Some projects for my kid: heart, good bear, egg

A few kid presents I made so far in 2023:

Heart Amigurumi

Two small amigurumi hearts in pink and red.
A set of two amigurumi (crocheted) hearts.

Made these for my kid around Valentine’s day (although we don’t really celebrate that one).

Ravelry project link: https://www.ravelry.com/projects/terriko/heart-amigurumi

Good Bear

A small knitted bear wearing a green hat, green jacket, beige sweater (only barely visible) and blue pants.
A small knitted bear wearing a green hat, green jacket, beige sweater (only barely visible) and blue pants.

This is a Susan B Anderson pattern with a kit from her store (Barrett Wool Co.). I love these kits: they’re well designed and have carefully thought out techniques. I didn’t love this thinner version of the yarn as much as I liked the thick one I used for the giraffe I did — it’s very rustic in a good way, but a bit more finicky and less squishy in the smaller size — but it was still well suited for the task. Kiddo has named him “Green Bear” for now, a name with much honour since it is his favourite colour. He chose the buttons, which are a ladybug and a plane. I’m so glad I have a stash of kid buttons for this sort of thing since he loves digging through them to choose some for each of these animals. I went really lazy and used the plastic cotter pins used on the card to also attach them to the bear.

Easter Egg

A knitted easter egg featuring a colourwork motif with lines and diamonds.
A knitted easter egg featuring a colourwork motif with lines and diamonds.

This one is from a pattern by Stacey Lewis, the designer who makes all the baubles I highly enjoyed in November/December 2022. (They’re just so satisfying and quick!) She knits it with a plastic egg as insert, which looks less lumpy, but my kid *loves* playing catch with soft things so I turned it into a bean bag.

The Dread Pirate Kid dyed the white/yellow/blue contrast yarn. It looks so good! And it checks off a 2023 fiber goal: using our hand dyed yarn!

2020 Fiber Goals: How did I do?

My 2020 goals were as follows:

  1. Whittle down the WIPs and Query the Queue.
  2. A Bit of Brioche.
  3.  Top to Toes
  4. Some Smaller Shawls

By my mid-year 2020 fiber-goals check in post, I’d already done 3 of them and decided that #4 was a silly goal in a year when it was finally easy for me to work on sweaters.

1. Whittle down the WIPs and Query the Queue.

The big work in progress for me this time was my 2018 Little Box of Crochet Advent. I still haven’t finished it, but I made it further and I’m pretty happy with that. I may turn the rest into my year-long project because they’re good palette cleansers, but if I crochet too much at once sometimes I get a cramp in my hands and have to take a while off.

Robin crocheted ornament hanging on the tree.
Crocheted Holly

I didn’t hit the queue as hard, but I *did* finally finish the Aspen Leaf scarf, which was the design that inspired me to give brioche another shot!

Aspen Leaf scarf with real trembling aspen leaves!

2. A Bit of Brioche.

I did petit brioche, then the Heliotrope hat and made it to the Aspen Leaf scarf that was my brioche goal, but I’m definitely not done.

Heliotrope brioche hat

I took a second PDXKnitterari class and started her Syncopation Shawl, which I put on pause to do seasonal things but intend to finish in the new year. I may restart it, though: I’d been thinking about doing the thinnest width but after rescuing a shawl end from puppy mouth today I’m thinking the wide one might be safer to wear right now!

3. Top to Toes

I did a few more top down socks! The top down version of my favourite Sundae Socks:

And two more Made By SarahS knit a longs:

So definitely a success!

4. Some Smaller Shawls Sweaters!

As well as finishing my Pocca sweater, I did a Hazelwood sweater:

And the Stepping Stones cardi:

And I bought some lovely yarn for the california poppy one from By Hand Serial (though I got the blue colour, because having just completed a yellow sweater I didn’t think I was in the mood for a peachy one). It’s going to be my first adult sized fingering weight sweater!

It wasn’t the goal I’d planned, but I’m pretty pleased with how it worked out.

