LetsCrochet.com's Mystery Crochet Along #3! Complete!

Well... complete as in, I finished the instructions and came up with a new handle instead of using wooden ones. Now I just need to line the whole thing and be done with it! I am thinking pale pink. I'll give it a go today and see what comes of it.

I like it on the whole. It's not too big, not too small. It's pretty good.  Ha.

Butterfly Blanket FINISHED!

Insert sigh of relief here! This one was a really long project, I have to say. I got seriously tired of doing those circles. But it turned out really well, and my daughter loves it. What more can I ask for than that?? I will have better pics later now that I've finally recharged the battery on my Nikon. Syd is already making up poses to show off her new butterfly! I found this pattern in Crochet Today!'s Ultimate Blankets issue.

LetsCrochet.com's Mystery Crochet Along #3!: Days 4 and 5

This purse is really moving along. Everyone should check out the website letscrochet.com or our Facebook page Crocheting. I'm really enjoying the mystery of how it will ultimately turn out. Will I stick with the original pattern or will I modify the end to make my own handles? Only time will tell!

Day 4

Day 5

LetsCrochet.com's Mystery Crochet Along #3!

Today is day two of our mystery crochet along. This CAL is in a purse theme. So I know it'll end up being a purse... of some sort. I'm pretty excited about this! It's a nice break from the butterfly blanket for my daughter. That project is almost done, so I'll be posting pics of it soon. I'll be posting a picture of each day's progress, so here's the first two day's progress! So exciting!

Day 1

Day 2

Hooded Baby Blanket: Complete!

I've finished it finally! Woo! It was supremely easy to do, I can't imagine anyone being physically able to mess this pattern up. It's also gorgeous, which is a bonus for me. I'm sure my little Bear won't mind.

Without further ado, here it is!

The Forgotten Project & a Pattern Idea

The forgotten project! It's so wonderful, really. I love, LOVE this pattern. It's a bit of a pain in a sense, because when I did this I was new to crochet. A nearly total newbie, if you will. My husband saw a version of this and set me out to find the pattern ASAP. Here is the finished product (with him in it!)

Yes! You see it correctly! It's a beanie. It's a beard! It's... the Ultimate Bearded Beanie! Of course, I used the hubby's preferred beanie pattern. It's a very nice pattern I found over at Lion Brand. I LOVE most of their patterns. Go figure. The beard comes from a lovely woman on Etsy. Her shop is called ByLauraDesign. I like the texture of this one versus the original beard, but they are both truly awesome. A very, very cool play on the traditional ski mask.


Onto the pattern revision. I'll probably edit it into the original post but I'll stick it here for now. On the Tri-Strand Easter Basket you can do double crochet instead of half double crochet. It makes for a different look AND gives you the ability to weave some ribbon through and give the basket a bit of a different look!

Lazy Kind of Days...

So! I've finished another few inches on the hooded baby blanket I started for my son. It's just so lovely, and it feels like... a textured cloud. I think Bear is going to enjoy it! Otherwise on the crochet front it's been a little slow. I've been a little busy with one fussy with teething pretty-much six month old.

I do have crochet related news to share, though! I should have mentioned it sooner, but I have discovered a wonderful group of fellow crocheters. If you are on Facebook, you should definitely "Like" Crocheting. It's a very fun place to hang out with like minded crochet lovers. After you've liked our Facebook page, you should head on over to our forums at Let's Crochet dot com and meet some of our members. I personally love it there. I wish I had more time to hang out there.

I should mention these two places like to do Mystery Crochet-A-Longs. That's right! You get instructions, but you have no true idea what it will look like. The latest, which will start soon, is a purse... of some sort. It should be a lot of fun!

Baby Bibs!

My husband is out of town this week and I was having a bit of trouble sleeping. My son is just starting solid foods and is desperately needing bibs! So I decided to crochet up a bib. I found a pattern I liked on Ravelry, but the pattern is by Coats & Clark. You can find it here. It's called the Beep Beep Bib. I didn't do the car pattern on the front, and the tabs that go around the neck are too small but I think it turned out well. One of the best things about this project is that I learned the reverse single crochet (or crab stitch). I'm quite happy about it! 

