i love crocheting!

i've been crocheting off and on since my great grandmother taught me how at the age of nine. it's something i love to do because it's so relaxing, and for the most part, a finished product (depending on the project, of course!) can be accomplished in an hour or two... almost instant gratification, but still with the pleasure and enjoyment of saying look what i made! i'm the type of person that always has something "on the needles" (though that's more of a knitting term since crocheting only takes one at a time, and i haven't been brave enough to try to learn to knit yet). i have so many half-finished crocheting projects that i've attempted to make the proverbial basket full of yarn part of my home... this one, for example, has been sitting by my couch full of a half-finished baby blanket and underneath it, the squares for patchworked couch-snuggling blanket:

because i usually work on it while i'm watching a movie, i just let it live on the end table beside the couch and hope it adds some charm and warmth to the house. at least the blue matches everything else in the room!

so, of course, my crocheting has taken a baby theme recently! i spent a really relaxing saturday afternoon today sitting on my made-up bed (something that rarely is done) just crocheting and letting my mind wander. i started a granny square baby blanket on a car trip to the beach a few weeks ago, similar to the one i made my baby nephew last year, and i decided to do something a little different and just play around with it as i go.

for baby nephew:

half-finished project number three:


(and a skein of pink, just in case! doesn't hurt to have both!)

my one big downfall in improving at all in crocheting is that i'm terrible at following any kind of pattern. i'm much more an explore-as-you-go type person. i'm working on it though... trying to pick out patterns and really work on focusing enough to follow them. i felt very accomplished when i followed not just one, but two patterns to make this super cute little baby hat:

it was the first time i'd used the baby hat pattern, found after a quick google search of "easy crocheted baby hat patterns" and it actually was very quick and easy! the flower i'd done before and is one of my favorites. the hat itself turned out a little smaller than planned (almost preemie to newborn rather than newborn to 3 months as planned with the pattern) because i had to go two hook sizes smaller, since i have a very random selection of hooks from over the years. i also found it's really hard to get a good picture of crochet work!

so in celebration of my 111th day of pregnancy today (yay!) i now have a pink hat and an almost finished blue blanket! just a few more weeks until we can hopefully find out which one we'll need. i think until then i'll go work on some matching pink booties, just in case, of course!