Christmas 2017 Projects

For the grands

For my dad-he loves it!

4 sets for family gathering Christmas Eve

small snowman made from thread. I didn't like how it turned out

12 snowmen ornaments for my Bible Study women

For oldest granddaughter

For youngest granddaughter

For Grandson

For a friend

I also made 2 hats, and a pair of slippers. And a larger version of the thread snowman. I think I may need to start earlier than August if I want to do this many projects again!

Nativity set-September 2017

I fell in love with this nativity set last year but didn't buy it because I was swamped with other projects. But it has stayed in the back of my head all year long and so I finally went and bought it. Now I think I have become a bit more ambitious than I have time for but I am going to go for it and try and make at least 4 sets and maybe even 5. Here is the first set. I think they turned out adorable even though they are way bigger than I thought they would be!

Angel without face. I put the eyes on after the picture I guess. I am going to trim the hair up some more because this angel looks too girly to me. 

Baby Jesus

Joseph

Mary

Camel-all of the legs are kind of wobbly, as I make them I'm sure I will improve on technique.

Donkey was fun! I mean, look at that mane!!!

The sheep was fun as well and really is pretty fun to hold if you are a tactile person!

Shepherd-again I think I will improve as I go on, I'm not happy with his hat at the moment, but it is sewn on already and I am not fixing it. The next one I will make sure fits the head better.

The whole set-I want to make 5 of these! I know, I am crazy! They are fun to make!

There are also patterns for 3 wise men but I didn't make those since my son-in-law always points out that the wise men didn't show up until Jesus was a couple of years old and living in a house by then! ha! But if you are traditional and want the whole set they are available so you can do whatever floats YOUR boat! The set whips up pretty quickly. I finished two in a day when I did nothing else. The set took me about a week to finish. The instructions are excellent as I have come to expect of Mary. She also created the instructions for the superhero dolls that I made. Step by step with pictures so I highly recommend her patterns. The nativity set calls for safety eyes which I don't use. I just whip stitched some eyes on with yarn. That way you don't have to worry about the little ones choking on them. They are weighted and I used glass rocks in the bottoms of each of the people. Go HERE for the pattern by Mary Smith.

September 2017- Puppy Dog

I made this puppy dog for my friends daughter that is going to have a baby in January. I'm also going to make a blanket for her to match. I'll work on that after I finish Christmas gifts.

All of the pieces are finished except for the eyes

All put together and looking so stinkin cute!

All dressed

Totally forgot that I was going to put blue overalls on him and so his tail matches his clothes. Oh well, he is still cute!

Go HERE for the free pattern and links to assemble and make his clothes

Olaf Snowman-September 2017

Olaf head and face-the eyes and mouth and tooth are all made out of felt and glued onto the crocheted head

Uhoh, Olaf in pieces! A friend said I should connect him with buttons so that he could be taken apart!

Finished Olaf

All 3 Frozen characters together

I was looking for a pattern for Olaf and I wanted a bit bigger than what this pattern called for. I couldn't find another pattern that I liked better that was bigger. So I doubled the yarn and I used a size K crochet hook and he turned out to be a comparable size to the dolls so I was happy. 

These are going to be Christmas presents for my 2 granddaughters and my grandson. Hope they enjoy them! I thought they all turned out cute. 

I got the pattern for Olaf here: One Dog Woof Her instructions were pretty good. There is some "free crochet" that has to be done for the nose. That means you just kind of have to "wing it" to the best of your ability. Not sure I'm overly happy with my rendition, but it will work. I would have preferred to crochet the eyes and the mouth and tooth, but wasn't sure how to "free crochet" those so I went with the felt look instead. The pattern calls for animal eyes, but I don't like using those so I just made up some felt eyes. He does look cute!

Ice Queen Sweetie(Elsa) August 2017

head, body and legs(I love the way these dolls work up. The instructions are GREAT!

face and dress

arms and wig cap

she looks like Cousin It!

All finished(she has a white sparkly cape on as well)

The two girls together

I really enjoyed crocheting these dolls. They work up quickly. The only time consuming parts are the face and the hair. I'm not overly fond of Elsa's hair, but it will do. I'm sure my granddaughters will not know that they aren't perfect. ha! 

I got all of my doll patterns from Made By Mary's Etsy store. Check out all of her masterpieces! Her instructions are excellent and easy to follow!

Winter Sweetie doll(Anna)- August 2017

Here she is almost all put together

Here she has her face and her wig cap getting ready for hair...and arms!

She has arms now!

Finished! She's so cute! I'm not a hair professional, so it looks okay in the picture, but I see all of the flaws. ha!

I made this doll for my youngest granddaughter for Christmas. I had to cut the cape a few rows and probably could have not done several more rows because I crochet a lot bigger than most people. I thought she turned out pretty cute.

I got the pattern from Made By Mary. At the time I got the pattern she was offering it for free along with all of her super hero dolls. I don't know if they are still available or not.

My most favorite afghan EVER! July 2017

I was looking for a Harley Davidson afghan to crochet for my dad for Christmas and found this one. I loved crocheting it. It took about 2 months to finish, but I think the end result is GREAT! Here is a picture progress of the whole project:

It's starting to look like something!

A mess of yarn!

I decided I needed to come up with a better plan, these kept getting tangled up

I put yarn on these embroidery cards. At one point I had 50 of these cards filled and also was using several smaller balls of yarn!

One wing almost finished and starting on the lettering

starting to add a little orange for the Harley logo

Moving right along

I found that I needed to go on the back and cut yarn that had been left behind and tuck them all in as I went instead of waiting until the end of the project.

The weird thing about the Harley Davidson words is that you can hardly read it just looking at it, but in the pictures it looks so clear. 

I can see the mistake can you? I don't know if I read the pattern wrong or if I skipped a line or what, but there is a random white stitch that should be either black or orange. Did I fix it? NOPE! I left it and hope that nobody else can see it even though it is glaring to me!

It's getting too big for the couch!

Speaking of the couch...doesn't that other afghan look lovely on there?

Starting the other wing and moved to bed to photograph

Almost finished!

Finished! I added a little bit of a border. I was going to add more, but I was tired of the project by then and I thought this was big enough so I left it.

Another angle of the finished project

 I think my dad will love this! But now I have to wait until Christmas to give it to him! Ack! That will be difficult as I want to show it to everyone!!!

Here is the link to purchase the pattern

There are a lot of other Harley designs there and other graphs and such to choose from. I need to go browse now that I am projectless! I didn't really look around while there because I was specifically looking for the Harley design.

This project took a lot of time! I mean serious time! I watched a ton of episodes of Bones and lots of movies and other TV while crocheting this. I believe it took me about 2 months, but it could have been longer. I focused pretty much all of my time on it. Mainly because I was obssessed! No, I will never crochet this particular pattern again! I'm a one-time kind of project gal!