Here's a finished pic. I like how the yarn made a big V pattern. I used Peaches 'n Creme cotton yarn for this. It's quite a nice pattern overall. I'm a little bit in love with cotton yarn, too! 

Don't mind the little foot... he was snoozing away next to me.

Cowja Pics & Progress on a Hooded Baby Blanket

And here he (or she) is sans arms! I'm still working on those. I quite like how the little mooninja turned out. Very cute. He is missing arms because.... I started work on a baby blanket for my son. This blanket is so FAST! It's fantastic. The hardest part, so far, is the beginning row, just because beginning rows are always a bit of a pain. So here is the progress as of last night.

Love love LOVE it!! The pattern is from LionBrand and comes with the Pound of Love yarn. You can also find it with a registration for free over at LionBrand.com.

Secret Ninja Reborn: Cowja?

I have a very good friend who saw the secret ninja and decided she needed a little sneaky amigurumi. This very morning she caught the hubby online and informed him that it would be cool if I made her one. Little did she know I was in the process of crafting her a ninja of her very own. Her very favorite thing is cows. Cows of the Holstein variety to be exact. I thought, what fun would it be to make a ninja dressed in a cow suit. He (or she, I'll let my friend decide) is currently in progress, awaiting his stuffing and final touches. Time to hit the Wal-Mart and pick myself up a bag of poly fill.

Until then it's back to the grind on my daughter's Butterfly blankie. I swear I'll finish it... I'm giving myself a goal of this weekend. I only have three rounds on the current circle I'm doing now, then another circle, the antennae and putting that bad boy together. I'm so excited for it to be done... I'm having a love/hate relationship with that ting right now. For some reason the body threw me into total burnout, but leaving it unfinished is even worse.

Ahhhh, back to hooking!

Secret Ninja

Secret Ninja broke his arm doing ninja rolls, but he is still primed and ready to sneak attack!

A few years ago, my (not so) little sister broke her collarbone doing a ninja roll through a hula hoop. She's going to be 21 this May and because she's not a drinker, I wanted to give her something awesome for her birthday.

She has a thing for ninja. Luckily, she's not the only one. I found a fantabulous pattern and I couldn't wait to get my hands on it! I used Red Heart Super Saver in black and nude. It made up pretty quickly, maybe three hours total time spent. It was great fun and I really can't think of any ways to improve upon it.

You should also check out the other free patterns on that site... they are pretty awesome, too. I've got a few more of those on my list!

Crochet Baskets: Easter!

I took a break from my latest project to dive into Easter baskets for the kids. Since I'm getting all into the handmade thing, I thought it'd be nice to make their baskets this year. I searched and searched online and couldn't find a basket pattern I liked. For this, I created one.

The best thing about this pattern, I think, is how easily it can be modified to suit your needs. With my daughter's basket, we added lavender ribbon between the half double crochets and put a crochet flower on one side of the handle. The possibilities are note quite endless, but there are tons of things you can do with this!

In the basket pictured I used Red Heart Super Saver in Spring Green, Bernat Softee Baby in white and Bernat Baby Sport in yellow. For my daughter's basket (I'll dig up the picture later!), I used Bernat Softee Baby in white, Red Heart Super Saver bright yellow and Caron Simply Soft in lavender. I thought those colors would create a hideous Mardi Gras wannabe nightmare, but it is quite lovely.

If you try out this pattern and it doesn't work quite right or you have questions, please let me know! I did test it when I made my daugher's basket, but I was also remaking it from memory so it's possible I missed a mistake.



Tri-strand Easter Basket

This is a small easter basket with a built in handle. It's easily modified to be larger or smaller by decreasing (or increasing) the number of increasing rounds. Keep in mind the length of the handle and the number of hdc on the top row will need to be adjusted.

Place your stitch marker in the first stitch of each round. On round 14, place the stitch marker on the chain 1 space, as this is where you'll slip stitch your handle.

