Easy baby blanket

Finals are over! This means that I will have much, much more time to crochet than during the school year, especially until I start my research job in a couple weeks. That being said, I finished a baby blanket that I had started months ago. I think it turned out pretty well. I used Red Heart's One Ball Baby Blanket Pattern and light blue I Love This Yarn from Hobby Lobby. While I generally really like the pattern, there were a couple of changes that had to be made to it:

1) It took almost two skeins of yarn from start to finish.
2) For Row 2, the "dc in first dc" should actually be "dc in chain 2". This was confusing until I realized the mistake.

Time for this project: 11 hours and 45 minutes
Total time: 19 hours and 55 minutes

Trial dishcloths

I've knitted dozens of dishcloths before (literally), and they were always a huge hit with my aunts and grandmothers. I've never crocheted any though, so I decided that crocheted dishcloths would be a good experiment. Hopefully the women at Safe Harbor will love them as much as my relatives did.

I loosely based my pattern after Lion Brand's "Dorothea Dishtowels", but I essentially only kept the base pattern of alternating single and double crochet stitches. I chained 25, and crocheted in rows until it made an even square,

then did a row of single crochet around the border to give it a more finished look.

For these, I used skeins of Lily Sugar n' Cream yarn. It's a really nice, 100% cotton yarn. I was able to use one skein to make two dishcloths, so each dishcloth came out to about a dollar to make.

These were experimental, so I alternated the base yarn and border colors to see how it would look. My plan is to donate them to Safe Harbor as a set. I liked how it turned out, so I think I'll do a variation of it next.

I've had trouble making my chains too tight, so for these I chained in a J hook, and then finished the pattern in an H hook. This helped a ton, and made my chain row just as long as my last row. I've had issues with that for so long that it was extremely satisfying to finally work this out!

Overall I was very pleased with these.

Time for each dishcloth: 1.5 hours

Time for all three: 4.5 hours

Total time: 8 hours and 10 minutes

Baby booties

I've never tried to crochet socks before, so I thought I'd start out with a miniature version, in the form of baby booties. I'm glad I did so, since when I repeatedly messed up turning the heel, I only had to rip out small portions. I found the pattern here.

These were really fun to make, once I figured out how to turn the heel correctly. I used some leftover Caron Simply Soft yarn from my stash.

Time on this project: 3 hours

Time total: 3 hours and 40 minutes

Polar bear hat, part 1

So for my first donation, I'm making a kid's polar bear hat. Pattern found here:

http://amray1976.blogspot.com/2011/12/crochet-polar-bear-child-hat.html.

I've used a ton of the patterns on this blog, mostly for my little cousins. They're sized great, and super fast to crochet. I finished the base of the hat, and realized that I don't have any stuffing. Time to go to Walmart!

Time today: 40 minutes

Time total: 40 minutes

Introduction

Hi, I'm Lizzie. As one of my Odyssey projects for Hendrix College, I'm crocheting items for the clients and re-sale store of Safe Harbor. Safe Harbor is a wonderful shelter for victims of domestic violence in Upstate South Carolina. More information can be found here: http://safeharborsc.org/.

This blog will serve as my hours log and reflection journal. I'll put up pictures of projects, new techniques I learn, etc.