And I *did* cast on for one single-skein shawl, but it got dropped in favour of end of the year knitting, so it may be my first finish of 2021.

Plus, as I mentioned in the mid year update, I did a bunch of the goals I’d considered but hadn’t chosen too. Pretty good for a very unusual year!

I know a lot of folks have had more time for hobbies, but I’m doing a full time job in 4 hours per day and being the solo parent on duty for the other 4. So I’ve got a lot less time to craft than I used to and I spent a month pushing burnout before we got my workload right (mostly I had to drop projects that needed a lot of meetings or weren’t in good time zones, and I took up more training and documentation instead). So I’m really happy we managed to find ways to do things like the yarn dyeing as a family, and glad that kiddo is starting to enjoy more independent play so I can knit and help him build/do/pretend when he wants to do it himself.

On to 2021!

Spring embroidery break

I strained my hand/wrist/arm at the end of socks on vacay (it wasn’t *just* knitting but the short needle setup I was trying didn’t help), so I took a two week break and tried some different crafts while I waited for my body to recover.

Embroidery has been popular in knitting circles. (even punch embroidery, which I haven’t done since I was… 11 maybe?) When my local knitting store was closing down their bricks and mortar location I picked up a couple of Kiriki sampler kits on sale. This one is spring and I also got winter. (And I might have to go order Summer now…)

It’s definitely a hello world style kit, meaning it’s clearly got training wheels intended to help you get started. The kit itself doesn’t have printed instructions, but they’re all on the website.

I’ve done a bit of embroidery for amigurumi and the odd Christmas ornament so it’s not a completely new skill for me, but this was definitely way outside of my skill set. I’m pretty pleased with the results, though! I expect I could get pretty comfortable with this if I practiced.

I wondered early on what I would even do with embroidery skills, but this is actually cute enough that I might try to find a way to display it. It’s clearly meant for a 6inch display hoop, but I kind of like it on a smaller one that doesn’t show the how-to parts. This 3inch is still a bit too big, but I might find something eventually.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this! I’ve got a few more free-form kits from Fireside Textiles‘ Patreon but I’m going to at least tackle the other sampler I have first.

And speaking of amigurumi and Christmas ornaments… I also did exactly that as my second project:

As the photo says, this was part of last year’s Little Box of Crochet advent calendar. I didn’t get very far in it, but that was expected because eh, life. Hoping to get a bit further this year!

Both of those served as a nice break where I used different muscles. I spent a few days on calls to Japan and needed something to keep myself awake while listening in, but with knitting out I needed to try to branch out. Although I was not exactly thrilled when it took two weeks to recover, it’s better than that time in high school where I didn’t rest enough and had sore wrists on and off for 9 months!

But even if I’m not on a knitting break any more, you can expect me to do some more embroidery and crochet coming up this fall. It was fun!

And yes, in case you were wondering, I do realize the title of this post is a bit punny.

2018 fiber goals: how did I do?

Last year, I set myself some fiber goals for 2018. So, how did I do?

2018 goals:

  1. Use more of my project kits
  2. More amigurumi!
  3. Spin the neat fiber kit Kathy got me
  4. Organize the stash

2018 Results:

1. Project kit success! I made up a beanie bag, started a cowl kit (but haven’t finished that one), and bought and started a Cascadial Wrap kit. Plus I mostly kept up with my Shawl Club subscription. I guess new kits don’t solve my pileup problem, but they make me happy and it’s nice to see that investing in pretty kits is a good thing to keep doing.

Cascadial Wrap:

Shawl club:

2. Amigurumi success! I made the baby Dread Pirate Potato an elephant that lives in his travel toy bag, a dino that lives at home, a pumpkin, and started an amigurumi advent calendar that will be my decorations next year.

Elephant:

Dinosaur:

Pumpkin:

Advent:

3. Fiber fail? I didn’t touch the kit, but I *did* do some pretty spinning and dyeing so I don’t feel so bad about it. Turns out the Dread Pirate loves my spinning wheel, which is great because I can leave it set up and he’ll touch it and enjoy it, but it’s hard to get time to use it myself. I’m going to have to work on a habit for next year.

