After last time, I started to realize that this project was going to cost me a lot of money and time. I thought how I could save some of both, so I decided to revise the pattern slightly.

One square doesn’t really photograph well, but all in all, much better than the brown experiment, don’t you think?

Here’s my modified pattern:

This may not look very exciting, but that’s because it’s just the first step in an enormous project to make a crochet granny square blanket. I used some left over (from various crochet teddy bears and dogs) brown yarn to make a test square. First, to get an idea of the size (this is a giant 15cm X 15cm square) and second, to estimate how much yarn I will need.

I was originally inspired by this hex-bag project from future girl. I even made my own version last year. But – it’s a cold winter, and unfortunately, I can’t cuddle inside the bag…

I made these drawing kits to-go for the kids yesterday. I’m not sharing the pattern, well, because I’m planning to sell them. And the pattern. Coming soon!

Each kit is a padded suit case with hook-and-loop (Velcro) closure. There is a pocket on each side of the inside cover for paper, stickers etc. In the middle there is a zippered pocket for colors, scissors and any other equipment your child might need.

These are for younger children, sized to fit A5 size paper (or A4 folded in half). For older kids there will be larger size, to fit A4/letter paper.

Boy & girl versions:

After I made my daughter a rubber crochet ducky, my son got jealous and requested a monster. We’ve been playing Super Mario on our Wii, so I was inspired by the mushrooms when I designed this monster.

Well, as usual, I’m happy to share. So here goes:

For my friend at Muffashionista. Happy birthday!

The flower was made using this tutorial over at LollyChops.

The head band was made as follows:

With worsted weight yarn and a 5 mm crochet hook, ch 12. hdc in 2nd ch from hook. hdc across (9 times), ch 2, turn. [10 hdc, ch 2, turn] until the band reaches the desired length. For a nice finish, ch 1, and sc evenly along the long side of the band. When you reach the end of the first side, bring both edges of the band together and slip stitch across through both layers to join. Continue sc evenly around the second side.

Keep your ears nice and warm stylishly during the winter!

Do I really need to explain why I wanted to crochet a duck? They’re so cute, and my daughter loves them. I knew that she would love it, and I was right! She absolutely insisted to take it to day care and won’t let it go long enough for me to get a good picture. See?

This pattern took a little “figuring out”, because I wasn’t sure how I was going to get the curvy tail shape, and I really wanted to make it one continuous piece instead of making separate body and head pieces and sewing them together. Well, here goes:

We got out all of my older son’s winter clothes from when he was two-ish, filtered out anything that had a truck on it, and were left with plenty of winter clothes for my daughter.

When we got out the winter coat I thought that we could pull it off, all we needed was to make the light blue coat just a bit more girly. So what I did was make a very simple crochet flower using this pattern.

I hand sewed the flower over the monkey-robot-something applique, and now I hope I won’t get too many “Aww, what a cute boy” remarks…

Just in case, I’m putting the money we saved aside for a psychologist when she grows up (all I ever wore were hand-me-downs from my brother!)…

Noam asked for and got a dragon hat. Hodaya can’t speak yet, so she got what I felt like making. Basically, the simplest crochet hat possible, made from such nice, soft, pink yarn (which has made several appearances in past posts).

The hat is super simple to make:

Every year, around this time, I make the kids new winter hats. I’m always just a tiny bit late, because I think of it only when it starts getting cold, which is by definition too late. Hodaya’s hat is a pattern I tried last year, but the size came out wrong and ended up being too big at first, and too small later on (well, really too short). Hodaya’s hat is not quite ready yet, I’ll be sure to post it when it is…

Noam’s hat is a dragon hat of my own design, based loosely on Toothless from “How to Train your Dragon”. It’s really simple and I’m willing to share what started out as a general outline and turned in to a quite detailed tutorial, of how I did it (after the jump).