Babies, Babies, and More Babies!

Many, many faculty at school are pregnant. Or their kids are! Or friends are. It's in the water. So, I have been making lots of baby related crocheted items. My favorite item to make is the baby hat. Below is Matt, who had twins. I made a boy monkey hat and a girl monkey hat for Alessandra and Anthony.
Below is a hat and bootie set I have made for Jennifer, who is one of the dog trainers at SEGD. She doesn't want to know what the sex is of her baby, so I had to go with a nature theme. Hence the leaves on the hat.

Jan's daughter is having a little boy. Jan runs all the systems behind the scenes in the library. Her nursery theme is Nature. So I did leaves and trees.

Hat 1 with some leaves. I tried a four leaf clover, but it didn't work out. This set of leaves was much easier to do.

Hat 2 I was particularly proud of. I thought the tree came out rather well. It is actually a patter for a fern, but put on the baby hat, I caled it a tree. 8-)

Hat 3 Just a nice hat with gender nuetral colors.

Zoe, an English teacher at school, is due in January. So I got to put my feminine side to work and use up some of my pink yarn.

Notice the pink booties. They seem big don't they? I think they are for gigantor baby. I'm just not a good bootie crocheter. I wasn't sure they would actually fit a human baby, so I made another pair. They look more normal. I need a good bootie pattern. If anyone has one, please share!

Here's a close up of the multi colored pink hat with three solid pink flowers.

Here is a photo of the solid pink hat with some solid white flowers. So, that's everyone that is pregnant for now. My work for the pregnant is now done!

Crocheted Baby Items

I am throwing a baby shower for a friend and am finishing up her baby gifts. I couldn't resist using Her Royal Highness Berkeley as a model and you can see what she thinks of the idea. I think she looks cute. I was thinking she looked more Snoop Berkeley, but a friend pointed out that Queen La Berkeley would be more appropriate. Either way, she's a cutie. I have finished up the blanket and only have the monkey faces to do now. Here's a peek at how it looks:



Both the afghan and the hat came from the Stitch and Bitch Guide to Crochet, which I highly recommend. Here's a look at the border, which I really like. The border came from Nicky Epstein's Crocheting on the Edge. I've made this afghan twice and made it with two of her borders. It's nice, because it makes each afghan a unique gift. One was a more boyish border and this border seemed more girly and flowery.



I also made another hat with pink yarn from the monkey pattern and some booties to match.


I had to use my other dog Willow as a model, just so she wouldn't feel left out. 8-)


Now, I have to start cooking food for the shower! It'll be a tea party for 17. Woot.

Booty Call

I found a great pattern for baby booties. The only problem was that there
was no gauge and so the first one I made was for Gigantor's baby (see pink booty next to the green one of a normal booty. The ankle of the gigantor baby must be about 5 inches around! Yikes! But I carried on and did another one with much tighter stitches (a little strain as I am mostly not a tight crocheter) but the results are really cute, I think. I have two friends who have had babies whom I will give the green on and another I am making with a multi-colored Italian thread. The green booty was made with bamboo thread, which is really soft, but tends to unravel a bit and if you are crocheting tight, is a bit difficult to work with. I topped it off with a ladder yarn with sparkly green and blue bits.

Here is a shot of the in progress booty.






I also finished up one of my student's scarves! Woot for me! She selected
a bobble stitch scarf from Fun and Funky Crochet by Sophie Britten. It is made with a soft blue chunky wool yarn and is quite warm. She goes to Northwestern, so it should do its job of keeping her nice and toasty warm. It was a fairly easy scarf to make, but I, personally, don't like the bobble on a scarf unless there is something on the back to hide the indentations. I think this scar is made to be worn so that you flip one side over your shoulder and only see it bobble side up. It's really long. The bobbles are very pretty. I don't have consistency on them, but that is the problem with starting a scarf and then finishing it 7 months later on a pattern you have only done once. I need to make one first for practice, but really, who has time for that? It will have to be "handmade" in the true sense of warts and all!

Mom and dad visited over Thanksgiving and they brought Willow a ver cute hat that should keep her cool when she plays frisbee. She seems to like it pretty well and kept it on while we all took countless photos of her.

Now it is back to cleaning out the Holiday decorations to get the tree up.Yea Christmas!