Dye and spin experiment:

4. Stash success! I got most of the yarn into organized boxes other than the worsted and sock yarn I peruse regularly for inspiration. I managed to use more older yarn this year because it turns out I select based on squishing and comparing. So the stash has become better inspiration — something I really thought deeply about because I read A Stash of One’s Own this year. Total win!

Partway through organization:

There’s a row on the bottom that’s fabric boxes full of fabric, kits, and some recent purchases.

Appropriate current state:

More baby proof! It needs smaller labels.

Decoration/closeup:

Summary:

3/4 clear wins isn’t bad and I think my dye and spin experiment filled a similar niche to the fiber kit I didn’t touch, so I feel like I kept some spinning up even if I did it a different way. I think the yarn kits were a good fit for me, and the stash re-org got me in shape so that my office in nearly toddler friendly, and it helped me find treasures.

I’m still figuring out what I’ll strive for in 2019. Maybe this year is the year of the fingering weight sweater? Try the spinning set again? I’ve already got plans to take a steeking class so maybe that’s the easy goal #1!

2018 Fiber Goals: Kits, amigurumi, spinning, and organizing.

Earlier, I posted about how I did on my fiber goals for 2017. Overall, I’d say I was pretty successful!

I’ve been thinking a bit about what I’d like for this year, and here’s my list:

  1. Use more of my project kits.
    • I still have quite a few Beanie Bags I never got around to, plus the big blanket-a-long from last year that I got stalled on. I think a few easy kits might be a good thing this year. I should probably set a number to aim for here, but I’m not sure what it should be. 4, maybe, at least one per quarter, with a month of blanket-a-long counting as 1?
  2. More amigurumi!
    • Baby Potato is getting into soft toys, so I’d like to make him some more before he tires of them. Especially since I’ve made so many for other people’s kids but none for him yet!
  3. Spin the neat fiber kit Kathy got me
    • My friend (and spinning teacher) made me a nice kit of different fibers to spin as a Momma gift, and I’m eager to try all the different breeds and blends out. If you want your own, I believe she’ll be selling them through Black Sheep
  4. Organize the stash
    • I’ve *finally* hit the point where I can’t just remember most of the yarn I have on hand, so it’s time to start cataloging or organizing so that I can find what I’ve got faster. Most of this goal is going to be spent on figuring out what works, I expect, especially as I physically move some stuff in my office to make it more toddler-friendly.

Some photos of the neat spinning supplies: look at all those fibers!

April the Amigurumi Giraffe

I made this one for a co-worker and very awesome lady who’s expecting to give birth Real Soon Now. With the whole internet waiting for April the Giraffe to give birth, a giraffe seemed like an extra-appropriate baby gift. Since the gift has been gifted and the giraffe has given birth, now’s the time for a blog post!

April the Amigurumi Giraffe

Pattern: Gigi Giraf. You might recognize this one, as I’ve made it before, and used it as a base for a moose I made for another colleague some time ago. It’s a great pattern!

April the Amigurumi Giraffe

Yarn: Be Sweet Bamboo for the base colour. I love using this yarn. It’s so very soft, shiny, and it’s got a neat and very subtle tonal going that really works for giving some depth to the amigurumi. I immediately bought most of the colours for my next few amigurumi projects. If you’re local to me, Black Sheep at Orenco has it, and it’s worth trying!

April the Amigurumi Giraffe

The brown is Nova Plus Four Seasons Cotton. This is a nice soft cotton made of many tiny strands. I love how it feels when crocheted up, but it was a bit easy to split while I was working with it unless I wound it up a bit as it went.

April the Amigurumi Giraffe

I love the little tail. :)

April the Amigurumi Giraffe

I should have taken some more in-progress photos, but here’s one more before it got its spots!

