Crocheting and sewing for Christmas

Have I blogged about how much I love to crochet? If I haven't I really should. I really love it. It's relaxing, it's easy, it's fun. I love shopping for yarn; I love the way it feels. Okay, you get it. For Christmas gifts this year I crocheted A LOT. I made hats and bath-scrubbies for all of my children, plus my niece and nephews. I found a bunch of free patterns on Pinterest and through google searches.

This was my first ever character hat. Hello Kitty for my favorite niece (she's my only niece). Pattern found here: Hello Kitty Free Crochet Hat Pattern

August has been asking for a sock monkey hat for a long time. She loves sock monkey's and has about 15 of them. Along with her hat, I made Emily and Julia, Perry the Platypus hats.

The sock monkey hat pattern can be found here: at Crochet in Color. I used her pattern with a very large hook to modify it to fit August's head. I can't find where the Perry the Platypus pattern was from. But a simple google search can yield many free patterns. 

I saw these awesome book slings in the Family Fun magazine a while back. I saw them again on Pinterest and decided to make them for Emily and Julia. They always have a ton of books in their beds, these were perfect to hang on the wall next to them. They were also very simple to make. Link here at Penny Carnival .

Kiley and Haley both got slouchy hats, which I regret to say I can't find the link for the pattern.

One of my favorite projects were these monster bath-scrubbies. If found the free pattern at Ravelry.

 I found a skein of really cool Red Heart camouflage yarn, and made each of my 3 wonderful nephews a hat. Apparently I only took one photo of the camo hats. Ha! I guess I need to be better at photographing my work. This was for my youngest nephew who is almost 2. I used the pattern from the sock monkey hat and omitted the ear flaps. I used a smaller hook so that it would be baby size.

The other two hats, not shown were just basic skull beanies for boys/teens with no pom-pom. They are camo with orange stripes in the middle.

These are flower coasters. I made several sets of these in different colors. I even sold a set! Yay me. That was my first homemade sale. This pattern I found on Pinterest and it's linked here at Mollie Makes. I used Patons yarn. I would love to find it in similar colors as the pattern pictures, but so far I can only find blue, white, purple, black and gray.

Making gifts really saved a lot of money. It does take a lot of time. I started 3 1/2 months before Christmas to get it all done. I get really bad carpal tunnel, not the best thing for someone who enjoys crocheting as much as I do. I have to do it in small doses.

 Happy New Year.

~Kimmie