Skip to main content

The 1-Up Beanie

Do you remember when I learned to crochet a baby beanie? I was happy to pick up a new skill, but it almost felt like a parlor trick. I mean, it's not like I was going to start making beanies left and right. Right? Heck, I even finished that blog post with a joking recommendation for people I know to have more babies precisely because I figured it was a one-off type occurrence.

Well, the universe has a quirky sense of humor. As it turns out, I now have FOUR close friends and family who are all pregnant. What's more, they are all due around the same time. What are the odds? I can understand four such people being pregnant at the same time, or even being pregnant in the same year (I'm at that age). But four people all due within a month or so of each other? What are the odds?

One of those people just so happens to be my sister. She is the first of us siblings to have a kid, so it's an extra special big deal. It wasn't a matter of whether I was going to make her kid a beanie, it was a question of what that beanie was going to look like. I wanted this thing to be super awesome. So, I went hunting for interesting beanies.

Ultimately, I settled on a pattern for a 1-up mushroom. For the uninitiated, the 1-up mushroom is a mainstay in the Super Mario Brothers video games. For many of those games, you get multiple attempts to beat levels. Each such attempt is called a life, and a 1-up mushroom adds an additional life to your total. I figured that having a baby was the real-life equivalent of a 1-up mushroom, so this seemed like the perfect idea. Also, there's the small fact that my sister loves the Super Mario Brothers series.

So, I went about crocheting this beanie. I had to adjust the pattern in that video a bit, since it was originally designed for an adult. This was obviously not meant for an adult. However, I'm no pro. I had to guess and backtrack a bit to get the general mushroom shape. Mind you, "backtracking" in this scenario means undoing a bunch of stitches in a round. That can mean undoing 50+ stitches, to give you some idea of the scale involved. Let's just say that you really don't want to screw up.

I also consulted the Mild Fiancée a few times, to see if she thought the beanie was the right shape or size. In fact, I asked her enough times that she decided I needed a model of some sort in order to actually measure whether or not the beanie was the right size. However, it's not like we have babies or toddlers lying around. The next best approximation was a baby doll. They're shaped like a baby, right? So, for a few dollars, I gained a baby-shaped measuring tape. The funniest part was that she asked a couple of the moms at the store if the doll was the right size, but they universally remarked that the doll was more like a premature baby. So, I actually had to make the beanie fit very, very loosely on said doll.

Eventually, after quite a few nights of crocheting to get it right, I had an actual beanie. Heck, I even spent a short car ride crocheting to put the finishing touches on the beanie. I think it turned out well, though I also know full well where I could've done a better job. The Mild Fiancée thought the whole thing was amusing, so she took a picture to commemorate the occasion:
I may have also been amused by this whole thing
One down, three to go.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

All Good Things ...

August 8, 2009. Over twelve years ago, I started blogging with this simple post . I didn't really have a great reason for starting the blog, other than I wanted to try it out. I wanted to try writing and putting it where others could read it. I don't know, it just seemed like a new adventure to try. Along the way, there have been all sorts of posts and all sorts of life events, but through it all, I kept writing. It just became a part of what I do at some point. It wasn't a matter of whether I was going to write a blog post, it was a matter of when. The Mild Wife has described it as a "writing practice," and it was one of the reasons why I kept writing. Honestly, it's good practice, and it gives me an opportunity to hone my craft. I'm no professional author, but we all have to write stuff in our everyday lives. Why not give yourself reps to get better at it? However, I think it's time for that practice to change. My weekly anecdotes sure kept me amused...

Where Do I Go?

As the days of COVID-19 are dragging on, we are having to make more adjustments to our usual routines. Some of these changes are so mundane that I haven't mentioned them at all in this blog, while others have lead to some pretty funny anecdotes . That's probably par for the course, since you wouldn't expect a global pandemic to be all giggles. As it turns out, however, not all of the anecdotes happen to us directly. Having to socially distance and remotely do things has actually led to at least one goofy episode that we found out from afar. You see, it was our niece's birthday recently, but we couldn't visit her because of the aforementioned social distancing. So, we figured we'd ship her a present and call her on her birthday. We couldn't be there in person, but we could still wish her well and try to make her feel special on her birthday. Given that shipping times have been erratic the last few months, we ordered the present with plenty of time, and it arr...

Dreams

Normally, I don't eat very many sweets. I tend to eat pretty generous portions, but I generally prefer savory food over sweet. In fact, I usually prefer things half as sweet when possible. My preference doesn't have anything to do with health reasons, it's just one of those things that I've always liked better. That said, I do inevitably eat dessert, particularly if I'm out with other people. My stance towards dessert is roughly equivalent to those who are social drinkers . If other people want to munch on something for dessert, I'm not about to cross my arms and refuse. That'd be just a tad gauche. So, I do eat some dessert. I even have a few standby favorites that I'll usually order when presented with them (brownies, creme brulee, and apple pie). But left to my own devices, I'm not about to go hunting for dessert. Apparently, this means that the sugar can really mess with my system under the right circumstances. As I've discovered, ...