April the Amigurumi Giraffe

Crochet Pokéball Postcard Pattern

My favourite local yarn store, Black Sheep at Orenco, got turned into a pokémon gym with the advent of Pokémon Go, and I was so pleased by this that I thought I’d make a pattern! Now, pokéball patterns are a dime a dozen, but what I wanted was something that would be easy to print up nicely and give away, so that’s what I made. I’ll have a batch to give away at Albuquerque Mini Maker Faire on Aug 27-28, and hopefully the lovely folk at Black Sheep at Orenco will let me give away some there too.

Here’s the pages as images, but if you’d like to print it yourself or save it in your collection, I recommend the Pokeball postcard pattern pdf. It’s intended for a 4×6 postcard, or both sides will print onto a single 8.5×11″ sheet of paper. (Also, you can queue it as Pokéball Postcard on ravelry.)

Pokeball-pattern-1

Pokeball-pattern-2

(The text version of the pattern is at the bottom of this post)

Need help? There are lots of great tutorials out there, including video tutorials on youtube. If the first one you find doesn’t work for you, there’s many more options!

Here’s a few tutorials you might need for this pattern:

Still confused? You can probably also find an expert or a class at your local yarn store.

Love the pattern and want to thank me? Here’s a few things you can do:

  1. I don’t take tips, but I love seeing photos of what people have done with my patterns, so feel free to drop me an email at terri (at) toybox.ca.
  2. Make a pokeball and leave it for someone to find at your local pokestop or gym!
  3. Buy something at Black Sheep at Orenco so my favourite yarn store stays in business. (If you’re a crocheter and haven’t tried Teresa Ruch’s tencel, I recommend splurging on a ball and making a shawl or scarf. Such saturated colours with beautiful shine; the pictures hardly do it justice!)
  4. Buy something from my pattern editor’s most excellent store Flying Corgi Studios. I’m a big fan of her teacup pincushions, as you may have noticed in my photos!

Feel free to print this pattern out for friends or strangers and do whatever you’d like with your pokeballs! (Although please don’t hurt anyone with them!)

Crochet PoKéBall

A free amigurumi pattern by Terri Oda

Materials: Yarn in red, white, black. Crochet hook appropriate for yarn or smaller to avoid holes.
Yarn needle. Stuffing (polyfill and/or beans work well)
Picture uses worsted weight and size I or 5.5mm hook.
sc single crochet
inc increase by doing two single crochet in a single crochet stitch
dec “invisible” decrease: pull up loop in outside-of-ball half of next stitch, then full following stitch. Finish by pulling though all 3 loops on hook.
When starting your next stitch, be careful not to re-use the 2nd stitch in the decrease by accident.

Button:
0 (white): 6 sc in a magic circle loop
There are great tutorials for magic circles online!
1 (black): Switch colours to black, 2sc in each stitch (for total of 12 stitches)
Cut yarn, leaving a long black tail for sewing
Ball:
0 (red): 6 sc in a magic circle loop (6 stitches)
1 (red): increase (inc) 6 times (12 stitches)
2 (red): { inc in next stitch, sc in following one } repeat 6 times (18 stitches total)
3 (red): { inc, sc, sc } 6 times (24 stitches)
4 (red): { inc, sc 3 times } 6 times (30 stitches)
5-7 (red): sc around (30 stitches)
8 (black): change to black, sc around (30 stitches)
Don’t worry if your colour change looks obvious, it will be covered by the button.
9-11 (white): change to white, sc around (30 stitches)
12 (white): { dec, sc 3 times } 6 times (24 stitches)
13 (white): { dec, sc, sc } 6 times (18 stitches)
Start filling ball. You may need to stuff more as you go
14 (white): { dec, sc } 6 times (12 stitches)
15 (white): dec 6 times (6 stitches). Last chance to stuff!
Cut thread and pull through to close circle.

Sew button onto ball, covering the area with colour change. Toss at a pokémon to catch it!

