crochet triumph!

Now I have always been slightly scared/wary of crochet - give me two, four or five needles and I'm happy - show me a needle with a hook in one end and I start to panic.  A great-aunt did try to teach me the basics when I was little, but I don't think I ever got any further than chaining. 

Having commenced a project to knit a couple of toys (to be blogged later today), I realised I would need to crochet the ears.  Oh dear.  The pattern seemed to be utterly incomprehensible (1 d.c, tr into next stitch, long tr into third stitch, etc), so I called on my mum for help and she gallantly did them for me.  I had a go under her guidance but got into a bit of a mess.

I'm usually up for a challenge, so I decided to teach myself using an online tutorial over at Meet Me at Mike's which seemed pretty clear.  Here are my first and second attempts (following lots of pulling down and starting over):

I think the second attempt is actually worse than the first (what happened to the lower corner???).

Anyway, I persevered this morning, and this is the final attempt, which I'm pretty happy with, it's not perfect, but not bad for a learner I reckon :o):

And the whole ensemble:

The pretty buttons and backgrounds I purchased from Jessica Sprague the other day - the backgrounds (and cameras, to be seen in the next post) are by Kitschy Digitals, the buttons by Crystal Wilkerson.  Thought they might jazz things up a bit on here!