Christmas is over.

Now that Christmas is drawing to a close, I can finally post pictures of the animal baby rattles that I crocheted. I was avoiding putting them on the internuts so they would be a surprise for both my nephew and my sister... mostly my sister though since my neph. is only 7 months old and doesn't know what a rattle is or that I put in a few hours effort and many trips to various stores to find an adequate object to put beans inside of. Anyway, here they are.

I ended up using ping pong balls and beans for the rattle. It was pretty easy to do once I finally settled on ping pong balls. At first I tried a stocking with rice in it for a softer rattle but it ended up being a completely mute rattle once the stuffing was around it. Then I thought about trying miniature ornaments only to realize that they are made of glass and break quite easily (there's one crocheted octopus that never saw the joy of a baby's smile but instead saw the inside of the trash can...). My mom finally suggested ping pong balls and they worked perfectly. They fit nicely inside of the creatures which are relatively small (fit in the palm of your hand) and make a nice rattling noise that isn't too abrasive nor too quiet. Overall I am very pleased with the outcome.

I think the idea of the frog is really adorable, but it came out a little sloppier than I would have liked. I ended up giving it to my cousin's baby for Christmas... it doesn't make me a bad person, giving a semi-sloppy gift to a baby! It's mostly the eyes, which you can't really notice in the picture, which came out messy.

The owl is my favorite. The design, color and craft of it is definitely better than the other two, but there is also something about it which made me kind of want to keep it for myself. I would never, however, deny my darling nephew the joy of the owl rattle regardless of the fact that he is not aware of how awesome it is and thinks of it as another chew toy.

I don't have much to say about the penguin except that it's pretty cute and has a speck of unintentional sadness in his eyes. I hope the nephy-poop grows up to name his rattles and tell awesome stories about them surfing on lava from an exploded volcano... or something.

I mentioned last post that I received some Christmas coasters from white elephant and that I wanted to turn them into something. Well this morning before breakfast I did just that:

A perfect sized Christmas place setting!

I spent some time deciding what the pattern/shape would be and finally settled on this. There weren't enough to make a doormat out of nor were there enough to make a large enough square place setting. This seemed most logical. I actually really like this idea and might go out and find more fabric coasters to stitch together into new place settings and floor mats (I'm thinking bathroom...).

-Dani