Mandala bunnies

I’ve been working diligently on my cardi and more diligently on security for a software release at work, but I did find time in March and April to make a few presents. This pair went to two awesome little girls:

Mandala Bunnies

Their mom tells me there has been much singing of “Little rabbit foo foo” as a result!

The pattern is Easy crochet bunny (Ravelry link) and as promised, it’s pretty easy. Make a couple of round granny square centres and go from there! I did change up the second tail, though, when I realized my first pom pom wasn’t sturdy enough to be age appropriate for the younger giftee:

Mandala Bunnies

Other than the variant tail, I followed the pattern as written, but I kind of think it would be amazing to scale these up a little bit and use a fancier mandala in the front to replace the simple granny square.

Have you seen how amazing crochet mandalas can look? Here’s a roundup of a few free crochet mandala patterns, but that barely scratches the surface. Check out this tutorial and this artist’s crochet overlay mandala patterns and I imagine you might find yourself deep in a “crochet mandala” google image search eventually.

Here’s a few example photos to get your mind imagining the same thing as mine:

Round 33
Overlay crochet potholder
Here's a second #mandalasformarinke

Aren’t they lovely? Overlay crochet is on my list of things to learn; I’m debating doing that with some of my beanie bags now that I’ve collected a few without using them again. But no new projects until I get my cardigan done!

Twilight Sparkle for Katie

I made this Twilight Sparkle for a friend and then, uh, took a year or something to get it to her. I am the worst at mailing things (in the end, J gave it to her in person and I never mailed it!)

The pattern

This is a pattern I made myself, and this Twilight Sparkle is actually one of the first ponies I made after I had actually published the pattern. (I also have a set of teensy tiny felted ones that I haven’t finished up and photographed yet… someday I’ll get through my backlog of projects to document!)

[Crochet Pony Pattern inspired by My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic on my website (toybox.ca)]
[Crochet Pony Pattern inspired by My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic on Ravelry]

(You can tell it’s been a while because she’s still just a unicorn!)

Photos

Since I wrote the pattern, I don’t have much more to say about it, so here’s a bunch of pictures of the pony!

Body only:

Violet Pony for Katie

I do love that she’s a bit posable….

Violet Pony for Katie

Those legs are surprisingly bendable!

Violet Pony for Katie

If I wanted to her to have a bigger range of positions I could have wired her legs, but this is just the qualities of the yarn and stuffing.

Violet Pony for Katie

Her head also moves, although maybe not as much as the legs

Violet Pony for Katie

And here she is with a mane and tail and cutie mark: I don’t love her eyes (I haven’t found a great way to do them; these were drawn on fabric and sewn on), but she does look more expressive with them!

Twilight Sparkle for Katie

Closer look at her rump so you can see the cutie mark. Or make jokes about butt-shots, whatever.

Twilight Sparkle for Katie

Did you notice what book it is?

Twilight Sparkle for Katie

I chose it for photos because of the colour, but it does seem like something she might enjoy, eh?

Twilight Sparkle for Katie

Maybe one day I’ll do a version with the wings…

Twilight Sparkle for Katie

Or at least one for myself!

Twilight Sparkle for Katie

Overall, my biggest regret on this one was not sending her out sooner. Sorry about the delay, Katie!

Rippy and Chompy the Gators

Rippy and Chompy

These two gators got named Rippy and Chompy after the Arrogant Worms’ classic children’s song Rippy the Gator. The girls who recieved them might give them other names, but I suspect these might stick given how many times their dad and I went to Arrogant Worms shows over the years! For those not familiar with this particular musical gem…

Billy and his family went on a holiday
They went down to Florida to laugh and dance and play
Bill went in for a swim, he didn’t see the harm
But when he came back out again, he was short an arm
‘Cause Rippy the Gator went chomp, chomp, chomp!
Rippy the Gator went chomp, chomp, chomp!
Passing the time by ending children’s lives
Down in the bottom of the swamp, swamp, swamp!

and so on.

