Cake Decorating

Well I know I said that this would be a crochet blog, but recently I've been taking cake decorating classes at my local Michael's store. It's been fantastic!! And I really enjoy making cakes!! So my first class was all about how to use icing, how to make it, how to ice a cake, etc etc. And this cake is the final for that class.

I really enjoy making the ribbon flowers! So much fun!! Also, I really like making chocolate butter cream icing. Super yummy!!

The other thing I really enjoy doing is making rice krispie square "cakes" and decorating them. TONS of fun!!!

Let me tell you, it was yummy! I also made these two at the same time for my roomates.

and

So in the future expect some more cake decorating pictures splattered with some crocheted items. Can't help it, cake decorating is my newest thing! :)

Baby Hats

Wow, it's been a while since my last post... sorry. And my new post is about hats again lol. Well life sometimes gets in the way of things that I enjoy. And I had to get a new computer thrown in as well. Anyways, my sister had a baby boy and I made him a cute little blue newsboy type hat. Very adorable. Sadly I don't think it fit him for very long, the crappy part about making a hat for a newborn. Well anyways here it is. I pretty much just made a basic hat and then added a brim. For something different I thought hey why not add buttons. I have a whole pile of buttons from back when I was in college. (I was taking EA-SNS and we used buttons for counters in a class project, but bunny trail aside) So I let my sister pick the buttons and I think it turned out really well with the buttons on the side. I might start doing more hats like that.

So the next baby hat I made is for my dear friend Cody. She and her husband are big Firefly fans and I knew they were gonna have a baby girl. So I though hey why not make her a baby Jayne hat. For a girl. Now I'm still waiting on pictures from Cody of her darling baby girl wearing them, but for now these will do.

So this hat was super easy to make. And to make it more girly I thought, hey why not add a flower. I couldn't believe how much extra the flower adds to the hat. I'm thinking of maybe making hats for adult women with the flower in it, as kind of an extra femmine touch.







Well that's it for now, but I'm working on a bag. Hopefully this one turns out. I've discovered that crochet bags are like kryptonite for me, I just can't make them. All I make are fail bags :p. But I have high hopes for this one as I want to start mass producing them and using them as part of Christmas presents. (and yes I know it's only July but if you START making stuff now you'll be finished before December and then you aren't stressed out trying to finish everything before Christmas)

Hats, hats and more hats!!

Okay so I feel like half of my blog posts are about the hats I make. But I can't help it, I LOVE making hats! It also might be a factor that I LOVE wearing hats haha. So the first hat to demonstrate to you is the lovely beret that I made. I finally figured I owed it to myself to make ME a hat for once. So I followed this pattern http://suzies-yarnie-stuff.blogspot.com/2010/09/sbsb.html. It's really easy to follow and I enjoyed making it. And it was quick!  Anyways here are the results. I also added my own fabric flower that I bought while I was in Hawai'i. :)

(haha, notice the I heart my geek shirt, I told you I married a geek. And yes I do love him)

And there's the smile haha. I really like this hat. You could chose to wear it off to the side but I actually like it better like this.

Okay the next hat I made for myself recently was a winter hat. And I did not follow any pattern. I just used the wool that I got in my stocking from my best friend Sarah and made a hat out of it. I used it all up, and needed a bit off extra white. But otherwise it was almost the perfect amount!!

This hat reminds me of mint oreos haha. I like it though. And I LOVE the curly q thing on top of the hat. I wanted to make something different than a pom pom and I think that turned out perfectly!!!

And here I am all wintered up haha. And I actually really like this picture of me, hmm.

So this is my special hat edition. But hats for me for once haha.

*meow* Kitty Cat hats

So my friend Kerri requested two kitty cat hats to be made. Now it was a bit of a challenge for me cuz I'd never made one before. And I could not find a decent pattern for exactly what she wanted. So I had to create some of it by myself, and kinda steal ideas from other patterns. It's kinda like a Frankenstein pattern haha. But here is the resutls.

I'm thinking of writing up this pattern but not anytime soon, whoo boy it was a doozie. The funny thing was I just kept making mistakes cuz it was a first time hat. Like I made one ear, and it was all wrong so I had to discard it and make another one. The first time I sewed the face on the wrong side of the hat haha. That was not fun to take it all off and redo it on the back. But I think overall it turned out really well. Kerri tells me she keeps getting compliments on her hat and that makes me happy. I think I will definitely make more animal hats as it wasn't complicated and they look really cute. Here's a picture of Kerri and Sarah wearing them.