Materials:
2 balls worsted weight yarn
1 ball baby sport weight yarn
K (10 1/2, 6.5mm) hook
Stitch marker
yarn needle

Ch 2
Rnd 1: 6 sc in 2nd ch from hook. Place stitch marker.
Rnd 2: 2 sc in each sc around - 12 sc
Rnd 3: *2 sc in next sc, sc in next sc *around - 18 sc
Rnd 4: *2 sc in next sc, sc in next 2 sc *around - 24 sc
Rnd 5: *2 sc in next sc, sc in next 3 sc *around - 30 sc
Rnd 6: *2 sc in next sc, sc in next 4 sc *around - 36 sc
Rnd 7: *2 sc in next sc, sc in next 5 sc *around - 42 sc
Rnd 8: *2 sc in next sc, sc in next 6 sc *around - 48 sc
Rnd 9: IN BACK LOOPS ONLY, sc in each sc around
Rnd 10: *2 sc in next sc, sc in next 7 sc *around - 54 sc
Rnd 11: sc in each sc around
Rnd 12: *2 sc in next sc, sc in next 8 sc *around - 60 sc
Rnd 13: sc in each sc around
Rnd 14: ch 1, hdc in next 28 st
Rnd 15: ch 34 to start handle, sl st in ch space on opposite
side
Rnd 16: sc in each sc back aross handle ch
Rnd 17: return to basket, 28 hdc, 2 sc
Rnd 18: sc in each sc aross handle, sl st in st with stitch
marker. Finish off.


A quick note about my patterns: You may use them to make items for family and friends. I'd absolutely love if they were used for charity or local fundraisers. Please do not repost my patterns on another site or redistribute them in any way. Please link back to this page to share. Feel free to sell your items, but if you do, please link to this page and identify the designer as Bearly There Crochet. Thank you!

A Bear Hat for My Bear

I. Love. This! My son is named Bear. It's only fitting for him to have a little bear hat. Plus, the ears are just so cute. My mom had this yarn in her stash. It's Homespun by LionBrand. I really really love it, but it's hard to work with. The pattern is pretty simple and straight forward and you can find it Here.

Unfortunately, this hat was too small for my Bear. He has a pretty large noggin. I've redone this pattern, tweaking it as I went, a few times to make it fit my little man. It took some doing, but I finally got it. It's a bit too big for him now, but next winter... look out ladies!

My First Crochet Project

This is the first crochet project I ever tried. It's a hacky sack. It's done in the continuous spiral style. I really liked that. It also sort of taught me to crochet very tightly. You can see by the ridge lines, I used back loops only throughout. It wasn't part of the pattern, but it gave it a bit of a different look. It was hard to make the stitches as tight as I would have liked towards the end, but, I quite enjoyed this project! Plus, this project also gave my daughter the idea to start a garden. I had filled the sack with beans to give it a heavy, but still light feel my husband likes. My daughter ended up planting the leftover beans!

Some things I realized I would need in the middle of this project: Stitch Markers and a Row Counter! They are invaluable when you're working in the round and need to know where each row begins.

I used this pattern as a guide: Hacky Sack

Crochet: Not Just your Grandma's Hobby

The family and I have recently arrived back in the States after a year living in Okinawa, Japan. If you've never been, I highly recommend some time there. It truly is paradise. While there, I was big into sewing. My favorite thing to create is bags of all sorts. Even the kind I refuse to use myself. I am a picky purse person. Now we're back home and our things are still crossing the pacific and nearly the entirety of the United States, this leaves me without any creative output and a lot of time on my hands... Well, as much time as you can have with an eight year old and a three month old.

My mother used to crochet afghans. Not a lot, but every once in a while. These days she's into hats more than anything. Since I was bored she bought me a crochet how-to kit. You can find them at any craft store, or the chain store to beat all chain stores: Wal-Mart. I decided to give it a go with nothing better to do in my down time.

To make this story short: I fell in love. So now I'm crocheting every neat pattern, and some patterns of my very own, that I can get my hands on. I guess this blog will serve to show my progress in both actual crochet and the projects I'm working on. I've started what I call 'the crochet bible'. It contains every pattern off the yarn I buy and patterns I find on the internet, either bought or free.

I will probably link to free patterns and paid ones alike. Since I'm new to the crochet game, I probably won't be of much help should anyone ever read this and need assistance. I can only say... I love Youtube. Here's a shoutout to Teresa who does the Art of Crochet videos. With all that said... let's hook!