Crochet Beanie Hats

As I mentioned in my last post, I learn how to do a lot of different crafting techniques from YouTube.  I want to share an amazing crochet teacher on YouTube with you.  Teresa could teach a rock how to crochet!  If you are like me, a very hands-on and gotta-see-it-to-understand-it learner, you will love Teresa's videos.  I initially came across her videos when my dear husband and I were trying to figure out what stitch his grandmother used in making his afgan many years ago.  I love the design the stitch creates and wanted to do a blanket with the same stitch.  Shortly after learning that it was called the ripple stitch, and making a baby shower blanket in that stitch, I ventured on to some videos to make my unborn baby a beanie to wear home from the birth center.  I've been sold ever since on Teresa's videos.



We recently had to make several 5-hour road trips so I wanted an easy to finish crochet project for the ride.  I watched the above video several times, then went to Teresa's blog to print out the written directions.  I'm frugal and will use up what I find laying around so I made the first beanie out of some rainbow yarn my husband had leftover from a sock puppet he had to make for his military initiation...long story!  I actually ended up getting off some how and so I unraveled the whole beanie and started over.  The end result ended up being too small for my son, but will make a perfect gift for a friend who is due with a precious bundle of joy in January.  It will be perfect because we won't know if the bundle of joy is a boy or girl until the baby decides his or her birthday and join us earth-side of the womb sometime in January.  I moved up to crochet hook sizes to an "I" and made another beanie which fit Liam really nicely.  I added several rows of single crochet on the inside to get a cute little roll on the edge and to make it a bit longer down to cover Liam's ears completely.  However, just today Teresa added this video on elongated ear flaps!  I will definitely be visiting that video when I make the next beanie!

Here's Liam in his beanie that I made to match his winter jacket.  The yarn was leftover from an afgan I made for a deployment Todd went on in 2004.

He wasn't quite sure what was up with the thing on his head!  The photo below is a picture of all
three of my children a few hours after Liam was born.  He is sporting the beanie I made for him
while still pregnant.