After I made my daughter a rubber crochet ducky, my son got jealous and requested a monster. We’ve been playing Super Mario on our Wii, so I was inspired by the mushrooms when I designed this monster.

Well, as usual, I’m happy to share. So here goes:

For my friend at Muffashionista. Happy birthday!

The flower was made using this tutorial over at LollyChops.

The head band was made as follows:

With worsted weight yarn and a 5 mm crochet hook, ch 12. hdc in 2nd ch from hook. hdc across (9 times), ch 2, turn. [10 hdc, ch 2, turn] until the band reaches the desired length. For a nice finish, ch 1, and sc evenly along the long side of the band. When you reach the end of the first side, bring both edges of the band together and slip stitch across through both layers to join. Continue sc evenly around the second side.

Keep your ears nice and warm stylishly during the winter!

Do I really need to explain why I wanted to crochet a duck? They’re so cute, and my daughter loves them. I knew that she would love it, and I was right! She absolutely insisted to take it to day care and won’t let it go long enough for me to get a good picture. See?

This pattern took a little “figuring out”, because I wasn’t sure how I was going to get the curvy tail shape, and I really wanted to make it one continuous piece instead of making separate body and head pieces and sewing them together. Well, here goes:

We got out all of my older son’s winter clothes from when he was two-ish, filtered out anything that had a truck on it, and were left with plenty of winter clothes for my daughter.

When we got out the winter coat I thought that we could pull it off, all we needed was to make the light blue coat just a bit more girly. So what I did was make a very simple crochet flower using this pattern.

I hand sewed the flower over the monkey-robot-something applique, and now I hope I won’t get too many “Aww, what a cute boy” remarks…

Just in case, I’m putting the money we saved aside for a psychologist when she grows up (all I ever wore were hand-me-downs from my brother!)…

Noam asked for and got a dragon hat. Hodaya can’t speak yet, so she got what I felt like making. Basically, the simplest crochet hat possible, made from such nice, soft, pink yarn (which has made several appearances in past posts).

The hat is super simple to make:

Every year, around this time, I make the kids new winter hats. I’m always just a tiny bit late, because I think of it only when it starts getting cold, which is by definition too late. Hodaya’s hat is a pattern I tried last year, but the size came out wrong and ended up being too big at first, and too small later on (well, really too short). Hodaya’s hat is not quite ready yet, I’ll be sure to post it when it is…

Noam’s hat is a dragon hat of my own design, based loosely on Toothless from “How to Train your Dragon”. It’s really simple and I’m willing to share what started out as a general outline and turned in to a quite detailed tutorial, of how I did it (after the jump).

I just thought I’d make a small something for my mother’s birthday tomorrow (well, really – in about 30 minutes). I won’t be able to see her on her birthday, but a bit of cake would be nice, right?

A while ago I got a truck load of yarn from my mother. The black yarn is always useful, and the turquoise and light blue were used in a boy’s baby blanket I made as a gift. Here I am, “stuck” with about 5-6 balls of grey yarn, without an idea what to make. I asked some friends and readers, and everyone suggested various grey animals: mice, elephants and cats. I already made an elephant once and wasn’t happy with the result (I need to think of a better design than the pattern I used). Mice can be cute, but I really like cats, so I decided to go in that direction. Maybe I’ll make a mouse for the cat to play with next…

I made the body flat because I thought it was softer and more cuddly that way, but it can also be made into a cute scarf if you make the body long enough. You could also make it into a pillow by making 2 body pieces, stuffing them and sewing closed.

So, here’s how to make her (it’s definitely a she):

My son loves Timmy the Lamb. I agree. Stop frame animation is one of my favorite animation types, and this one is styled so nicely. The stories have little or no speech, so they are appropriate for younger ages, but the story has enough nuances to be interesting to older children and grownups as well.

Timmy the lamb is not to be confused with Shaun the sheep, who may or may not be related to Timmy. They are similar, but Shaun has wool on his head and Timmy does not.

No sheep were harmed during the making of this project. The Timmy doll is made entirely with synthetic yarns.

So, let’s get started.