First, if you enjoy a good knitting blog, I would recommend that you check out my friend Brandi’s: Knitting for Health and Sanity. I linked to it yesterday, but I also wanted to give her a quick plug. The girl has mad skillz when it comes to fiber crafts. Also, she spends a lot of time out on boats for her job and she likes to write about that as well. She has a very compelling way of talking about her projects as well as her job. I seriously spent the last few days reading through the entire archive.

I did a good bit of crafty things through the summer and so I decided to split up everything I did into a few different posts. I didn’t want to put up a million pictures at once and make you all regret reading my humble little blog.

I had several friends have babies over the course of the summer and I needed cute but not too expensive gifts, and so I spent more time than usual with my sewing machine. I made receiving blankets and burp cloths and I think they all turned out pretty well.

These were for my friend Robyn. She had a very cute little boy named Everett.

This was the first time that I decided to back the burp rags with a different fabric (because I only had enough of the cute boy patterns for one side). I really like how they turned out.

This isn’t the best picture, but these were for my friend Jessica and her daughter Shayla. This was my first time making the wide double stitched hem around the edge. I really, really like the extra bit of fancy it gave the blanket.

And finally, these were for my friend Lisa and her newest baby girl, Natalie. This was actually the first set I made this summer, and they are the roughest of the bunch. Although, I still really like them. I think they turned out very sweet and baby like. (If that makes sense.)

For Cole’s birthday I spent some more time with my sewing machine. I wanted to make him some cute, fabric balls as well as some bean bags. I think they turned out pretty well. Don’t tell my friend Aaron, or really anyone else, but I wished that I was slightly better with the math when I worked them out. I’m sure there is some sort of magic formula to make the balls turn out perfectly round, but I opted for the tuck-corners-in-and-sew-to-make-them-as-close-to-round-as-possible method. They are a little wonky still, but they are fun for the kids to throw around, and most importantly, they don’t hurt when kid A decides to throw a ball at kid B.

Bean bags… nuff said.

Here is a bitty little octopus I crocheted on a road trip. I love him. That’s about it. I made him out of this amazing bamboo/silk blend yarn. I don’t remember the brand anymore. He’s really, super soft, and I’m sure that the yarn is way fancier than a small little toy deserves, but maybe a cute, little cephalopod is deserving of awesome yarn.