November 17, 2014

Finnished balnket and amigurumi crochet bunny

Cold weather always makes me want to crochet more. And this time around my head is full of ideas for lots of crochet projects. As I mentioned before I've been making my firs baby blanket. It's supposed to be a part of this baby gift basket/set. I'm not sure what else is going to be in this set, but a blanket (lovey) and a crochet amigurumi toy are a musts. At first I really wanted to restrain myself and make it one piece at a time - first finish the blanket and then move on to the toy. But boy is that a hard task for me :) I always tend on start new projects while the on going ones are still not finished. And this time I did it again. But to be honest it really turned out good this time. I managed to make the toy and still finish the blanket without having to push myself on finishing.
So here is the finished blanket. It's about 13x13'' (33x33mm), few inches bigger then expected because I went went with the flow of the pattern. It's still not washed so it's a bit stiff and wavy.



For the toy I went with the bunny. Always loved them and it seemed like a good fit for a baby's toy. I really had no clear pattern for it, just made it one row at a time :) Having a vision in my head helped, rest is just a case of trail and error. Although for the head I used this great pattern called "The Ideal Crochet Sphere" I used it before, it has few different sizes, it's absolutely awesome and perfectly round. After assembling the parts whole picture came together and I was so happy with the result. Also I made this pink dress for the bunny (it's obviously a girl :)).
Since while making the fist bunny I didn't wrote down any of the pattern I had to star making the second right away while still remembering how it was made. And this time I'm writing down the pattern very carefully :)

For the second one I switched from cotton to baby wool (Merino) and the color is Cream, more like a winter bunny :)



October 24, 2014

Crochet granny ripple blanket

After some careful consideration I decided that I have to put all of my non jewelry crafts in a separate shop on Etsy. So now I have "Pretty Dots Art" and I can finally do some more crocheting! This is so exiting, I have like a million new ideas and my Pinterest crochet board is getting bigger by the minute! But I have to calm myself down so I wouldn't start a bunch of new project at the same time (as I do so often). First of all I decided to make something that's been in my mind for quite some time, something fun and sweet for a truly special occasion - new baby. I love those gift sets/baskets so why not make something like that for a newborn girl/boy. No doubt one of the most important things for a baby is his own sweet blanket and a hand crochet blanket is always so much nicer than any of these store bought mass production ones. I've been making this big blanket for myself from some old yarn I never use, and the pattern (video tutorial here) I chose looks really nice. It's a simple dc ripple, but it looks really good, even with those random colors.



So I thought I'll do that for the baby blanket as well. But then I saw this cute granny ripple pattern and went for it instead. 


You can find the pattern tutorial here. It really is a simple pattern, basically you only need to know the chain and double crochet stitches in order to do it. I decided to go with a small lovey type blanket (about 10'x10') since it's just a part of a gift set, not the whole gift. So far I'm only on the 10th row but it looks nice and I'm quite happy with it. Hope to be finished with this blanket soon so I could move on to the next item on the new baby gift set list - crochet toy!