Baby bonnet

My cousin recently gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, so I decided to make her a bonnet! I wanted to try my hand at knitting this time, but after much searching, the pattern I found was crochet. That just means the little one will be receiving her bonnet that much faster :)

Pattern from Craftown here

I got a bit confused halfway through with the pattern, but I think it turned out well in the end. 

Simply soft yarn really is soft; perfect for a baby!

As modeled by my panda bank 

Now to find new baby projects as another cousin is expecting. Babies galore!!

Broomstick Lace

I've added yet another infinity scarf added to my collection! I learned about the broomstick lace stitch last year, but did not have a broomstick or anything of the same size handy until recently. I used this pattern and just kept going...

and going...and going...until I finished the entire skein. which is not what I was supposed to do. which means I have a REALLY long infinity scarf that needs to be wrapped three times to fit properly >.< 

Thanks to my wonderful friend D who let me stop by whenever and let me use her broomstick :D

More crochet!

As I mentioned previously, I have taken up crochet as a post-exam stress relief activity and I have two more projects to share!

First: A shawl to use up the last of the teal yarn in my possession.
I was looking for new stitches and came across the Solomon's knot AKA Lover's knot. Using this blanket as a guide, I made my shawl in the Solomon's Grid pattern and added a decorative ridge. I'm not sure of the dimensions, but a guesstimate would be 6ft x 2ft.

  

Since I had some leftover yarn, S & S (both of their names start with S!!) told me to make a headband. As I am eager to please, I made it and I even wore it in class today!

P.S. I made the headband with no plan/pattern, but I used this tutorial for the flower.

Basket Weave Blanket

I was inspired after seeing a video of the basket weave stitch and decided to make a good-bye/congrats-on-med-school-acceptance blanket for N. I pretty much worked on it post-exam and carried it with me almost everywhere in order to work on it in my spare time.

Yarn: Teal Red Heart Soft
  

And since I thought that the calculations were impressive, I will share. :D

I used a little over 18 skeins so...
Total yarn length: 256yd x 18 = 4,608yd = 2.62 miles or 38.4 football fields
Weight: 5oz x 18 = 90oz = 5.625 lbs
"Box" = 10 stitches wide, 9 stitches tall; 25 'boxes' wide, 18 'boxes' tall
Each completed row of 25 boxes ~1 skein. I averaged 4 hours per skein so total time: 72 hours (I started in March and finished mid-July)

Carrying the blanket everywhere I went was pretty tiring, but the result is GLORIOUS if I do say so myself. Without further ado...my basket weave blanket for N!



I am very proud of the fact I finished and was quite sad when I had to give it to N, but his reaction and appreciation was worth the effort.

 

Crochet Project for Feb

So I was going to try a project/month...but school is quite time-consuming now. However, I did start up crocheting instead of sewing! I find it is much easier to start/stop on a whim. Sewing projects were hard for me to gauge in terms of time. Portability is also a bit of an issue. I can't be carrying a sewing machine wherever I go, right?

I got back into crochet when I saw a friend working on this infinity scarf pattern. Extra exciting for us was the fact she is also a med student!! If she can do it, so can we! It took me a couple weeks of working on it in spare time before I finished.

I will put in a pic once I find one/I'm not at home so I can't go into my closet and snap a pic >.<

EDIT: Pictures!

 

Hopefully you can see details in the pictures. It's super soft and super warm...which means I can only wear it maybe 2x/year in sunny Fl. *sigh*

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Over my christmas break, I had a couple weeks to rest and relax [AKA babysit and take a family roadtrip.] Fortunately, I had a couple days to sew and crochet so here's what I made!

For my mom and a friend, I made a linen grocery tote.

Then I fashioned myself a shirt after getting inspiration from Etsy.com. I used the same concept as when I made a version of the ruffle J. Crew shirt by buying a larger-than-my-size long sleeved shirt and then using the sleeves as extra fabric to make the ruffle.

Since this is the first week back to classes, I'm taking advantage of the little time I have free to sew as much as I can-especially since the projects I am working on are supposed to be Christmas presents. >.< So far on this wonderful Friday evening, I have made my friend a ruffle vest and will soon start on her le sac dress.

It feels good to be back at my sewing machine. It's been gathering dust for too long! Maybe a resolution for this year [aside from the obligatory "start exercising!"] should be to make something at least once a month. So far, so good :D

Happy 2012!

Comfort Cat

My friend has been having a rough few days, so I wanted to make something to cheer her up. I really didn't know what to do, but I came across a crochet cat bookmark that I thought was cute and chose it. I ended up shortening the tail because I felt it was too long and I added a small heart.



Cats are <3. Cheer up!

Slouch Hat

I crocheted a slouch hat for my friend's birthday back in March and then decided to make one for myself [and yarn was on sale when I went to buy a skein for her hat :D]

The weather has been crazy this week in the Tampa Bay area, but after the crazy rains yesterday, today was beautiful! The night was semi-cool so I figured it'd be a perfect time to wear my hat. My parents said I looked ridiculous, but I like to think I looked pretty good ;)



My nom nom nom-ing isn't very photogenic, but the sushi was DELICIOUS!



And, just for kicks, my little sister's doodle of me.

Happy Friday [&April Fool's Day]!

Hearts Galore!

Happy Valentine's Day!!

There are so many DIY projects available for this lovey-dovey kind of day and I couldn't help but get lost looking through it all. My friend, Jessie, sent me a link for DIY website called design*sponge last week. As I was exploring the site, I saw a bunch of projects that caught my eye. The whole time I was thinking, too bad I don't have tons of fabric just laying about...but I DO have lots of yarn!

So, I decided to start with a couple crochet projects. The first was a heart garland. I'm a beginner at crocheting, so it took me a bit to figure out the instructions and, needless to say, I didn't really follow them very well resulting in variously sized crochet hearts. But, to be honest, I kind of like how some are thin and others are wide.



Now my room is all festive <3



As I finished making these hearts, I realized that I wanted to make a shirt for valentine's day. I came up with several ideas and the one that stuck was a racer back tank top, held together in the back with a crochet heart. However, I'd want it to be a big crochet heart. Looking up designs led me to find another tutorial!  However, the heart was still too small for my liking [sigh...no new shirt today] and I already made a garland.  So what to do with the extra heart? Make a necklace! :]

I was still feeling crafty after all that, so I looked through my closet and found...a pink tank top with silver hearts! PERFECT! But what to do...

[To be continued!!]