( E's purse )
Y- as promised, links to hats I've made.
Fun colorful hats, I love making these, I play with texture and colors on them.
Pink Heart Flap Heart
Mel's Blue Hat (star flaps)
Cabled Hat
Plain black which makes it very hard to see the cables, but it's cabled. This is the hat I wear when it's very cold, since it's alpaca and silk.
Very basic beanie with spike stitches
Kitty Hat white
Witch Hat! Awful picture. Sorry!
Frog Hat
Hello Kitty
Sun and Rainbow set E's favorite. She loves the reaction this set gets.
Ribbed hat and Hello Kitty hat on my kids. The ribbed hat was a design I came up with because.. it's really hard to crochet for boys!
Hmm.. seems like there was also a black kitty hat, but I can't find that one. The 2 hats my son is wearing were made of wool, and the black cabled one, as mentioned, is silk/alpaca (too expensive. I'm not sure I'm doing that again!), the rest are all worsted weight cotton.

I hope you are all having a lovely holiday if you celebrate it.
Working on- Shawl and cross stitch still. Very slowly. I duct taped my lighter last night because I got bored with it. :)

My keen deduction skills have told me that people care a lot more about Tenacious D vs. Jay and Silent Bob than Oompah Loompahs vs Munchkins.
Yesterday I had to confess to Mike I called the comic book shop just to see what the vs. was this week for all of you, see, I'd forgotten. I wasn't emotionally involved like I was with the Munchkins.

Up to the sunrays on the hat. Which is turning out really cute. I keep saying "I'm going to write down directions for the base hat" but don't. It's pretty automatic for me. I know that I have to end with 72 stitches with a size h hook to fit E's or my head. I start with 8 scs in the first stitch, and just keep increasing and working some rows plain to get a rounded shape until I get to 72, then work the rows plain until it's long enough, then I break off, count 9 stitches from where I break off, and start the first ear flap which is 18 stitches wide to start.
I know! I can write the earflaps!
Decrease is worked by inserting the hook in the first stitch, yo, pull through just the stitch (2 loops on hook), insert hook in second stitch, yo, pull through all loops. Dec sc made. At least the way I do them for these flaps.
row 1: 18 sc
row 2: ch 1 to turn,18 rsc (reverse single crochet, which for me is a whole lot easier then switching hands and trying to do it that way to keep that characteristic sc ridge from showing
row 3: Dec over first 2 stitches, sc in next 14 stitches, dec in last 2 stitches
Row 4: ch 1 to turn, rsc across..

yeah.. well.. I could write all the rows, but it's all like that. Just decrease by 2 on the sc on rows, and rsc across on the rsc rows until you're left with 2 stitches, then break off and do the other side, then I sc all around and at the ends of the flaps do my chains for the straps, you know, chain down, slip stitch up.

The basic hat is easy. It's the decorations that make it fun. And this one has little triangle sunrays. Unstuffed or only lightly stuffed though. I'm nearly out of stuffing and I want to get this done.

Someone on Craftster asked for the pattern for the stars on Mel's hat..
( pattern..  )
Sugar-n-cream frequently goes on sale for 1.00 a ball, and I stock up then.

Today was the annual "Chrismtas for the Animals" at the zoo. This is a passholder only event, you bring treats for animals and put them in bright red bags next to their cages. There is a bonfire, and cider and popcorn and 20% off at the gift store.
So I pull out my "for physical therapy" sweatpants, and a Miami Ink teeshirt (it was the first teeshirt I grabbed out of the drawer) and we went to the zoo. Before that, I told E that Mel said she could wear the hat, Emily said "No thank you." and wore her frog hat.
I just finished ( Emily's interesting hat )
At the zoo, we stopped by the gift shop because things were 20% off for today, and E got a set of cookie cutters, and we got an ornament there for the tree. They also had a little thing of glass marble type things 3/1.00 with some cute stuff in it, so I got some cute little glass things.
Fun fun!!!

Or What Can Happen When You Decide To Make a Hat for a Friend..
Alternately Subtitled- If you think that's weird, check out Flickr , keywords hat, crochet

So I decided yesterday instead of beading I was going to make a hat.
Unlike most hats, where I have some idea where I'm going with it, and have a definate person it's for, this one was a concept thing. If Melissa would wear a silly hat, what would I make her.
Well, obviously it would be cotton. For the clear and good reason I have a lot of worsted weight cotton (Sugar 'n' Cream).
It would be her favorite colors.
It would have stars.
And bobbles. Because I don't do bobbles often.
And spike stitch. Because I was using a 3 different colors. If you count variagated as a color even though it's actually a few colors.

And after hours of crocheting that hat, you might wind with ( something like this )
Of course, it is a very interesting hat.
So I tried it on, and Mike came home. He said "That's an interesting hat." and I followed him into the bedroom and put the interesting hat on him.
He pouted. He said it made him look stupid. He had no problems modelling the frog hat. Or the Hello Kitty hat. Somehow this one just bothered him. I think it's the incredibly bright colors. We aren't really a color family. Well.. except I wear a lot of pink and E wears all sorts of colors just to prove everyone wrong and that they can be worn together, even if they shouldn't.
I showed E. She thought it was great. I told her "If Mel doesn't want it, it's yours."
I showed it to Mel, because there is no point in mailing a silly hat that might not get worn when someone a few feet away wants it.
Mel likes it. Mel will wear it. Mel thinks her grandmother will love it.

