Little booties and some news about my patterns

You know, I'm really happy today. Despite the fact that the winter is back and a nice sunny day suddenly turned into a snow storm I'm sitting here and smiling. And I've got several reasons for that.
First of all, yesterday for the first time in my life I've posted a pattern to Ravelry. My tiny newborn socks. And today I've discovered that 47 complete strangers added it as a favourite and one lady already knitted a pair! Wow!
Then yesterday in the evening while Little Man was having a nap I translated the same pattern into Russian for the lovely ladies in Russia who knit and crochet charity blankets and clothes for children in Russian orphanages. Send it to one of them and she posted it into her blog so ladies could use the pattern for their charity projects. And again - almost 40 complete strangers re-posted it to their blogs.
Someone would say that 40 is not much and even 80 (if I would count all of them together) is not much too, but for me it means a lot. Really a lot. And first of all it is so important to me because I don't know this people and they don't know me, so they liked my pattern not because they like me and want to be nice and polite, but because they all like what I did. And it makes me feel happy and proud of myself.
The other thing that made me smile was a response from the lady from Canada who received my pot holder, that I crocheted for her participating in a Pot Holder Swap on swap-bot.com She loves it and it was nice to read how talented I am and how perfect the work and the colours are.

Today I finally packed everything for my charity package to Russia. Hoped to send it today, but had to stay at home because of the snow. Anyway, I promised to show you the booties I was making for orphanage babies. Here they are:



The yellow ones were made using a pattern found here which actually is not a pattern but a Japanese crochet chart (the chart itself can be found here ). It might look a bit confusing but after you figure out what they mean in the chart the booties turn out to be quite easy. I used 3mm crochet hook and some DK yarn and the finished size is about 3-6 months.



The blue ones are actually my favourite. For them I used a pattern I found on Pinterest but I had to modify it a bit as I just could not understand the pattern in the end. Little crocheted star pattern can be found here and I used 2mm crochet hook and a bit of 4ply for them.  For the booties I used 3.5 mm crochet hook, not 4.25 as in the pattern as I just didn't have one, and DK yarn leftovers. The size I was making was 6-9 months, but I ended up with a really tiny pair, 0-3 or even newborn size... Was it my crochet hook that changed the size so much?
But I still love them



Hope are doing great too :)
Have a nice evening!

Hat mood, charity and some Scrap buster hats for babies

Since my last post I had a great crocheting period. I've been in a hat mood. First of all because I noticed that my Little Man's hat, a gift from his grand grand parents, was sliding over his eyes all the time he was outside, so it was obvious that he needed a new hat, the one that would fit. I've searched my stash, found some yarn and grabbed a crochet hook. In the first evening I had to remake it, starting all over again for about 5 times, but after all of that and one more evening the hat was finally finished.



As you can see Little Man likes it. It has a big metal button on a side and fits perfectly. Every mum knows that babies are not big fans of hats and if they can pull that hat off, they will. Well, no chance with this one, Little Man was trying really hard but had to give up without even moving it away.



Sadly I wasn't writing down the pattern while working on it. May be I will try to recreate it later as it might be useful for some other babies too.

After finishing that hat I realized that my husband needs a hat too (it was snowing and freezing outside), so from the same yarn in the same evening I made a hat for him. That one was so easy, that I will make a pattern for it and crochet one for myself. Sadly, no pictures of it this time.

Then last Sunday I bought a knitting magazine and found an article about knitting for premature babies there. It was good to know that there are ladies here in England who knit tiny little clothes for premies and give them to the hospitals. While reading this article I felt that a big need for some charity work was growing in me. I wanted to help someone too. But I wasn't sure, that our hospital would take my knitting as I don't think they are dealing with premature babies. So I was thinking about orphanages. Went to the Internet and soon discovered that there are no orphanages in England. Makes me proud of this country again.
And then I remembered that in 2011, when I was pregnant with Little Man I took part in a charity project for orphanages in Russia. I crocheted a blanket for them. Why not to make something like that again? I found one of the project coordinators in the Internet and started crocheting.
Here are three little Scrap buster hats I made for babies:



The pattern is A Scrap Buster hat from A Dog in a Sweater. When I saw this pattern for the first time I immediatelly wanted to make a hat like that but wasn't sure that I would wear it. It felt like something too childish, so perfect for babies, not for grown-ups. So when I decided to crochet for an orphanage it was a perfect chance to try the pattern out.
What should I say about the pattern... It's easy. In fact it's super easy and written so good that it's easy to follow even for beginners. The only thing you really should think about before making them, except the size, of course, is the colour. The original hats looked a bit strange to me. No, they were fine, they just looked scrapy. And I wanted to make my hats funny, colourfull, but stylish in the same time. This are still scraps, but it doesn't feel like something that's made from unwanted leftovers.
I've changed the design a bit too as I didn't want to make the long braid like on the original hat, and I wanted mine hats to have a bit of gnome style. So I made following changes: after row 18 I repeated rows 17 and 18 two more times and then crocheted every two together in the next row. As one of the hats was Little Man's size I asked him to be a model and you can see how it looks on babu head:



Now I'm working on two pairs of baby booties from my scraps too for the same orphanage. Will show them to you when they are ready.

Hope you all have a nice day :)

New charity project - "Knit for Japan"

Looks like I found a charity project I'll participate in this year. It's called "Knit for Japan" and was started by a german, who lives in Japan to help the victims of March 2011 earthquake in Japan. First he wants to join all the granny squares into a huge blanket for the Ginnes record book and then the blanket will be divided back into regular size afghans and donated to temporary housing facilities in Tohoku/ Japan, to support victims of the March 2011 earthquake. You can follow the link and find out more, or may be participate too.

Last year I made a charity blanket for the orphants in Russia. Here it is finished before I sent it:



Hope one little girl really loves it as it was really a lot of love put into it :)

I think that it is quite a good tradition - participating in at least one charity project every year. I really believe in this things. And I believe in them more than in donating some money.