Stuff I Made...aka my craft failure.

I have a new hobby... its a hobby formed out of desperation... of being help captive to my couch while my lovely little one eats ALL the DANG TIME.  If you know me in real life, you know I have a lot of creative energy.  I have an entire room of my house filled with fabric, paint stuff, beading, metal stamping, scrap-booking, silkscreening, you name it I probably have some of it... and that's just in that one room... craft/art/project stuff is spilling out of every corner of our house (and don't even get me started on my spray paint obsession in the garage).

Unfortunately, a lot of my favorite activities require a sewing machine or two hands, or basically just not an infant attached to one's chest.  So I slowly went crazy for a few months, not really being able to get some of this energy out except in short, nap-length bursts from time to time.  And I went a little wild on Pinterest...but that's another story.  So I decided I needed to learn to crochet.  There's tons of cute crochet things out there that don't look like your granny's blanket thing-ies and I could totally do that while feeding the boy.  Corbin has this cute crocheted ball that he loves and I  decided making crochet balls would be a good goal.  And how hard could it really be- you're just tying knots- right?

I think I have finally met my match in the craft world.

Not to sound braggy or anything but I am good at crafty things.

They just generally come naturally to me.  I am not the best sewer but I am good at the things I do make with my sewing machine.

I am by no means a master painter but if I want something to look a certain way I can usually accomplish it.

I am totally awesome at making life-sized monsters and Halloween props.

But crochet.... ohhhh crochet.  Why do you evade me like you do?

I started to out by learning the basic stitches- no problem.  Tying knots... literally.

I figured out how to hold the hook and start my foundation row.

I loved picking out fun yarns (cheaper than fabric!).

And then I struggled through learning how to read patterns (horrible person who figured out that method of short-hand!).

I decided if I could figure out hats then I'd get a good overall understanding of how crochet works.  Seemed like a small enough of a project that I'd actually finish it and I like hats and Corbin looks cute in hats (since he has no hair) so win-win.

Lose-lose.

My first attempt:

A big, green, yarn pancake.  See:

Not a hat.

After several more 'pancakes' I finally started getting my projects to look a little more hat-like:

I made this one for Mr. Incredible.  He said it looked like a giant knit boob.

My next attempt was actually closer to fitting an actual human's head... but still boob-like:

For the record I proudly wore the blue boob out in public.


I finally started getting a flatter hat shape... but its weird:

Here I stopped while I was ahead... already boob-ish:

These were two different hats that didn't turn out so I stitched them together... kind of like a sad ice cream cone:

I actually finally started to figure things out and found a pattern that wasn't written in Martian and my hats started turning out.... see how cute Corbin looks despite his mama's lack of crochet skills?

And yes I finally did accomplish it- the crocheted ball:

Pretty much 2 months from when I first started this 'hobby' I finally think I have a 50/50 shot of whatever I'm working on turning out more or less like what the pattern says it should be.  I feel like a craft failure for the first time in my life.  I suppose I'm getting better with practice.  We'll see... one thing is certain, I've got the corner of the market covered for yarn pancakes and boobs!