Babies in crochet!

One of the best things for me about crochet is making things for other people especially when the people I'm making for are as cute as these babies.

Here's Nina in Sitges, Spain keeping warm in winter on the beach with her hat and blanket. Nina is the daughter of the beautiful Flavia and Gaby.




Natalie in Maine is the daughter of my prom date Anthony and his lovely wife Jess. Who not only have an awesome wedding dance but also an awesome baby.



And last but by no means least, here's Jamie holding Gideon who's all wrapped up in his blanket in Cheltenham.

Valentines Day

I got a bit over-excited about having re-discovered my sewing machine and decided to use it to make some valentines cards. I sent ones to my my family and gave one to my boyfriend.

I quite enjoy valentines day. My boyfriend less so, so this was his card. Happy arbitrary day of love!


In the same way I love Christmas without being religious I think anything that encourages people to be nice to one another and show that they care is a good thing. And yes I know rampant commercialism, why only appreciate someone on one day, making single people feel bad etc. etc. blah blah blah but I'm with the Oatmeal on this one.


Although from experience and talking to the girls at work I think xkcd has modern valentines day pretty much in a nutshell

Classic Crochet

As part of home-made Christmas my sister found my stepmum a beautiful folder of vintage knitting patterns. Debbie already had this crochet book so donated it to me


I decided to make this stylish tie.



And here is Emerson modelling it beautifully





I also submitted it to the wonderful Helen Zaltzman's collection of #shitgift tweets. You can read the whole joyous collection here

Blanket

For my Dad and Step-Mum I made a granny square blanket. I love the colours and I like the way the different patterns worked out together. I couldn't decide how to edge it but the good people of twitter helped me decide and I went for red grannny stripe, brown granny stripe and then a red single crochet to finish. And I also enjoy the badly posed photos :-)

Scarves

Here are Jennie and Jonathan in their scarves. Jonathan's was extra thick and chunky thanks to the front-post back-post rib stitch. I didn't follow a pattern and it was almost too chunky and solid but someone at Stitch Balham taught me the trick of soaking it in cheap hair conditioner to make it wearable. For Jennie's I followed a ravelry pattern and really like the flower drops.





Everyone in their crocheted gifts on Christmas morning.

Handwarmers

I made these handwarmers for my step-sister-in-law-to-be Laura on a train from Edinburgh to London. I sort of invented the pattern myself from what I could remember of a similar one on Ravelry. I really like the ribbing on the cuffs (back-loop-only dontcha know) and was pleased how it turned out overall. I was even more amazed that I managed to make the second one the same!

Beanie hat

This is the beanie I made for my step-brother-in-law (?) Roger. I was struggling to think of manly crochet but then I saw this tutorial from Mikey. Mikey taught me to crochet when I was first starting out and his slip knot is the best I've ever seen. If you fancy learning I found YouTube videos much easier than books and his are a great place to start. I used one strand of light and one of dark grey at the same time to get the mottled effect. It also makes the hat really thick and warm. Although I'm still rubbish at crocheting in rounds I was pretty happy with the end result.