Craft Challenge #1

A very good friend of mine had a very good idea to get people motivated to do more craft stuff! It's called the Craft Challenge, and every month we'll be doing a different challenge (well it's all explained in her blog that I linked, so I guess I don't need to go into great detail). This month's challenge is LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE BOY! Our challenge is to make something for a special boy in our life - husband, boyfriend, son, father, etc. We can use our choice of medium, and we have a month to do it -- during which time we should be blogging our progress!

This is a wonderful chance to get me blogging again... sorry to all you faithful readers who, y'know, are sick of seeing the same dang entry over and over. *blush* Susy Blog FAIL.

Anyway! I'm pretty excited about this particular challenge, because Christmas is only seven weeks away. And this Christmas I've made the decision to make as many of my gifts as I can! We're not doing a lot of gift-giving this year, on account of things are going to be tight (plus being in Australia is going to be a great gift for our family and friends back home anyway!), but I have been making... well I don't want to go spoil any surprises! ;)

My chosen medium at this point is crocheting. I learnt how to crochet while bored at work in 2007 - true story! I was pregnant and wanted to make a baby blanket, and my boss Geraldine said she'd show me. And to her credit, she did - not only how to make the stitches but also how to hold the hook and loop the yarn, etc. I don't think she realised how hard I would fall for this art form!!

I'm still fairly inexperienced - I've attempted a few "intermediate"-level patterns in the past few months, and have learnt some new stitches and techniques. I've also "winged it" on more than one occasion to join things together, and have been kinda surprised that nothing's fallen apart yet!

Anyway, enough blabbering. Onto the Challenge.

Who will the special boy in my life be? Honestly, I don't think it will be Aaron. He's not the knitted-hat-or-scarf type. Because Christmas is coming, and since I haven't started anything for them yet, I think I will have three Specials Boys in my life - Sean Patrick, Curtis William and Douglas M. Royal -- my nephews!

Three childrens' hats, one for each of my nephews.

I trawled some online yarn craft pattern sites last night, and found quite a few good ideas there. Since I'm still fairly beginner-level, like I mentioned before, I don't want to try anything too fancy. I think the fact that my challenge response includes three separate items is fancy enough!

I have a big bag full of different colors/textures/weights of yarn, but not really any "manly" colors. I'm thinking about a soft greyish-purple for Dougie (he just turned 1), maybe orange for Curt (he's 3.5) and blue for Sean (to go with his other gift I've already begun - he's 12). I actually just last night began making a hat for, er, someone who may or may not be reading this blog ;) in a pattern that is super-easy to follow, but doesn't take forever to see results -- that's the problem with one of the first hats I tried, it was a very simple formula but it was single-stitch the whole way round, so it seemed to take forever just to take shape.

And maybe on Christmas morning, when they've received their pressies, I'll post photos of each of them wearing their hats!

Now, in spite of being required to blog my progress, I don't think I'll be blogging every day. I doubt I'll even be working on the hats every day. I'll get started later today, since the image in my head of Doug-alicious wearing a fuzzy purple cap is just killing me with cuteness.

Stay tuned, faithful readers!