Crocheting Dilemma

First, of all, thank you for the cooking stories, except-two people?  Only two people commented and left stories.  Seriously, what happened to all of you?  I am certain that there are many more awesome/horrible cooking stories out there.

So, this past Thursday I went to a baby shower.  That baby shower caused me so much frustration and grief, and I'm sure that the person the baby shower was for would be very upset if she knew that.  I've mentioned her before.  She's Kip's wife and they have an adorable almost 3 year old girl that I babysit all the time. They live super close so all I have to do is walk on over there to babysit.  And she used to be a YW leader, but she got released because she's moving soon. :( Which I am really sad about.  So, because I've spent so much time with her and love her so much I really wanted to crochet her something special.  Oh, and she's having twin boys so that meant I had to make two of whatever it was I was going to make.  I started probably three weeks before the shower, by googling 'baby boy crochet projects' just to get some ideas.  I found an adorable picture of brown booties with a white stripe and a little football.  But it was on pintrest and since I don't do pintrest I couldn't look at the pattern.  So, then I decided to google 'baby boy booties' and finally found a website that just had links to a ton of different patterns online.  There were some really adorable ones, but my favorite ones were some little sneakers.  So, I printed off the pattern and started figuring it out.  It didn't take long before I realized something was wrong.  Some parts were way to big and it got to the point where I seriously did not know what to do.  I ended up undoing it and redoing it, I think, three times, trying to get it right, before I gave up.  I have a book that has patterns that have always worked out and it had a pattern for some high top booties.  They looked adorable, so even though I wanted something a little more creative I thought that at this point I couldn't really be picky.  So, I hurriedly made the first booty, assuming that it would work out because this book had been great so far.  Somehow, the ankle turned out a little smaller than my fist.  That was not going to work.  I'm pretty sure that this was the Sunday or Monday before the shower.  Mom told me that she got some burp rags with a crocheted edge as a baby shower gift and that she always loved them.  So, on Tuesday at WISH I talked to someone in my ward who crochets (she actually teaches a crocheting class) about how to crochet on fabric.  She researched it, sent me a link on how to do it, and gave me some fabric that she had on hand.  I spent my time alone while Mom was at dance with Anna and Gracie, looking it up, finding a pattern for burp rags and cutting the fabric.  To do it, you basically just poke a hole in the fabric with your hook.  It does work, but it is hard and gets more and more frustrating with each hole.  I couldn't actually start until the next afternoon after my sewing lesson because I needed to serge the edge and my sewing machine was at my sewing lesson.  So, I had to poke holes into the fabric for each individual stitch with a dull metal hook and my already barely big enough burp rags became kind of small.  The holes were uneven and the thick yarn I used for the edge just seemed bulky.  I hated them, the project of making them and the entire situation by the end of it, but Mom said the were cute and the woman a gave them to liked them and the color.  I finished them about 15 minutes before we needed to leave for the baby shower.  The whole thing was a nightmare and as it went on it just got worse because the shower was getting closer and I was getting so frustrated.  The woman from my ward who sent me the link helped me the best she could the whole way.  She didn't have a good booty pattern either and tried to find one for me and she was really very supportive the whole time.  She's going to help me crochet an afgahn for a Personal Progress project.  I'm excited. :)

After this whole thing I thought that I really needed a book full of patterns for things for babies.  Today I went to Micheal's and found an entire section dedicated to crocheting books and half of it was dedicated to crocheting for babies.  I was so excited and looked through almost all of them individually and a couple more than once.  I didn't look at them as long as I would have liked to, though because I was there with a friend that only came with me because we finished book club early (another subject).  There was one book that was awesome.  It had tons of stuff, except it was mostly sweaters and vests and only had three pairs of booties and three blankets, which is probably what I would crochet most.  There was another little book that had 9 pairs of booties that were all completely different and adorable.  I really want that and the other book, but both of them would be about $30 and you can't use coupons on books.  I'll have to figure that out.  But I want them so bad and am getting so excited that I can't think about anything else!  It's such a dilemma.