State Fair and A Baby Shower

It was almost one year ago that Chad and I rounded up the kids, picked up my dad and stepmom and headed to the state fair. In order to get discounted tickets, and just for the fun of it I had submitted a couple of photographs I had taken and so had my stepmom. We were all excited to see them displayed and I was especially excited to visit the crochet exhibit. I wanted to get a good look at it, because I knew I wanted to make some entries this year.



However, things didn't go quite as planned.



Our little Baby L was due in just three short weeks and I had been having some contractions here and there all morning. That was not at all unusual for me. Nevertheless by the time we walked around the fair, I was beginning to feel quite uncomfortable. Chad and my parents wanted to visit some other booths while I looked at the crochet. But by the time I got to it, I could barely walk. I found a bench and prayed that Chad would get back to me soon. An eternity later (ie about 20 minutes) he did and we left and went straight to the hospital. That was just the beginning, as I was admitted and in labor for about 30 more hours before Levi was born!



Thankfully, this year I expect my visit to the crochet exhibit at our state fair to be less painful.



And I'm even going to enter a couple things...despite not getting a close observation of the competition last year.



I just finished these cute little cowboy booties which I'll be entering into the baby booties division...

They are made from 100% wool and the white is alpaca.


E3 has told me that he would like a pair of these as well and with the most serious expression said, "without a snake inside". That's a Toy Story reference..you know, "There's a snake in my boot!"
I'm also entering this baby dress I made for my friend when she had her little one. And finally, I'm working on a baby blanket to enter. That's all I'll have time for as the deadline is this weekend.

...Speaking of baby blankets, I just went to another friend's baby shower this weekend. I gave her a baby blanket and hat for our sweet little one. He's due right around the fair time as well...maybe I should warn her.

They're ready!!

Preemie blankets galore! We've finally got them all collected and ready to go.

My girls helped me to roll each blanket and attached hat and tie a coordinating ribbon around them. We slipped a small typed note from us as well.

Our goal was a total of 35 blankets and we ended up with 45! ...19 boy blankets and 26 girl blankets.


I separated them for easy distribution. So above are the boy blankets.


I also pulled out a few with particularly small hats to give to the particularly small babies.


Here are the girls blankets.


And the girl blankets with the tiniest hats.


Look at this precious bonnet for a micro-preemie. The bonnet is only about 2 inches high.


They're all ready to go!

Two blankets and a Pitiful attempt at Amigurami

I'm singing praises that we have finally collected enough blankets for the NICU service project. I'll be wrapping them up and getting them to the NICU in just a couple of weeks.

Here are the last two blankets I made:

And here is my pitiful attempts at amigurami.... First, I tried to make a quick frog for a birthday gift. It didn't turn out the way I wanted at all, but Baby L loves chewing on it. G9 watched as I searched online for amigurami patterns and begged me to make the bom-bomb from Mario. After I finished it, E3 wanted a blue bom-bomb and E6 wanted a Mario star (not pictured).






I think I'll stick with baby blankets.

Headbands for Sale

I'm attempting to keep a record with pictures of each of my crochet projects this year. I often give away (and sometimes sell) my crochet so it's nice to have photographs that I can look at.

I recently starting selling some things on etsy.com including headbands. These pictures are all posted there, but not here, so here goes...

Pink Jeweled Flower Headband

Three Crochet Flowers Headband

Crochet Fireworks Three Strand Headband (I've made two of these so far.)






Patriotic Stars Headband (I've made two of these as well.)





Red, White, and Blue Braided Headband



Crochet Sunflower Headband

All of my crocheted headbands can be purchased at my etsy shop: Little Ones Galore.

An array of headbands.

A friend of ours needed some soft headbands for her five year old daughter, so I decided to work a few up. I had so much fun, that I didn't want to stop!

The first one was based on a pattern I saw online. It's got a fun retro look and I loved embellishing it with buttons.

Next was a wide headband with a BIG pink flower.

I really like this simple headband. It actually ties under the hair making it adjustable.

I had a couple headbands that I had previously made for L1, but she would never wear them. I added the black ribbon to this one which really made it pop.

Purple and pink are H5's favorite colors.

This braided band was one of my absolute favorites. I love the fun colors and the pretty braid.

And finally, just in time for fourth of July...

And here they are ready to go.