The Pattern

Rippy and Chompy

[Baby Gators on Ravelry]
[Baby Gators pattern on Mochimochi land]

One of my complaints about amigurumi patterns is that it’s hard to find ones that really take advantage of the range of textures and shapes that are possible. Now, don’t get me wrong: there’s a lot of cute things you can make with balls and cylinders, like good old Hello Kitty, but when I was working on the My Little Pony-inspired amigurumi pattern I made, I had a lot of trouble finding good techniques for some of the shaping I wanted to do.

So when I saw this creative pattern with the textured stitches and the nostril and eyebrow shaping, I knew I had to try it.

My Notes

Link to my Rippy and Chompy the Gators as a project on Raverly

I used Caron Simply Soft for this, because I like that it’s soft, washable and reasonably hypoallergenic. Since these were going to two kids under the age of two, those are all important things!

One thing that’s interesting about this is that it’s knitting, not crochet. In my experience, knitting tends to be a bit stretchier so knit animals tend to have less interesting shapes because they squish out when they’re stuffed. As a result, I rarely love them the way I like the crochet ones! But this one was cool enough that I wanted to try it anyhow.

You do have to be a bit careful with stuffing this one because of the properties of knitting, though. When I first stuffed the nose, it lost shape and you could barely see the nice nostril shaping, and you can tell if you look at the photos that the tails are different widths. Under-stuff rather than over-stuff on this one.

Rippy and Chompy

The pattern is very clear and easy to read. It’s increases, decreases, knits and purls, with something a bit fancier for the bobbles (the nose and eyebrows), so it’s doable for a relatively new knitter, but probably not an absolute beginner unless they have help on hand (or patience and youtube videos!).

The only thing I might have changed is that I found the legs a bit long once I had them sewn on. I decided I didn’t care enough to re-knit, but if I do this again I might think about taking out a row.

Also, as usual with amigurumi, don’t be afraid to experiment a bit with how you sew things on. A little movement can make things look way more cute or a bit uncanny, and I found this was especially true with the legs on this one: in some places, they made it look like spider gator!

Rippy and Chompy

Conclusion

In conclusion, great and interesting pattern that knits up quickly because it’s so small. I may make this one again!

Hello Kitty Amigurumi (“Bring me the head of Hello Kitty!”)

Hello Kitty Crochet is a book I have coveted since I knew it existed, in part due to nostalgia as I remember getting little cute Japanese things on occasion as a kid, but also because it just looked like a fantastic set of amigurumi crochet patterns with lots of details and cute photos.

Hello Kitty Crochet: Supercute Amigurumi…
Hello Kitty Crochet: Supercute Amigurumi Patterns for Sanrio Friends
by Mei Li Lee

J’s parents were sweet enough to get me a copy for my birthday. So of course, the thing to do is to make the titular character and send her back with a thank you note! I have no idea what they’re ever going to do with a little Hello Kitty, but what has one ever done with Hello Kitty other than admire her, really?

I finished her head pretty quickly, then got side-tracked by something else so there was just this severed head lying around the house for a week:
Hello Kitty Amigurumi

Eventually, though, she got some more body parts:

Hello Kitty Amigurumi

The strange one there is the bow. I am quite sure that there’s an error in the book, because they have you doing 4 sc and then 3 sc in one, which would give you a total of 7 sc across… but then the next line says you should turn and do 9 sc plus another 3-in-one. Does not compute, Hello Kitty. Through looking at the pictures and some online research my best guess is that you’re not supposed to turn your work front to back but rather make an oval by crocheting around the other side of the original chain, so that’s what I wound up doing.

Here’s a picture where you can see it better:
Hello Kitty Amigurumi

And here’s one so you can see that she does indeed have a tail:
Hello Kitty Amigurumi

What you can’t see is that she has washers in her butt to make her a bit weighted and not top heavy. I debated putting a rare earth magnet in there too, but I couldn’t really think when that would be useful, so I went with just the washers.

