Long time... no post!

I have been crocheting a lot lately, but just been too lazy to post. Cold weather (yes, it even happens in Austin, TX now, thanks to good ol' global warming...) makes me want to curl up inside with yarn and Gilmore Girls... which is a show that my knitting friends in la la land turned me onto... it's the perfect show to stitch to!




Anyway...



here are some projects I've recently completed ... and my to do list...



A baby it cold outside sweater and matching hat for my newly mobile baby niece...

In two different purple blends of a homespun-like yarn. (I used mill ends that my mom gave me last year). The white trim is homespun. I added flowers to the bottom left lapel to make it look more vintage and feminine.

Her older brother also wanted to try on the hat... which is a bit too small ... but cute nonetheless :). The BICO pattern is really quick and easy and really does work up in less than 3 hours. The secret is that it's almost entirely done in one piece- so there are no seams! Just an excellent project! For the hat, I just did a hdc simple cap and added a shell stitch border. The buttons and the center of the flowers are in the same purple blend as the hat... but the main sweater color I ran out of as I completed the last row of the sweater (how perfect is that!?!?)
I highly recommend the BICO sweater pattern! 1 skein + 3 hours = one adorable baby sweater. That's tough to beat!


For my other nephew, I made this lil' ear flap hat with a pom-pom, which I guess fit him for about a week before he out grew it!


This was also done with mill ends of a homespun-like yarn. It worked up in about an hour... plus 1/2 an hour for the pompoms and earflaps.

It was inspired by watching A Christmas Story... the boys wear the cutest winter hats in that movie!!




I also made him a fuzzy brown bear hat... but I'll be adjusting the size on that and reposting once it's finished.





I also made a hat for my friend Jamie that is pretty much identical to the toddler hat above... I teased him that he would never actually wear it (he requested it)... and so he sent me this video...




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK2XzY8J1i0








Cool, huh? (if you can't view the video, click the link).

I also made a Longhorn hat for my friend Marco... which I don't have a picture of yet. And I'm working on 3 hats for my friend Jeff.


For my mom, I gave her this circle vest that I had made... in white cotton tots yarn.


I am hoping to get a picture of her wearing it because the picture I took with me trying it on really isn't very good...(wow, look at my filthy bathroom mirror - gross). I basically did the Lacy Leaf Cocoon pattern by Annie Modesitt for Interweave Crochet, Spring 2006 and didn't add sleeves. My mom said that she prefered it without sleeves, just as a vest.
The picture to the left is of it lying down, pre-blocking.


I made a similar vest for my sister Megan in pink... but... I decided that the yarn I used (a soft, cotton baby yarn actually... it's what I had laying around when I started playing around with the pattern...) didn't really do the pattern justice. So, I'm reworking that for her.


I have about a dozen other projects in the works right now... all top secret and very late christmas gifts!

This coming Wednesday, I invited some friends in Austin to meet up with me at a coffee shop for Mat Hatter Day. We'll all make hats... I'll be teaching a lot of them to make their very first hat... which is uber exciting for me :o)

I'll post results afterwards...