Christmas Hats

Hi!

Sorry it's been soooooo long. But I've been on vacation. Okay, okay. I know that's no excuse, but really I haven't been at a computer almost at all in the last week. I've been playing with my niece&nephew, playing games, cooking, baking, making snowmen, doing puzzles...

AND I've been doing lots of knitting! Yay.

Unfortunately, almost everything I've made has been gifted and the people took them before I even got a chance to take a picture. Boo.

Fortunately, that has to mean that everyone liked their stuff. Right...?

So this year for Christmas, everyone in my family got a homemade toque (Americans: toque = beanie). These are the ones that I gave them. My brother in law got one of the ones that I made just in the nick of time!

It's called the Jacques Cousteau hat. And I like it a lot. The pattern took longer than I thought it should... It also took a lot more yarn than I thought it would... but what can you do? It's long so it will be warm, and because of the ribbing it's nice and stretchy.

Only, I totally messed up the pattern. It said to use 120 or 140 stitches! That is WAY too many in my opinion, so I cast on 110. That worked for the ribbing pattern... but when it came time to decrease, I was sort of in a bind. I had to do it so that the decrease panels are different sizes. Luckily, I don't think you can tell. :) (To make it all work out, I should have cast on 100. That would have for sure still been big enough.)

And I think my BIL liked it, so that's all you can ask for.

Hope y'all have had as great a Christmas as I've had. More finished projects to come soon. I promise.

Failure

The verdict is in: I am giving up on amigurami. Officially giving up on trying to make armigurami. (The little crocheted animal toys.) I've tried before and failed WAY before the steps where you get to put the toy together. This time, I made all of the pieces okay, but for some reason the result is a complete failure.

Is this not the scariest penguin you ever did see?

Maybe it's cause I use beads for the eyes. I tried to find the eye beads at Michael's yesterday, but no luck. Whatever it is that makes this penguin look freaky rather than cute, I don't think I can give it to my nephew for Christmas. Mr. Scary Penguin would be a cruel thing to give to a 3 year old.

But I don't like to leave on a sour note, so here is something else I whipped up. A head band. I didn't have a lot of yarn left over after I made a had out of that ball, so I used the base repeat from this pattern and stopped when I ran out of yarn.

I'm okay pleased with this ear warmer. It's not gorgeous, but I think it's wearable.

Hopefully I'll have a success before the end of the year.

Bella

This hat is weirdly pointy. Why...? I'm not quite sure. But at least I'm not the only one. A lot of the reviews of this pattern say that it turns out pointy. (Too bad I didn't read them *before* I made the hat!)
I made this out of the leftover yarn from the cabley mittens I made. I thought there would be enough yarn for the full hat, but crocheting always takes up more yarn than you think. But the stripe in the hat looks okay to me!
Now I just have to finish all those other projects... I really have to stop procrastinating!

What's it?

What's it?

Yup. That's all I have for you today - this mess of crocheted things. Really. It will turn into something eventually. Hopefully it will be something soon. Something cute even! I actually only have one more part to crochet, so hopefully by the end of the weekend I'll finally have another finished project to show off.
I'm still plugging away at other projects that will hopefully they will all get done in time! And then I'll be able to show them off too.

(Wow. I just wrote "hopefully" 3 times. I guess it is Christmas... the season of hope. ?)

Topographical

It's December! Can you believe it!?! It's time to count down until Christmas!! And the BIG knitted gift giving of 2009. Oh what a glorious day that will be. I hope there is snow so my family will have no choice but to wear what I made them! Oh the fabulous things I've been making...
Only... I've been struck with ADHD again. Yup. Look at this:


This hat is so not something on my list of gifts for Christmas 2009. Nope. Not on there. But I made it anyways!
I just haven't been able to concentrate on finishing a project recently. Nothing new, but this time around I'm blaming it on nanowrimo. How that? you ask. Well, I was so focused and dedicated to finishing that task, that it used up all of my concentration. Now that I no longer need to focus (because November is over and I won! Yay!!) on anything. I can't stay on task.
So I made this hat.

Not the mittens of the sweater I should be working on. They're boring. And half done. So hat it is! I had the yarn and it was perfect for the pattern. Why not make it?

Luckily, it was a super fast knit. Super easy to make. The yarn does all the work! You get a yarn with two colours and then just purl the stitches of the opposite colour to make the little ridges. (Hence the name!)
I thought it turned out really well. I like that I made it slouchy and for the first time it sort of worked. All the other times I've tried it, the results have been only so-so. But this time, with this hat it worked! It's totally simple, yet it looks pretty cool (imho).

So, although I wasn't planning on it, I have another hat to give away at Christmas. Cause really... I have more toques (beanies... whatever.) than I know what to do with. But don't think that's going to stop me from knitting them. Not a chance! Not a chance in the world. In fact, I bet you'll see another one before the end of 2009. (Pretty safe bet to make since it's about me and knitting.)