To fill out the post, here’s some photos with a Hello Kitty Makeup box I got when it was on sale at Sephora:
Hello Kitty Amigurumi

Very kawaii, indeed. I’d originally intended to felt her, but once I got her features on I didn’t want to mess them up. Maybe next time!

Hello Kitty Amigurumi

Hello Kitty Amigurumi

If you don’t know how big that box is, it might be hard to tell how big she is. Here’s a shot with a ruler, although the one I have with the ruler up and down didn’t turn out so well, so you’ll have to guesstimate from the one where it’s beside her. She’s a little under 3in high.
Hello Kitty Amigurumi

Aside from the issue with the bow, I found the directions pretty clear. They’d be suitable for a crochet/amigurumi beginner if you’re eager to try her out. I can’t wait to try some of the other patterns in the collection!

Baby bunny! (Amigurumi)

It’s after Christmas, so you’d think by now I’d be digging out the photos of all the projects that became christmas presents. But no, I’m going to dig back a little further to one I forgot from this summer…

This little amigurumi bunny was just so charming that I decided to make her for baby V:

Baby bunny for V

My favourite part is the little mohair fluffy grey tail:

20130722-IMG_0277.jpg

This is a pattern where the details really matter, so while finishing the bunny body didn’t take very long (I think I finished most of her in an afternoon at Quelab), getting her nose and ears sewn just so took me a while. Despite the little bit of fussiness, I think this is my favourite bunny pattern yet, and maybe sometime I’ll make another with more patterned fabric as the original pattern suggests.

The pattern is free on Ravelry: Crochet Spring Bunny by Stephanie Jessica Lau

A passel of penguins

Last year at Pycon, I made a bunch of teensy amigurumi penguins to give to the friends who were sprinting on GNU Mailman with me. (Small round penguin ball pattern here) Florian commented some time later that he nearly didn’t get to keep his, as his wife is a huge fan of penguins, so since he had a new baby at home by the time of the next PyCon, I figured I knew what I should be doing: making a small pile of penguins for his family.

Amigurumi Penguins

The emphasis was indeed on small since Florian would have to fit them in his suitcase for an international flight but not too small, since they were sort of intended as baby toys. Below you can see a size comparison of the largest one (in proto-penguin form) with a spatula (made unintentionally hilarious later on when the spatula was discovered lying on a pillow in the spare bedroom and questions were asked).

Penguin + Spatula

And here’s the smallest one, with my hand for size. It may help you to know that my hands are fairly small — I can just barely play a full-sized violin and would probably be more comfortable on a 3/4. (Well, okay, I haven’t actually played the violin in years, but the point is that I have almost child-sized hands.)

Amigurumi Penguin

The patterns

The big round penguin

Amigurumi Penguin by Lion Brand Yarn. I’d made this pattern before, and it’s actually what inspired my small penguin balls from last year. It’s a very easy pattern for beginner crocheters, and you can get a fair bit of expression out of adjusting the penguin’s beak and wings.

The tall penguin

Penguin Amigurumi by Tamie Oldridge. This one’s especially fun because he has a little separate hood that you place over the top ball (hence the bowling-pin shaped proto-penguin in the photo with the spatula).

The pink penguin

Amigurumi Penguin Cell Phone Strap by Pierrot (Gosyo Co., Ltd). As you can tell from the title, this one was meant to be made with smaller yarn or cotton thread, but I scaled up so it wouldn’t be a choking hazard. People were so entertained by this one that I made a few more at the conference and gave them away too.

Here’s two pictures of one of those little wool penguins, before and after felting, with my apple power connector, watch and ring for size comparison. You can see that it didn’t get that much smaller but it definitely gets fluffier with the hand felting.

2013-03-21 00.28.082013-03-21 08.36.35

The yarns used for that one were Knit Picks palette yarns, which is one of my staples for travel since I can take small balls and a handful of stuffing and still make cute things. (If you ever feel a need to buy me hundreds of dollars of wool, you can buy a sampler pack with all the colours. I’d use them, promise!)

