Knitting for Nieces

With one niece already and another due in April, my thoughts have been straying towards kids crafts.  I love the idea of knitting items for a new baby, but lack the patience to knit a baby blanket.  So Aunt Jenny has turned her focus to learning to crochet stuffed animals.  I've started with this kit:

I've really enjoyed it.  It gives a brief tutorial of crochet stitches and how to read patterns, then gives you the patterns for the different animals.  It also comes with the materials for the goldfish and the beaver.  I started with the goldfish.  It actually went much better than I expected.  All of my previous crochet attempts have ended in disaster.  I won't say that it was the neatest or prettiest fish.  But it looks like a fish.

I think it was convincing enough for my 2-year-old niece.  After I gave it to her, she immediately put it in the sink of her play kitchen.  Obviously! Fishes need to swim!

My next project was the beaver.  This one came easier than the fish; I am starting to get used to the stitches and patterns.  Still, he does have a homemade, quirky look:

 

The next project in the book is a bear.  Although I'm also tempted to make a little log for my beaver.  What else is he going to chew on?  Once I get good at these, I may move on to something like this:

Crochet Puppet Scarf @ Craftzine.com blog

How cute is that?  I may be able to muster up the patience for a big project like this.  Maybe...