New Year, New Goals

While I'm itching to get back to crocheting soon, I've been busy thinking up how  this year is going to go. So far it's looking like a bright year - I got an offer to advertise my hats in my children's pediatrician's office, which I plan to do next month when we go back. My hats may also going to be featured in a local boutique store. And, I'm still getting pictures from last year's sales and they're adorable! Today I received one from my triplet order!

I also picked up my crochet hook for the first time in almost two months the other day, to make the infant cookie monster hat into a bigger baby hat. Now my daughter has her fuzzy Elmo hat that she wears everywhere (even to bed!) and my baby son has a fuzzy cookie monster hat! The two of them are adorable as they wear them around together!

After a very busy year, I'm enjoying my pressure free time off to have lots of bonding time with my baby boy, but I'm definitely getting excited about getting back to it in the next month or two! I'm eager to start building up my store again, so in between custom made orders I can also have a large amount of ready to ship items as well. 

Week #13

Well, baby hasn't made his grand entrance yet at 41 weeks, but I haven't been able to even pick up a crochet hook in the last week or so. However, many babies that I made hats for are being born awhile, and I've received some adorable pictures!

Here's some of them. These are thanks to Rachelle for these incredibly precious pictures of her sons!

Week 12

I meant to be finished completely before this week with all of my custom orders, but it didn't work out that way. I've been crocheting my fingers off to finish up now. It seems like this baby is pretty set on being late to the party, so I guess being a bit behind is no big deal.

I finished up this girly pirate owl hat this week. These pirate owl hats, with their many colors and details, take about double the time of a normal order so I was especially glad to get this one done. Since I was in a rush, I didn't get many pictures, but here's the best one. You can't see the pretty glittery swirled dots on the top of the hat, but trust me when I say they add some adorable flare!

I have one more order that I've been speeding through (it's an infant one, so it should be done in no time except for the fact that I'm using some thinner yarn than normal.). I finished the hat portion (booties also go along with the set) and was looking for the perfect pink yarn to outline it in and make a pretty rose for the side. While I was searching, some fuzzy, glittery red yarn caught my daughter's eye. She grabbed it, put it on her head and said "Elmo!" Since I already feel bad that my new baby has a grand total of ONE hat made by me and Katie hasn't had a new hat for a few months, I had to quick whip up an Elmo hat for her. Lucky for me, fuzzy hats are a quick job and I had it done within a few hours. Now, to go search for that pink yarn that I could have sworn I had somewhere! A bonus would be finding the cookie monster infant hat I made about two months back - how cute would pictures be of my little Elmo fanatic and her cookie monster brother?!

 

Week #11

Getting so close to wrapping up my great year of hat making! Just two more orders, which I'm hoping to finish by mid-next week at latest.

I just finished up my last big order, which was a sibling set of color coordinating owls! They're in size child, toddler and baby.

Also, one of the many December babies that have Homespun Dreams' hats waiting for them were born this week. I got a picture of the little darling Arabella wearing her pink minion hat within the first hour she was born!

Week #10

Another week of working on getting through my request list! I had a bit of an accident at my store and ended up having to add another custom order to my request list, which means I need to work on hats a little more than I already was, but I'm still managing to get things crossed off at a pretty good speed. I'm now down to 7 more requests plus a pair of booties that match a hat I'm making.

This week I finished up this adorable girly sock monkey set! I had a bit of leeway to be creative with this one, so I ran with it and added some very adorable touches - the pretty pink flower buttons (which are on the diaper cover, at the end of the braids, and in the middle of the flower) and the pink lining on the diaper cover. 

This Christmasy infant Holly hat was also finished and bought today!

One last hat for the week, here's a baby dino hat!

And we got another happy customer picture this week! This is little Natalee enjoying her purple daisy hat in the chilly weather!

Week #9

This week I finished a Pirate Owl hat for a toddler, the two Cowboys Helmet Hats that I've been talking about forever (those stars, I may never make a star out of felt again!), and received a happy customer picture from my Jack Skellington receiver! I can't wait to take pictures of the little Sock Monkey set I'm making for a little girl due in December! So far the little diaper cover is nearly finished of the set.

Just three more weeks to go to get through all of these orders!

Owl Ahoy!

Two little Cowboys:

 (The picture is greatly lacking, unfortunately! These were finished at 2 AM)

Unfortunately more didn't get finished this week. My husband had a week vacation, so of course I decided to take a little vacation too! But now I'm back at full force to attack this request list and get these finished before my baby deadline.

And a little Jack Skellington with his new hat right before Halloween!

Week #8

This week brings me closer to my second monetary goal for my business. I'm only $76 away from reaching that goal, which is really close.   EDIT: I've now surpassed that goal! Besides that, this was my highest grossing month to date. When originally written, I had surpassed my previous highest grossing month mark by $30. It's now by $170, so I blew that out of the water! It's so great to see my business finally taking off and getting to track each month. As we approach the cut off for making custom made hats (just six more days left), it's nice to try and break a few personal records before the hiatus.

Here's some orders that are going out this week and new hats made:

Another elf hat in baby size, a breastfeeding hat and a Minnie Mouse toddler hat: 

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This polar bear hat was sent out this week. Since the pictures didn't upload last week, I'll upload them again here. He's now found his new home awaiting the birth of a little baby girl, and is sleeping next to a little matching pink outfit!

Another hat that got sent off was this awesome hat, Jack Skellington has always been one of my favorites!

I also got pictures this week of  little cutie Lucy enjoying one of her birthday gifts from Homespun Dreams - a super soft Hello Kitty hat!