Crochet: My First Love

I started crocheting my freshman year of college. I think I saw a friend with a cool scarf and she told me she made it, so I decided I wanted to try. I had a friend show me how to make a scarf and hat, and that was it for a while. But then I moved in with a yarn fanatic who really showed me how to get going. She had made a snowflake afghan that I just loved, so I decided I wanted to make one too.

Funny story...the yarn I ended up using for the afghan was the same yarn I bought when I was 16 for a mutual night where a girl showed us how to knit scarves. My scarf was ridiculous beyond belief. It was about 3 feet wide and almost 4 feet long before I decided to bag it and try something else. I pulled the whole thing apart and ended up with all these balls of blue and green multi. I decided to use that color for the middle of the snowflake squares, and I'd find a bright green to border them.

After my roommate showed me how to make the snowflakes, I got working. I was really slow and my work was really tight, but after lots of crochet nights with the girls where I was able to watch and learn some better techniques I got faster and looser, and now I think my gauge is perfectly average for most patterns that I've found, which is nice :D

I worked inconsistantly on these snowflakes for the next year or so, until I had enough to put a couple rows together. I decided that once I finished that afghan I was allowed to get married. Well, I ended up getting married before I picked it up again (lol), and three years later my husband is urging me to finish it. Really the reason I haven't yet is that they discontinued the yarn and I've had to figure out another option. Which I recently did, so hopefully in the next few years I'll be able to finish the afghan I started when I was 18. But I digress.

In between working on that afghan, I decided to learn to crochet beanies for my little brothers and sister. Here are a couple of the beanies I've made since then:


This is the one I made for Richard. He bugged me and bugged me to make him a beanie. I think it was a little thicker than he was expecting, though, so he didn't end up wearing it much.

This is three yarns crocheted together in just a double crochet all the way around. I've got a how-to video in the works.







This is the one I made for myself. I like the yarn I chose because even though there's three strands, they're really soft and thin so it's not too bulky. Again this is just double crochets all the way around.









I made beanies like these for my siblings a couple Christmases in a row and then took a break for a while. This year they really missed them, so I decided to try something new. Mostly because I lost my N hook so I had to use a smaller one. I experimented with a hat for Rachel first, since I couldn't seem to find a hat at the store that would fit her head for longer than a week. I had some yarn left over from her baby blanket, so I stuck that with a shiny white color and came up with this:


It's basically the same pattern as before, just with two yarns and using a half double all the way around. It worked out pretty good.

When I made the hats for the kids they ended up being a bit thicker, but they sure love them. If I can round them up I'll post some pics later.