But the story doesn't end there.
Tonight, we decided to go out for dinner. While waiting for Mike to get home from work and pick us up, I asked E "What hat are you going wear?"
E-"What are my choices?"
Okay... she knows what hats she has.
I thought for a minute, realized what she meant..
I said "Not Mel's hat."
BIG sigh. DIssappoint that should have brought stormy clouds if she wear a cartoon character instead of an occasionally melodramatic tween with a love for silly hats..
"Oh.. so she wants it afterall?"

This finally ended with she and I discussing hat designs. Because apparently she needs a brightly colored interesting hat. Hers will be pink and orange, and have hearts for the earflaps.
And she wants bobble stitches on hers too.
And even being pink and orange, I can almost promise you she won't wear it with anything that matches. She's probably wear it with red sweaters and purple pants.

Rest in peace Michael Gilden. Apparent suicide.
It breaks my heart so many ways, and of course, if your my age or older, reminds you of when David Rappaport committed suicide.

( the frog hat )

( You really want to see what they look like on? )

For reference.. Emily is 5-5'1". Yeah. At 10. She took great glee in showing me how close she was to my height earlier today. That gives you an idea how much my "little boy" towers over me.
I know. He needs to shave. I told him so too.

The shirt she's wearing? Was white. This time I was smart though, I didn't put *anything* of Mike's or mine into the load of laundry she was doing. I swear she does it on purpose because she said "Isn't it prettier now?"

Today we were downtown for the Solstice Fair, eldest child was obsessed with the ocarinas. Truthfully, I've considered getting one for years, but never actually did. His obsession though finally prompted me to buy two small ones, one for each of us. His suits him wonderfully. He picked a fairly abstract blue flower design, and it's the first piece of "jewelry" I've seen on him in years that suits him. As Mike says "It's big enough." That and it's a piece of art. William is really more a piece of art then a piece of bling type kid. He walked around with me blowing on it and making up small songs. He was utterly entranced with it. I told him if he's serious, if he practices and learns to play songs on it, I'll pick him up another one in a month in a different size. He can play them and enjoy them. Mine has a raven design. They had no magpies.
We left the Solstice Fair and walked to the Saturday Market with a dual purpose. The first of course, to get coffee, the second, the artist who made the ocarinas that were being sold at the Solstice Fair was working at the market, and William wanted to tell her how much he liked it. I picked up a half lb of coffee for my dad as well.
Then we went to Hot Topic. HUGE mistake. HALF the store was clearance stuff they were trying to get rid of. 70 dollars later I got out of there. But it was a good 70 dollars. Various little bits of Tinkerbelle stationary for myself, Fantastic 4 teeshirts for both Mike and William, Naruto hoodies for William and Dad, and 2 NIN PHM teeshirts for Mike (I buy doubles of shirts I think he'll really like), and a Narnia teeshirt for Emily, a few other odds and ends, a belt buckle, a couple bracelets, a keyring, a deck of cards (because it came in a cool tin for Wm to keep his trading cards in), a couple cds. Not bad for 70 dollars. Mike called as we were leaving the store, and picked us up. I fell into the car and said "There was a sale" he saw the HUGE bag and said "I see that" and I said "It was GOOD". Went over to Dad's place, and we gave him the goodies. Dad saw the coffee and said "What color is it?" I thought "What an odd question" but opened the bag and showed him. Turned out, he LOVED the last lb of coffee I got for him (Samurai blend) and was down to half a pot worth of beans. Now remember, I spent *years* trying to convince him of the superiority of whole bean coffee, which finally ended in me buying him a 5.00 grinder, and PROVING to him whole bean from Costco which is roasted on site on Saturdays tastes better and is considerably more economic then even the cheapest cans. But this was the first time I saw him get excited over coffee past "That's good".
So we will see if he likes it. But next time I pick up coffee, I'll buy him a bag of the Samurai blend. Because it takes him about 2 weeks to use a lb of coffee, and I can afford 12 dollars every two weeks for him to drink good coffee.
After that, more shopping. Y'all will think I'm a shopaholic. Really. But this was a "necessary today" thing. You see, if you sign up for the Toys R Us mailing list, you get coupons that are good for a couple days. Print and go. This week, there was a coupon for 2 video games 19.99 or under for 30.00, one for a little cheapo mp3 player flash drive thingie for 15 dollars that came with speakers, and one for a personal water cooler. Emily's been wanting one of those and it was less then half price. The mp3 player I'm going to load up with songs for dad, along with Mike's old cheapo one. They are just a bit bigger then thumb drives, so between the two, dad will have space for 90 songs. Which he'll need. To tune out William and his ocarina.
So I'm all exhausted. It was a nice day though.

( two hats behind cut )

I'm going to get pictures of both hats worn this weekend I think.

:)
Shala