Evil Genius Update

Its that time of year… when leaves start to fall off trees and the air starts to turn crisp. Its my favorite time of year, mainly for being able to wear boots, hats and scarves!

Although I usually only crochet hats and scarves during the fall and winter seasons lately I have created some super cute hats both in the spring and summer months. I can explain this with one word…babies. A lot of my friends have been having babies in the past year and I decided to make them baby hats. Once I started that I thought, hell I can do kid hats too! Here are some examples of my creations:

This picture was taken before I added the buttons to the strap (Piggie)

Sea Creature with tail

Bear hat

Braid baby hat

I am currently making a hat for a special little boy and a fluffy scarf for his momma. I also have a hat and scarf combo and another animal hat lined up. Not to mention a scarf for one of my besties, and a scarf and two animal hats for my cousin and her children. If you would like to learn more about our products head on over to our Facebook page!

Blanket

Back in late April/early May I decided to make a blanket for my niece’s 1st birthday. Needless to say, I am not the most experienced sewing machine user. I own a sewing machine and I have successfully completed a few projects on it, but to this day I don’t feel comfortable in my lack of proficiency. Regardless I found some cute fabric and went ahead with my blanket plans. Halfway through the sewing I noticed that the person who cut the fabric for me at the store hadn’t done the best of jobs in making sure she was cutting on the border of the fabric. This meant that my job was going to be harder than it should have been. I decided to enlist my mother in law, since she is much better at solving these types of problems. True to my expectations she and I worked together to make the top material and the backing (a cute pale yellow flannel) match up as best as we could. In the rush to make sure that I sent the present in time to Arizona I forgot to take a picture of the finished product. What we didn’t forget to do was add my niece’s name in the lower left corner of the blanket. About a few days ago my brother and his wife sent me pictures of my niece drinking her bottle and napping on her present. It was nice to see her enjoying the present Rosa and I worked so hard on.

Tis the season for crafts!

As I mentioned previously, I am a bookworm (bookwhore) and I am very proud of it. Before my mother decided to get her second Masters degree and then her doctorate, she was an art teacher. I don’t think I inherited her talent for drawing. I do think I got her organization trait and her ability to be patient with children, animals and with inanimate objects. From her I also inherited her love for music and wanting to sing. I don’t think I am a great singer but I can carry a tune and I did earn some medals while in concert choir, so I guess I can’t be that bad. From my father I inherited my love for sports and athletic ability. An ability I might add that I haven’t used in the past few years, much to my dismay. The point of this drawn out background information is to say that I never had any crafty hobbies growing up.

A few years ago when I went to visit my great friend of many years (13 years to be exact), Judy, in London I learned something I never thought I would be good at…crocheting. I am a visual learner so it was great to have her show me. I have since then learned to crochet scarfs and hats. I have tried to learn to crochet animals and toys from books but I still haven’t mastered the ability to read the short script language of crocheting and with no one here to explain it to me I have sort of given up on it for now.  Since 2007 (when Judy taught me how to crochet) I have decided to try and find other crafts I could be good at. As mentioned in my Junkie blog, while in high school I learned how to make a country house facade from coffee stirrers. I decided to see how good my memory was a recreate one. You can see the end result here.

Last year as a Christmas present for the girls in my family I decided to try and make little party headbands. It was a learning experience with feathers and a hot glue gun. Here is an example of two headbands I created:

My Mom and then pregnant sister-in-law

Being anal retentive I wasn’t very happy with my creations, but being the first time I had done something of that nature I decided that I would improve on the idea in the future. Since then I have been creating new protocol designs for these years party hair pieces along with working with new and more difficult yarns for scarfs. I have had some positive feedback from Will’s mom, sister and nieces on both my crochet skills and my hair pieces. I was in fact commissioned to make a scarf for both of his nieces. Will’s mother even suggested I could sell my hair pieces, but I don’t know if they are good enough, or if anyone would buy them. I guess I will leave it up to my readers to let me know if they are cute enough to sell or if anyone would actually buy them. Here are some examples of simple pieces to the more elaborate pieces.

Purple feathers with silver beads

light blue feathers with clear beads

Clear beads with wire

Here are the scarfs I made for Will’s mom and nieces:

For the 5 year old

 

For the 11 year old

 

For Will's mom

So…should I try and sell versions of these crafts?