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So, my best friend just had a baby girl. And she is the cutest baby! I don’t even have to lie about how cute she is, which always a relief, because, well, not all babies are cute. And I’ve been so excited about this baby girl, that I’ve had this problem where I just want to crochet all the things. I feel as if every adorable baby girl yarny thing I see on Pinterest or Ravelry must be hooked up immediately.
I just can’t feasibly crochet all the things, so I crocheted several things. I made booties the weekend before my first exam of the semester, and then, after a short break from that to study, I went and made her a matching hat. Because she can’t have booties without a matching hat.
The design for the hat was one that I improvised, and it’s pretty simple. I used Yarn Bee Confection Chunky from Hobby Lobby, which is a super soft yarn. This color is called Rock Candy. I believe I used a J hook, and the hat should fit a 3-6 month old. You can follow my basic design below and continue increasing until you have the size you need, then continue with rounds with no increases until you have your desired length. Of course, the yarn and hook you use will affect the size of your finished item, as well.
Sugar and Spice Earflap Hat:
Round 1: Magic circle, with 12 dc in the circle
Round 2: Ch2, 2 dc in each stitch (24 sts)
Round 3: Ch2, 2 dc in same stitch as join, 1 dc in next, repeat around (36 sts)
Rounds 4-7: Ch2, 1 dc in each stitch around (36 sts)
Earflaps:
Round 8: Ch2, hdc in next 9 stitches, turn
Round 9: Ch1, 2hdctog, 1 hdc in next 5 stitches, 2hdctog, turn
Round 10: Ch1, 2hdctog, 1hdc in next 3 stitches, 2hdctog, turn
Round 11: Ch1, 2hdctog, 1hdc in next stitch, 2hdctog, turn
Round 12: Ch1, 2hdctog, 1hdc next stitch, turn
Round 13: Ch1, 2hdctog, finish off
Skip 9 stitches on Round 7 and make the second earflap as above.
Braids:
Cut several lengths of yarn, a little longer than twice the length you want the braids to be. For bulky yarn like this, I cut 9 pieces per braid. You’ll fold them in half (so now you have 18 pieces of yarn, or double the amount you cut) and take the loop of the folded end and pass that through the end of one of the earflaps. You can use your hook to make a little hole if the stitches are tight, and you can also use the hook to help pull the looped end through. Then pass the cut ends through the loop and pull tight. Now, seperate the yarn into 3 equal sections and braid. When you get to your desire length, tie the end in a knot and cut off the excess. Repeat this for the other braid. Sometimes it takes a little trial and error to get the right lengths of yarn, so you don’t end up with little dinky braids, or tons of 6 inch pieces of yarn left.
For the booties, I used a free pattern from Ashlee Marie, which you can find here. This is the second time that I’ve used her pattern for a pair of baby booties and both moms loved them! You can also leave off the scallops for a boy.
Finally, I also made a blanket for my new little love. I used the Something Pretty pattern by Mille Makes. And I think it came out quite pretty.
I attached the squares using the zipper method by Look at What I Made. It takes a little fiddling to figure it out, and it does take longer to do than joining with single crochet, but it looks quite nice.
I improvised the pattern for the border. I didn’t like that I couldn’t seem to get it to lay flat. But my friend says that she actually likes the way it looks a bit ruffly, so it worked out!
For the border, I did 1 round of sc around, 1 round of hdc around, and 1 round of dc around. In the corners on each of those rounds, I made 3 stitches in each corner stitch to increase. Then, I did a 4th round of 2dc, ch3, 2dc in one stitch, sk 3, repeat around. In corners for the 4th round: 3dc, ch3, 3dc all in corner st. Finally, I did a 5th round of 1sc in top of each dc and 3sc in ch spaces.
I also made a little elephant for her, but that was months ago, when we first found out that she was having a girl. I shared it in another post, but for fun and because I think it’s adorable, here it is again 🙂
The pattern is available for purchase on Ravelry here. It’s worth the money, in my opinion, as the pattern is quite well-written and has instructions for both a an elephant and a hippo. I made the hippo for my nephew which I shared in a previous post. The hardest part of the elephant is stitching on the eyes to make them match. But the crochet stitches make a sort of grid, kind of like cross stitch, so I found that helpful to guide the placement of the stitches when I was trying to make them match.
I suppose that it all for now. I have some studying that I should get back to on my day off from school.
Heather