Santa Hat

It's Christmas Time!

I love the Christmas season; I love the songs, I love the family time, and I love the gifts! Actually I love making and giving the gifts. I love seeing people love what I have created and sometimes it is hard to wait to give my gifts until Christmas day. 

I plan Christmas gifts throughout the year as ideas strike me since making the majority of my gifts takes time and not only do I need time, I need time when the recipient is not around. Making things in secret is the most difficult part.

While Santa may not be real, his hat is the perfect addition this holiday season.

Morning Frost Winter Hat

Winter is coming and with it (more like before it) the cold is coming as well. As the weather turns I have turned my attention to trying out new winter hat patterns. So far I've done mostly animal hats, but more colorful hats are fun as well.

This pattern is from ELK Studio and can be found here. She has many beautiful hat and scarf patterns, some of which are free and some of which are paid.

I like this patterns so much I had to try it out in multiple colors. 

Puppy Break

Who could resist this adorable face? I know I can't and so does he.

I don't like to do anything without my puppy unless there is no other alternative. So when I am working on anything at home he is always with me. As I was switching the item I was shooting pictures in preparation for my etsy shop Benson decided to get in on the action.

 He decided if I wasn't going to play with him I should take his picture and he wasn't going to move until I complied. That said it really wasn't all that hard for him to convince me; i love taking pictures of him.

Maybe some time I'll give him something to model. I don't know if he would be as excited about that since he hates being dressed up. I'm not even sure I'll dress him up for Halloween. Maybe i'll just make him something simple like a cape. Then he can be superpuppy!

Bomb Angry Bird Hat Pattern

Bomb Angry Bird Hat Pattern

The bomb bird is a fun and feisty. He is a great help in the angry bird app as he blows up obstacles you encounter. Now he can perch on your head and keep you warm as you demolish obstacles out in the snow this winter.

The base of all my ear-flap hats is from RepeatCrafterMe's hat patterns, so the credit goes to her. I make most of my hats adult size because even children can wear them and have room to grow. You can get the base hat pattern here.

Materials

H Hook (5.0 mm)

Red Heart Yarn in White, Black, Red, Grey and Yellow

Tapestry Needle

I crocheted the base hat in black and then did the trim in grey.

Now for the fun part: turning the plain hat into an angry bird!

Eyes (make 2)

Start with black yarn

Magic ring, 6sc in magic ring and join to first sc, ch 2 (6 sc)

Switch to white yarn

Round 1: 2 dc in each sc, join to first dc, ch 1 (12 dc)

Round 2: 2 sc in each dc, join to first sc, ch 1 (24 sc)

Switch to grey yarn

Round 3: *2 sc in first sc, sc in next sc* repeat (36 sc)

Tie off leaving a long tail to sew onto the hat

Nose

Use yellow yarn

Row 1: 8 fsc, ch 1, turn

Row 2: scdec in first sc, sc in next 4 sc, scdec in next sc, ch 1, turn (6 sc)

Row 3: scdec in first sc, sc in next 2 sc, scdec in next sc, ch 1, turn (4 sc)

Row 4: scdec in each sc, ch 1, turn (2 sc)

Row 5: scdec in sc, ch 1 (1 sc)

Continue to sc arounf the whole piece for a nice border

Tie off leaving a long tail to sew onto the hat

Eyebrows (make 2) 

Use red yarn

Row 1: 10 fsc, ch 1, turn

Row 1: sc in each sc (10sc)

Tie off leaving a long tail to sew onto the hat

"Feather"/Hair - I'm not sure what it is

Start with yellow yarn

Magic ring, 6sc in magic ring and join to first sc, ch 2 (6 sc)

Round 1: 2 sc in each sc, join to first sc, ch 1 (12 sc)

Round 2-3: sc in each sc (12 sc)

Switch to black yarn

Round 4-11: repeat round 2

Tie off leaving a long tail to sew onto the hat

Position the pieces nicely on the base hat until you like the arrangement and then sew them all on. 

Angry Bird Crochet

My newest project is something that I have been designing myself.

I'm not sure why but I wanted to make something Angry Birds which is kind-of weird since I don't really play it all that much. I saw that there are a fair amount of hats, mainly red, chuck and the bomb, but I decided I wanted to take the idea, but do it as finger-less gloves.

I had so much fun designing one that I decided to do them all. So here are my designs for most of the original birds.

Then my sister said I should make the new birds from Angry Birds Stella. The Stella version seems to be geared towards the girls so most of the birds are girls. And here;s those designs. Except that I got the color scheme for Dahlia all wrong, but that's easily fixed since I haven't made her yet.

And here are the birds that I crochet so far.

I love the idea of matching gloves and hats so I decided to enlarge the glove pattern and created a hat to go with my bomb glove.

I love that the gloves are so fun and fairly quick to make. But now I'll have to make hats to match them all which should just involve enlarging the glove pattern design.

 And finally my model, showing of the coolness and fierceness of the angry bird bomb. 

But she says I should make an angry bird Stella hat because she's never seen them before, but I think she just likes that it's pink!

Gifted Paws Etsy Shop

Alright, I finally did it.

I just set up and opened and Etsy shop to sell some of my crochet items. I love to crochet simply to crochet and create wonderful items, but now you can buy some of the items that  you fall in love with.

I've made a very wide variety of items so I've just picked a few to start out with. I'm open to suggestions if there are particular items that you want to get or that you believe would be popular.

Here is the link to my blog: https://www.etsy.com/shop/GiftedPaws.

Feel free to share it and let others know, but make sure you stop by and see it for yourself.

Panda Hooded Scarf

My most recent crochet project was a panda hooded scarf. I found a pattern to make a Cat Scoodie and I loved the idea, but I'm not into cats so I wanted to do it differently. After searching the internet for ideas I decided upon a panda bear!

It turned out great and was a very simple pattern to follow. I know I'll probably be  making more panda's or variations on this pattern. It's just to cute to resist!

The hood fits nicely and with the scarf the length of your arms the pockets at the end are a great place to put your hands for warmth or fun or a nice pocket for little things if you don't have pockets and aren't going to go swinging the scarf around your neck.

 I also learned something new when creating this scarf. While the scarf could have been started with a long chain, the pattern linked to a tutorial on how to do a foundation double crochet. I now love that stitch! I always found the foundation row tedious because I had to find each chain to stitch into, but with the foundation double crochet I can do both my chain and my first row at the same time. I'm sure I'll tweak future patterns and start with this instead of chains.

And of course my puppy let me know if I was going to be taking pictures he needed to be included. Plus his black fur shows up so nicely on a white backdrop.

Now I'll just have to wait for cooler weather to use the hood, but I am in no rush for that. I like the warmth and sun.