Crochet elephant

After crocheting booties for my best friends baby, and a blanket that I forgot to take photos of, I was still on the crochet buzz and had been seeing heaps of cute crochet animals. After trawling through pinterest for inspiration I decided to crochet a cute little elephant.

I freestyled it, adjusting it as I went, and at one point taking it all apart and starting again when I felt it was not the right shape. I started at the trunk with about five stitches in the round, and simply increased and decreased as I went, over the head, the body and right through to the tail. As the tail was closing it off, I had to stuff him as I went as well. I just stuffed him with the innards of an old pillow I no longer needed.

The legs and ears were made separately and sewn on. And as a final touch I embroidered on some eyes using black and white yarn, and pulled some of the gray yarn through the trunk firmly to give it a cute little tilt and bend.

Baby booties

My best friend is having a baby! So I thought I'd put my crafting skills to use for her baby shower.

I've recently (over the past year) learned to crochet, so I thought I would try my hand at some crochet booties. Being the over ambitious person I am I thought I would just work off a couple of inspiration pictures from my pinterest and a basic sole chart that you can see here.

Using the sole chart and this page for inspiration I tried my hand at some baby crochet Nikes. That link has a tutorial on it, but I found it did not match the pictures. Nevertheless, with lots of practice and redoing after mistakes, I think they turned out quite well:

 I crocheted the tick separately and sewed it on to the bootie. After crocheting the white sole, I crocheted up in two pieces, one on the side and round the back, and the other for the tongue. Afterwards I sewed them together to keep the shape, but this method gives a great looking tongue to the shoe to make it look much more like a sneaker.

The second pair of booties I made are more like little boots, based very closely on this blog post. There is actually a tutorial there, so I would recommend checking it out. But I don't really know how to read crochet patterns so I freestyled it.

These were great fun and gave me the crocheting bug. Looking forward to my next baby shower!