Hooked on Hooking

I finished the afghan in the previous post, and had a fair amount of leftover yarn. I thought to myself "what am I to do with this yarn?" And then I stumbled upon the February 2007 issue of Crochet World (who does have a website. I'm looking at you, editors of Family Circle Easy Crochet) I mean, look at it. It's a baby hat. With bunny ears. And a flower. How could I not make it?

Is there anything more fun than crocheting for babies? I have no idea why, but I get so excited when I hear someone I care about is having a baby, not only because I am happy for them, but because my mind starts racing about all the cute baby patterns I have seen. This is a baby afghan I made from a pattern I found in the Fall 2006 issue of FamilyCircle EasyCrochet (who do not seem to have a website. What self-respecting magazine these days has no website?) I used a white and yellow variegated yarn for the main body of it, and plain white for the border. I think it looked great with the open, lacy design of the stitch.

This is an afghan I made for my sister and brother and law. It's just dc's with a scalloped edge, but the boucle yarn makes it rather beautiful. I chose a very neutral off-white to go with their decor, and I think with the simplicity of the design and colour, it's not something that is going to fall out of style.

One of my Christmas projects this past season was to crochet snowflakes as ornaments. I got some of the patterns from magazines, some from free pattern sites such as Crochet Pattern Central . There are a lot of possibilities out there. My mom liked them enough that she asked me to make pink snowflakes for a Breast Cancer fund raiser her office is doing next year. It was my first real experience working in thread, and I have to say, I didn't find it tedious, as I thought I would. I almost feel brave enough to face trying a thread table runner or tablecloth.

I haven't updated this blog in quite some time; as you can imagine, I have several finished projects from that time I will be adding now. So, let's get started! First up, we have a little cap I crocheted for myself after picking up a skein of recycled cotton yarn. I was curious to see what it would be like to work with and what the result would feel and drape like. I wish I knew where I put the label, because I quite liked it, and would recommend it to anyone wanting to give it a try. Next time I am out yarn shopping, I will purchase some more for a project I think it would be perfect for, and I will update this post with the name. I didn't really use a pattern for this. It's done in sc, I started by chaining 4 and joining. I then crocheted in the round, increasing until it was just less wide than the diameter of my head. I then worked sc in each sc around until it was almost the length I wanted, and then decreased for about two rows to give it a bit of holding on to my

So, I saw that Blogger Beta had the option to have post labels, so that your archives can be sorted by category. Which caused me to switch. Overall I like it, but there are some glitches with things such as comments. Apparently, anyone with a Blogger account that isn't a Beta account can't post comments. This does not happen to people who do not have blogger accounts at all, or people who have Beta accounts. That really makes me sad, as I adore recieving comments. Who doesn't? Hopefully they will fix the bug soon, as I can't switch back to a non- Beta account. (A fact that they made me well aware of, it's my own fault for not reading the message boards in the help forums to see all the bugs people were experiencing first.) I'd say that if you had any questions about my experiences with blogger beta, to submit a comment, but as that may not work, I have started a thread on the crochetville message boards here . Feel free to post to it.

After finally learning to make hairpin lace, I decided to make a simple afghan to practice the strips. Overall, I like how it turned out, it makes a nice, light, throw. If I use it in an afghan again, though, I think that I will likely alternate it with strips of either sc's or dc's to make a more dense fabric. This ghan is going to end up donated to that fundraiser at work in place of the ripple one in an earlier post, since my mom has laid claim to the ripple.