A Fish and R2D2

Happy New Year, everyone!  It has been a while since I've posted on the blog.  Sorry about that!  It has been a busy month!  Well, as promised, I am finally posting the pictures and info on crochet projects that I actually finished a couple of months ago.  These are the projects that I was giving away at Christmas (as mentioned at the end of the baby blanket and hat post).  

Let's start with the fish hat.  Do you remember the picture I took of Randy and the shark hat when he came to visit me back in March?  No?  It's ok, you can see it here if you scroll to the bottom.  Anyway, I was looking at one of my favorite crochet pattern sites when I saw this hat that reminded me of the shark.  I pulled out some old yarn and started to work!  Here's the finished product:

*Sorry for the not-so-great quality of pictures...  I was using my phone instead of lugging my nice camera around while we were out of town.*

{You can find this pattern here.}

I did not alter this pattern in any way.  It came out pretty awesome, don't you think?  The pattern suggests using a size K hook for an adult, so I did that since I tend to crochet tight/small.  I actually learned some new crochet stitches with this one.  :)  Randy had no idea what it was when he opened the present.  haha!  Here are some pictures from Christmas morning:

The same day that I found the fish hat pattern I also found a pattern to make an R2D2 hat.  Um, yes please!  I knew Ryan would love it, so I went out and bought the right colors of yarn.  The most difficult (or, more accurately, annoying) part of this hat was making all of the little extra things and then sewing them onto the hat.  The hat itself was a piece of cake.  Here's a shot of the front and back:

{You can get the pattern here.}

I used a crochet hook sized H.  I thought that the bottom of this hat didn't look quite enough like R2D2, so I added a few more rows.  After crocheting that big section of blue (that changes to grey in the back), I crocheted one round of single crochets in grey, one round of half-double crochets in blue, and one round of double crochets in grey.  The number of stitches in each of those rounds I kept the same as the final round in the pattern (in other words, I didn't do any increasing or decreasing of stitches).  I also didn't make the little rectangles and circles that the pattern said to sew onto the back of the hat.  I didn't like them.  :)

Here is Ryan opening his present on Christmas morning:

So there you go!  Believe it or not, I have two more crochet projects to post about, but you'll just have to wait.  :)  I hope y'all had a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!  We did.  :)