Officially Addicted. Officially Nerdy.

Who am I kidding? I've been officially nerdy for quite some time now. At any rate, last year I had decided to overcome my fear of sewing and just dive on in, and I feel like I did so with some success, yay! So I decided that this year I was going to learn how to follow crochet patterns, exciting right? And in case you were wondering, it's my 76th birthday that I'll be celebrating this May.
I've been "crocheting" for, geez, about eight years now, but almost all of that has been squares (blankets), or rectangles (scarves, hats that you cinch up at the top), and the one notable exception that was the lamb costume, which I muddled through to make up myself. I mean, have you ever tried to read a crochet pattern? In case you haven't here's an excerpt:
Rnd 4 thru Rnd 25: 2sctog, sc the next 2 stitches one each, 2scinc, sc the last 3 stitches once each (8).
Say what?
Well, thanks to this book here and just kind of going in swinging, I now know exactly what all of that means, yippee.
Etsy has so many cute patterns, and I started with hats. First making all of theseThough I should tell you that I have yet to figure the flowers out. I'm still working on that. By the way, these aren't my pictures, they come straight from the shop, clicking on them should take you to the pattern should you be interested.
Hats were a lot of fun, but what really has me addicted now is amigurumi, or as I call them, just cute little stuffies. Again, Etsy has so much to choose from, but I'm loving Amy Gaines shop at the moment, and the other night I finished making this.
I'm kind of giddy over it. I'm so lucky to have plenty of nieces and nephews to gift these to throughout the year and kind of justify my making them at all. Which is not to say that they'll be wanting them, but that's just too bad isn't it? Pinky here will soon be headed to my niece Brooklynn as a fourth birthday present. Normally I don't post pictures of presents before birthdays, but then I usually don't end up posting them at all, and I'm pretty sure she doesn't really read my blog anyway. I threw in the next picture to give you an idea of how big it is, and also to give you a peek at the tail (which I love!) and also because LaRue is just so stinkin' cute.
Anyway, only a week or so into the new year it feels good to have one resolution well under way (and let's face it, it's probably the only one I'll make any real progress with). Sorry to go on about this for soooo long, but it's my new obsession. Also, if any of you are reading this and thinking it looks like fun - and how could you not be - I would add that just like every other thing I do, if I can manage to figure it out anyone can. Seriously. Consider yourself encouraged.