Pined it, Made it, it worked!

This project, like so many of mine, was something I made over a year ago, Feb 2012.  During one of our gatherings on a Wed. night at my house I decided I was going to try making something I had seen on Pinterest.  I had some yarn left over from a previous project so I only had to buy some ribbon for the ends.  The tutorial I followed is called "The knotted headband."  I like to think of it as a Celtic knot.

 

The tutorial is great, it was very easy to follow, had clear instructions and pictures, and was true to the final product.  Best of all this was a quick project, I would say no longer than 1 hour to complete the entire thing.  You can find the tutorial here: http://youseriouslymadethat.blogspot.com/2011/02/knotted-headband.html

 

 

One week I decided to wear my knotted headband to dance class.  Everyone loved it, I got many compliments and when I told everyone I made it they seemed surprised. A few people asked me to make headbands for them as well and I happily said yes.

 

 The light pink headband was the first one I made.  I was able to make the second one, a dance class request, with the same spool of ribbon as my original.

 

This is a progress picture of another one I'm working on.  I will have to go pick out another spool of ribbon to finish it.

 

For more great projects like this be sure to follow my "Too legit to knit" board on Pinterest here: http://pinterest.com/hccarroll/

 

Blankets, Booties and a Giraffe!

Baby Gift for my soon-to-be niece!

Earlier this month I mentioned that I made a baby afghan using the "Round the Block" pattern from the book Oh Baby, Crochet! for my soon-to-be niece.  For this afghan I chose to use a variant yarn that was Pink and Green.  However before I knew what gender this baby was going to be a started working on a gender-neutral afghan that was white, yellow and green.  I wanted to try a new pattern so I rented the book The Complete Book of Crochet Stitches from my local library.  After searching through the book I found pattern 373 that offered a puff stitch (which I love to make) as well as a v-stitch similar to a previous project I made for my niece on my husbands side of the family.

Close up of Pattern 373 and the baby booties I made.

I also wanted to make a pair of booties for my new niece, so I searched online and found a pattern in the book Crochet Precious Baby Booties.  (Fun Fact - I'm not sure if Amazon knows, but if you search inside this book you can get a bunch of the patterns in this book for free!)  So I decided to follow the 'Ribbed Booties' pattern which I really enjoyed crocheting as it was relatively easy to make.  I liked this stitch so much that I would like to try this ribbed look on an afghan.  It also was nice to use two different yarns without having to cut and sew in the ends each row since you don't cut your yarn until the very end!

Then I found this pin on Pinterest for a crocheted giraffe.  I had to make this for my niece since I knew her parents were going for a animal/african themed baby room.  I realized early on that I would need a safety pin to mark where each round started since otherwise I would find that I'd lost my place.  I did notice a few issues with this pattern, but any experienced crocheter could figure out how to handle these problems. The pattern was nice enough to tell me how many stitches each round should be, but I did notice in a few instances that the number counts were incorrect.  The pattern also didn't tell me how to make the eyes, but I just made 4ch and then sc into those and created little balls for each of the eyes.  I'm sure you could use buttons if you didn't feel comfortable making them.  This pattern also failed to explain how to assemble, but one can make the correct assumptions as to where to put the legs, arms, head, horns, ears etc by looking at the pictures on the pattern page.  If I were to make this pattern again I would definitely try adding some pipe cleaner in the neck, since the finished project is top heavy.  However this just gives my gift a little character as he's the Eeyore of giraffes!  Overall I was quite thrilled with the finished project and yesterday my brother and sister-in-law loved it at their shower. 

Don't you want to make one?

During yesterday's baby shower, I felt my family and I need a pintervention, because as my sister-in-law kept opening gifts we would shout, 'that's on pinterest!'  In fact two of my other very crafty cousins replicated this pin and did a great job!

They said this was a bit tedious, but definitely worth it!