Crochet animal hats

I've decided that being a "stay at home mom" is awesome (I get to watch my child grow and thank the good lord that we can afford it) but it does tend to get monotenous. I was an art major and I miss it. A lot. Just drawing and creating things--- and making a financial contribution to our family! So I have decided to create MOOSEink to fill some of this gap. MOOSEink is basically all the things I'm good at- Drawing, Photography, crochet and design. It's been a great way to take my mind off the fact that all I do all day is cook, clean and play with Jackson. The only thing I like of course is playing with Jackson lol. I don't plan on making this my profession forever, just until Jackson (and if we have other kids too) gets in to 1st grade or all day Kindergarten and then I'll make more of an effort to expand.
Recently, I've discovered my love for crocheting. And I think I'm getting pretty good at it. It takes a couple (OR MORE) efforts to get a design right, but -then again- I make up all my designs, so I guess that should be expected. Right now, I'm making animal hats for friends and friends of friends. It's a great feeling knowing that someone wants to buy my items! Again, I'm not planning on making a huge profit, but it's a wonderful way to spent my time! As I was debating on prices, I looked on Etsy.com and saw, to my utter amazement, how much people were willing to pay for the same items I was making. $30-70- ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!?! And this was for CHILD sizes too. No way! I'm just trying to find a reason to justify why I need to go to Michael's just about every other Wednesday- NOT about ripping people off. WHen it's all said and done, making a hat is not expensive- it's the time involved in making it. If you have the time and it's not too terribly important to you, like me, then making someone pay over $40 / hat is unreasonable! So I decided that for child & toddler hats, I would charge $25 and adult, $35. That seemed reasonable to me and apparently a lot of other people think so too! Right now I'm just making hats for friends, but once I'm finished, I think I'll sell them on Etsy--- for good price!

As I'm making these hats, I'm trying to write down HOW I made them in case anyone else wants to make them. I admit, my instructions are a little confusing so give me some time to sort them out and make them coherent... I'll post the pictures to a blog about them along with SOME of the instructions. Then you can email me or comment and I'll try to walk you through the rest of the hat--- or you can just be like me and make it up as you go! GOOD LUCK!

The Funny happenings of Jackson

One of the best parts of having a baby has got to be witnessing all the funny things they do. Jackson is no different. He's hilarious! A lot of the things he does are not funny to me at the time, but looking back now, I am able to laugh. He is definitely "all boy" as the saying goes. He gets into everything! It has only gotten worse since he turned 1 (On valentine's day). I swear, some of the things he does are just to get a rise out of me. For instance, last night we were going through another round of "the terrible teething monster" so we were up a lot. I decided to take this time to try and crochet a couple more hats... i ended up having to roll (and re-roll) yarn all night! We were in the process of camping out in the living room, watching Baby Einstein, when he happened to see an unrolled ball of yarn sitting on the couch. I was in the other room making us some milk when I noticed it was quiet. Too quiet. I rolled my eyes- nevermind, I'm having a beer and some chocolate. I walked into the living room and he looked like he was siting peacefully on the blanket-bed I made for him. WHEW! I went to give him a litle kiss and hand him his milk when I noticed the real reason why he was so happy... my yarn was everywhere around him! and I mean everywhere! He was so proud of himself that I just had to laugh. Oh good lord child- do you realize how often your "helping me" tends to actually make things worse!?!? at least you're cute! So I spent the next 3 hours working out the knots in my yarn while we watched several DVDs of Baby Einstein before finally moving on to Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Around 10:30 he was out. Thank the lord!
This morning when he woke up (and he also woke up for 90 min around 3 am too), he was in quite a little mood. He decided that the dog's water bowl was a swimming pool again and splashed a round in it- so I had to change him for the first time. Then he spilled his sippy cup of milk all over himself bc I forgot to "seal" it to make it spill proof- so I had to change him a second time. He is now naked bc he took the powdered sugar donuts out of their bag and was dumping (yes DUMPING) it all over himself! Thank goodness he had the good idea of doing it on the kitchen floor. He's now been up for almost an hour. Oh the joys of having a boy.

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