Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat!

A little less than a year ago, one of my dear friends asked me if she could pay me to make her some Christmas stockings using a pattern that she had found online. I said that I'd be happy to do that, as long as she was okay to not get them in time for Christmas. She was. So, she purchased the pattern for me, as well as the yarn in colors that she wanted, and once I got through my list of crochet "to do's", I started on them. I think it was February or so.




I had a ball making them. I love granny squares anyway, and so putting granny squares together into Christmas stockings was just a treat for me. In fact, it was so much of a treat that I tried to just give the stockings to my Amanda for free (she had bought the pattern and the yarn after all), but she wouldn't have it. (She's generous like that.)

Amanda has three daughters, hence the three stockings with a little bit of pink thrown in here and there.

After I finished with Amanda's stockings, I decided that, as long as I already had the pattern in my mind and in my fingers, I might as well experiment with some other color and design combinations:

And that my friends, is how I ended up spending a good portion of 2014 experimenting with Christmas Stockings. Not a bad way to spend a year, you know?

Shrugs

So, awhile back a friend of mine asked me to make this little sweater (from Holland Designs Etsy Shop) for her daughter. So, I did. I haven't gotten around to getting pictures taken of that sweater (and that daughter) yet, but while I was at it, I made a few more. These I did get around to photographing.

See?



































After our little photoshoot, it was obviously time for a little run around on the grass.




So that's what we did.

a fun little diversion

Not long ago, I got a message from a woman who was due to have a baby boy in about two weeks.  She wanted a hat to use in the newborn shots of her baby, and she wanted it to be in green and tan, her university colors.

She found this hat in my shop, and asked me if I could make one like it, but smaller (for a newborn) and with more stripes.

Here's what I came up with:



I forgot to set my camera with the "close-up" setting, so it's a little blurry.  Still, this gives the the general idea.

To make it, I followed my basic beanie pattern , with the following adjustments.

• I used a F size crochet hook
• I had 6 sc in my center
• I went until there were 7 sc in between each set of doubles, then I started just going around evenly on each row.  
• Once I got to where I wasn't doing any more doubles, I went a row or two with the green, then added two rows of tan.  Then 4 more rows of green, then two more rows of tan.  Then 9 rows of green, the another row of green, but just in the front loop (making the "fold up" row).  Then I turned and crocheted the other way, making 3 rows of green and ending with two rows of tan

 

I probably won't be able to send her to Harvard, but every little bit helps

I spent the weekend making this custom hat:



. . . and a few others that are the same base color but with different flowers and trim.

I was planning to finish those up and get them photographed and posted here and on etsy.com, but then on Monday, a company where I do some contract work was slammed with orders, and so I've been busy working on their inventory.  The work isn't all that creative, since I make the same item (a crochet mustache) over and over and over again, but I have to admit, it's really nice to be crocheting something for compensation without having to take pictures, choose etsy tags, write up a peppy description, post it to facebook, get an order, package it up and send it out.  Of course, the latter method is more rewarding on an internal level, but sometimes it's nice to get paid for just crocheting, without having to do all that extra stuff that goes along with the etsy shop. 

:)

I actually have a day job where I earn part of the money that pays our mortgage and keeps our heat on, so I'm able to put any crocheting money I earn in my daughter's education fund.  It may sound weird, but I've really loved watching the balance in that account climb by $10 here and $10 there because of this little crocheting windfall.

I think back to when I was ten years old, and my mom was teaching me how to crochet by helping me make my very own manta*.  Selling my "wares" was the furthest thing from my mind back then, and probably rightly so.  Now though, thanks to the internet, and some very inventive people out in Brooklyn, NY, I can do just that.

Lucky, lucky me.




*Most people would call this a poncho, but my father always called them mantas, which is a term he picked up while he was living in Chile while he was a Mormon Missionary there. So, that's what I call them too.