Baby crochet

Crochet is such a portable craft and baby items are perfect for being small and achievable things to complete on a holiday. Combine this with a plethora of babies and it makes a homemade gift for a new baby very do-able. Hence the following array of hats, bootees and bear. 

Credit where credit is due; the lilac hat and all bootees were based on a pattern from loopy love. The delightful boy hat is from LisaAuch.com. The bear from Crochet Now issue 2  and is the kit from the magazine.

Baby hat and bootees

I've ground to a halt with a couple of projects at the moment so obviously it's time to start something else.........This time I've run out of deer making wool. I was convinced that I had enough wool before I started but a ran out after finishing the first antler. I only have one more antler to do and then it's pretty much done apart from making the mount. I actually haven't done the mount for the Christmas deer yet, but I'm waiting for technical assistance with cutting out the plywood. That might have implied that I was going to cut out the plywood, but actually I'm just going to wait until it is done for me :). In the meantime, I've crocheted a newborn baby hat and bootee set for a colleague who is due to leave at Christmas. The hat and bootee were surprisingly quick to make so it means that I have started AND finished something. Hoorah. BTW the hat and bootee pattern can be found here. It's in american crochet terminology but once you have your head around that It's a nicely written pattern. It also has front and back post trebles so is probably an intermediate pattern, but it makes such a lovely stretchy bootee that it's worth it persevering to learn the technique.

Here's a preview of my Christmas deer. At the moment, it's just lying around waiting to be mounted. I have a couple of weeks to get it done in time for the festive season...... 

Here's a pretty doily beret style hat for a daughter. The finished hat has a little flower on the headband which I hadn't done when I took the photo. It was a nice quick little project using some left over wool from a previous hat and glove session, so fit the bill in a number of ways; quick, cheap and a happy daughter.

This was a finishing off job. The garland was made around last Christmas and I made the buttons whilst on the New Year holiday helped by our (mostly) tame and very talented potter friend Rob Rutterford. Anyway, the pottery was glazed and fired and returned in the summer and all I needed to do was to replace the buttons on the garland with the special pottery ones.  Well now it is done and it looks so much better. I only wish that I had done 11 instead of 9 buttons because I didn't have enough to replace the end buttons.

This is very much a started rather than finished project. I want to make a door garland for winter. So far I've only managed the covering for the wreath and a few leaves and things, but at least it's a start. The best thing about it so far is that it is again using left over bits and bobs of wool. The random colour change wool worked particularly well as it meant that there was not a lot of procrastination choosing the wool and colour scheme - it was very much a case of JFDI (just flipping do it - the polite version)