's very soft...but a little too wide. I was making a matching hat, but ripped it out because honestly, I never wear hats.

This is Maggie's blanket. Maggie is a baby cabbage patch doll that Grace got from her Great-Uncle Brian and Great-Aunt Linda at Christmas. We were down visiting and were able to see them and she was so excited. But problem was, she hadn't really taken any other "babies" and didn't have a blanket for her! So I found this yarn at Michaels, thought it looked fun, adapted a dishcloth pattern to make it big enough and had this finished shortly after we got home. Maggie loves this blanket ;)

And lastly, Grace's stocking. I'd made the boys stockings by their first Christmases, or second at least. Well, this was Grace's third one, but I finally got it done. On hers I added a little bit of lace on the pocket and around the top...so it was a little girlier :)

This is Grace's butterfly dress. I saw this on pinterest and so wanted to make it for her. I had the fabric...the hardest thing was finding the right buttons! I had to enlarge the pattern (it was a hand drawn one that I downloaded from the internet) and tweak things here and there a bit to fit her...the shoulders are still a little too wide, but there wasn't much else I could do with it. I decided that "sew alongs" on people's blogs are not my cup of anything, but the Grace loves the dress :)

This is the Buttefly hat...I found the pattern on pinterest...so fast and easy!!  I made this for Grace out this wonderful yarn from my grandma...and then I made two more a little bigger for two girls in Nathaniel's class that were having a combined birthday party...one of of this yarn and the other out of a sparkly fuschia yarn.

This was my first attempt at a headband and a big flower...Grace is not the most willing model...plus she doesn't like things in her hair or on her head for the most part. The flower came out a little larger than I'd planned :) This went into the gift/craft fair bag too.

This cute little green hat was a baby gift, too, for someone on the Trixie Belden board...this is the side view, the bow goes on the side. The actual pattern from Crochet World magazine has you use a scarf for the tie, but I've just crocheted "strings" for the two ruffle hats I've done. This one I down sized for a baby head.

This was my first ruffle hat...Grace was not happy modeling it that day...then a day or so later when I had the "string" made, she was a little more happy to try it on :)