The felting was done by hand in the hotel using hot water from the coffee pot, a mug and shampoo from those teensy little hotel bottles. Who knew hotels contained everything you needed for hand felting? Heat water without any coffee in the machine, pour a few drops of shampoo on the penguin, dip it in the hot water, roll it around in your hands or scrub at it, rinse, repeat, replacing the water if it gets cold or too soapy.

Finally, here’s one more picture of the big pink penguin hanging out on my windowsill in Albuquerque:

Amigurumi Penguin

A Moose for George

My colleague George is from the lovely tree-filled part of the west coast and went to UBC for his undergrad. For some reason, this meant that when he and his wife announced they were expecting, I thought “Hey, I should make a moose for George!” And so I did, but I wound up making a new pattern to do it, so here it is!

Moose for George

I’m a big fan of Ravelry, an excellent site for knitters and crocheters that provides a huge repository of patterns, so that was the first place I looked for moose patterns. But for some reason when I searched for moose none of the patterns really looked like what I had in mind.

Eventually, I realized why. What I wanted was a Moose version of the giraffe I’d made for another colleague at UNM:

Crochet Giraffe

Look familiar? Having established the what I wanted to see, it wasn’t too hard to go and adjust the pattern to make a moose!

And now, on to the instructions!

The original pattern

Gigi Giraffe — It’s free and nicely written. If you’re not set on a moose, I highly recommend just doing this pattern as it is! It’s so cute!

Two more pictures of the giraffe I made for another colleague: here and here

My moose-y modifications

Obviously the largest one is in swapping out the yellow for light brown (the dark brown for the hooves is actually the same as the one I used for the giraffe).

The neck

The next is the neck: I shortened it considerably. I forget exactly how many rows I did, but it was probably somewhere around 5 compared to the 17 repeats in the original pattern. You can maybe even count the repeats in this picture if you’re desperate to duplicate my moose exactly:

Moose for George

You’ll note also that I sewed the neck on a little funny. This was intentional! Moose are funny, humpbacked kind of creatures and this was my way of making a nod to the “yeah, I know what a moose looks like” while still going for something chibi-cutesy in true amigurumi form.

The antlers

The antlers obviously didn’t come from any modification of the pattern. Let’s look at them again:

Moose for George

They’re made in 3 pieces that all start like this:

Row 0: Magic circle (6 stitches)
Row 2: {increase (2sc in one stitch), 1sc} repeated 3 times (9 stitches)
Row 3-?: sc around (9 stitches)

Basically, make one short antler tube for the end piece (probably around 5 rows long), a longer one for the part that comes out of his head (around 9 rows), and one to attach the two together (again, around 9 rows). If you want him to be an older moose with a more impressive rack, make the joiner piece longer and add extra antler bumps on top. Stuff each tube relatively firmly and sew together.

Tail

The tail is also brand new and not part of the original pattern. I crocheted a little circular-ish piece and sewed one end to a bit of a point, then sewed the other onto the moose’s bum. The pattern was probably something like this:

Row 0: Magic circle (6 stitches)
Row 2: increase (2sc in one stitch) repeated 6 times (12 stitches)

It’s possible that I only went to 9 like I did with the antlers, though.

So in conclusion…

If you, like me, are making this for a baby, remember to sew things on really well, and tie extra knots as you go. Smaller pieces like the tail could be dangerous if removed and swallowed, and kids are tenacious. That said, crochet tends to tighten up into horrible knots when drooled on and pulled on, so it’s pretty safe to give to kids. And I should know: my grandmother made me a lot of crocheted things, and I seem to have flourished and “inherited” some of her talent for making new patterns on the fly. Clearly this means crocheted gifts are a way to foster creative adults, right?

Happy moose-making!

Moose for George

PS – For my records, this moose was finished ~ March 7, 2013. My next set of works in progress is also a gift, but the recipient gets the pile o’ projects at PyCon, so you can expect a post about that when it’s been received!