Happy Hooker Backwards Project #39 in progress

It's time to start the next project in my plan to work through the Happy Hooker backwards.  After a bit of a delay whilst I tried to overcome the problem of not being able to buy the required Barnat Softee Chunky yarn here in the UK, I eventually took action (rather than repeatedly doing the same Google searches and coming up with nothing) and headed down to a local yarn store to get some advice. 

Yes!  Excitingly I actually now have not one but TWO local yarn shops!  When I went to buy our 4 year-old's school jumper at a specialist uniform shop in a nearby village I discovered that they are also a yarn shop complete with a resident old lady knitting expert.  Then I discovered Yarnia in Belvedere in Kent, just a ten minute drive away, and it was here I finally managed to find myself some alternative wool with the help of one of the owners.  Phew.

I went for these colours rather than the suggested red and tan combination...

I want everything to be baby-girly so of course it had to be pink and soft.  This stuff was *gasp* £3.35 a ball, three times the amount I usually spend on yarn.  It's 10% wool, 20% alpaca and 70% acrylic, so it's fairly posh for a baby blanket.  But I can still shove it in the machine on a wool wash so all is well.

The brand is Wendy "Serenity"...

The irony of using a wool called "serenity" for making a blanket for a newborn is not lost on me :)

Coming home clutching my new stash I had to get started straight away of course and prepared myself to quickly work up one of the monkey faces essential to the whole project.  In the end it took me about four hours - no matter how I looked at the patten it just didn't add up the way it should have - and after many unravelled attempts I finally started again and just did it my own way...

And you know what?  It actually does look like the picture in the book!  I will post my amendments to this part of the pattern after I've hooked up a few more and perfected it.

I then moved on to the hat part of the project, which I am pleased to report was easy as pie and took about an hour to do in between bouts of working from home...

The idea is now to attach the monkey face to the hat in order to elevate its cuteness to heart-melting proportions.  I haven't done this yet, but here it is placed together...

Gah!  Too too too cute!  My eyes my eyes!

So now I am off to work on the afghan part of the project.  I am very much enjoying this chunky way of crocheting, everything seems so quick, apart from the blasted monkey faces of course :)