Learning to Crochet...

Like I said in Wednesday's post, I taught myself to crochet while I was resting. It's something that I have been wanting to do for ages (either crochet or knit, but I decided that I wasn't smart enough to handle the two needles for knitting! LOL!). The main reason that I wanted to learn is because of baby hats...I love them and need them all, but that gets rather expensive so this works for me...a ball of yarn is MUCH cheaper than shopping at Janie & Jack who makes the cutest baby hats around!!!

My starting point was these two books:

The book on the left is awesome for projects!! They are laid out to build your skills so if you follow the book, then you slowly learn everything that you need to know about crocheting. It was $24.99 at Michael's. Where it is not so good is on the actual clear stitching instructions which is where Crocheting for Dummies comes in. Great stitch instructions in this one!!! And even better, Barnes & Noble is offering a $5 rebate this month on all their Dummies books so this $19.95 book ended up costing me somewhere around $12.

This is my first failed project:

I, being the impatient person that I am, have yet to do a gauge check (although EVERYTHING you read says this is very important!) This was supposed to originally be the baby hat you see in the next photo, but it is about 1/2 the size it should be to fit even a baby's head. So the backup plan for my first piece of crochet is that I am going to use a bit of that fabric above it to make a flap and this little pouch will work great as a pouch to carry my crochet needles in.

This was my second project:

A baby hat for Katherine for her first winter. Later I am supposed to learn how to make crocheted flowers so I will probably add one of those to the cuff to make it a bit more girly. DH loves winter hats with tassels so he was very happy with this...and so am I!

My third project was a technique success, but I don't like the varigated yarn look on this, but DS loves to organize things so he has claimed this as his own...

This fourth project was much harder than it should be. I could not for the life of me figure out how to do the stitch around the metal frame (the book instructions were WAY off on this!!!), but I found a quick tutorial online which made it super easy and fast.

This will be a mobile for Katherine's room. Obviously it is still a work in progress, but I will post photos when I finish with it. BTW, the butterfly garland came from the easter section of Target for $7. I plan on cutting them apart and adding them to the rings and flowers.

My final project that I have done so far is this scarf...

It still needs to be blocked and have the fringe added to it, but since it has been in the 70's and 80's for the last couple of weeks, there doesn't seem to be much urgency in doing that.

That is what I have done so far. I have my next 3 projects planned. My next task to learn are granny squares, but I haven't quite figured them out yet. Then I think it is time for another hat. Yippee!!!
smiles,
christi