I gotta say, the purple one ended up the better of the two haha. That's cuz it was the second one. Technically the pink one is my prototype, the prototypes never seem to be the best but they are the original! (just ask Grant about his Jayne hat haha)

My next funky hat project? Who knows but there are two that I really want to make, one is the chicken hat http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=47371.0 and the other is a giraffe hat. I randomly came across one once and I think it would be hilarious to make one. But I've decided that for next winter I will make myself a chicken hat and wear it proudly. I suspect interesting photo ops for next winter!

Baby Shower Gifts

So a couple that I know just adopted a 3 month old baby! She's super cute and we decided to have a baby shower for her. PERFECT opportunity to make some awesome baby crochet stuff!!  So the first thing I made was a little stuffed hippo. And of course it had to be purple :)

So I got the hippo pattern from a book, one of the few books I have of crochet patterns. I'm all about getting free patterns online haha. But anways, this book is called Vanna's Choice Easy Crochet Critters. And it has the most adorable animals in it!! And they are easy to crochet. I totally recommend the book and it's only like $7 Canadian. Good deal.

So anyways, I also made her two headbands and a white hat with a flower on it. Now I forgot to take pictures of the hat and one of the headbands. But at least I did take a picture of the light pink one.

I really like these headbands, and they are SUPER easy to make. So here it is.

You chain 60 stitches. Then you do 1 DC in each stitch. You turn and do 1 DC in each stitch. Then you sew them together. Easy peasy. The flowers, well you can find an easy flower pattern here http://www.patonsyarns.com/pattern.php?PID=3096&cps=21191. Then you just sew the flower over top of the seam from the headband. Overall I say it was a successful baby shower gift :)





Loofa

So I've been noticing that my current loofa is on its last legs. So I guess I felt it was time to let it go, parting ways with an old dear friend... wait, no it's just a loofa haha. But just to show the evidence as to why I thought it was time to go.

Exhibit A

You'll notice how it's falling apart and loosing some of the structure that allows for a good solid cleaning.

Exhibit B

I mean just look at the "wings" falling out on the side. Shameless.

So all this led me to realize that I need a new loofa. Now being the cheap person that I am I went searching for an affordable, if not super cheap way to replace my loofa. I considered taking one of the Christmas gifts I had for somebody else and keeping it for myself. (yes my loofa has been on its last legs for a while) So while wandering the interwebs I came across this delightful pattern. http://befriendmantic.blogspot.com/2009/06/free-pattern-perfect-loofah.html Who knew you could create your own loofa! So I dug into my wool stash and found some old cotton yarn I'd had for a while. The only colour I had left was a chocolate brown. So I started right away. I thought for sure one small ball would be enough, ha. It's not, by the way, you're gonna need at least two. So when I ran out of brown I thought I would stop by Michael's and buy some more. Do you know they don't have brown cotton wool there :p. So I figured I'd go with another colour. So I picked aqua blue. It actually turned out really well. And here is my finished product.

Exhibit A

I actually kinda like the two tone colour of the loofa. I'm really excited to use it!

Exhibit B

This pattern is SUPER easy. It's just really time consuming and boring. Cuz you literally just put three DC in each stitch and keep going around and around and around... But it does make a neat finished product. Although upon reflection of keeping this a cheap product, I probably could have gone to Dollarama and bought a loofa for the same price that I bought the wool for ahahaha. But then I wouldn't have the satisfaction of making it myself. I haven't used it yet so I have no idea how well this loofa works, but it better work amazing for all the effort I put into it! haha.

Jayne Cobb Hat Pattern

So I finally actually wrote a pattern of my very own. I'm quite proud of myself. I decided to try the Etsy route for a while. So if you are interested you can pick it up for $2 at http://www.etsy.com/listing/67642709/jayne-cobb-hat-crochet-pattern?ref=pr_shop

I haven't really added a lot to this shop, still undecided how much I'm going to use it. But I figure it's worth trying. If anybody has any thoughts about Etsy, whether they be good or bad I'd love to hear about them. I think in the future I will post some free patterns. Just to decide which ones! I'm pretty new to the whole "making your own pattern" thing. But it's something that I'd really like to get into. Hmm, food for thought I suppose.