My Devilish Angel

This week I made Mr W a new beanie hat. It's getting rather chilly these days (now was I not complaining about the heat just a few weeks ago - how soon we forget) and I've been sitting up late every night to crochet it while listening to the wonderful rain we've been getting. I finally finished it on Friday afternoon.

There are lots of really cute crochet patterns for little kids but my son is just a little too old to have a frog or penguin on his head (around his mates that is) so I decided to adapt a few pattern ideas I had seen to come up with this. He has already worn it a few times... yay... after all the effort I didn't want to see it sitting on his dresser.

This is my first hat and the first time I've stitched an entire project using HDC... I think I've got it in my muscle memory now and probably wont need to look up how to make this stitch again.

I've made 7 crochet projects now... when I spoke to my Grandmother today I forgot to tell her that I've been making crochet... I'm sure she will be amazed that I finally figured out how to do more than chain stitch - despite her trying to teach me for so many years.

Poppy B tried the beanie out on Sunday at the birthday party... still cute but maybe a little disturbing too... that is a big bottle of Olive Oil thankfully the safety seal was still on bottle or that could have been very messy.

I think I will end up making a hat for Miss D - she has requested blue, and possibly Mr M but I'm not sure if he will wear it and these are a big project so I'll see how it goes.

Luma Amigurumi

I've completed my third amigurumi project a few weeks ago but forgot to post it to the blog. Mr W really was so desperate for me to get it finished he asked his Dad to make dinner last night so I could finish it off... he also stayed up until 10pm so he could see it finished off. Talk about pressure! I couldn't get the little arms exactly the same despite pulling them apart and re-crocheting them several times... in the end I gave up and decided to be happy with their little wabi sabi selves.

Here is Luma next to the Mario Mushroom I made previously. I think that perhaps this crochet bit is good for me (even if I'm not good at it yet) because it seems to use different muscles to the ones used in temari and yubinuki stitching. In other words my wrists and forearms hurt after making this project.

Amigurumi Wedding Gift

I made these love birds for our friends Suzie and Jono's wedding (which is happening on Easter Saturday). I think they are so cute. I got the pattern here. They came together quite well after a some failed attempts. I chose purple for the embellishments because that is the colour theme for the wedding.

Being very new to crochet I still don't know all the stitch names. This pattern is also written a little differently to other 3 projects I have made so I needed to get my head around that too. Initially I let that negative voice in my head (that tells me all the things I can't do) win so I tried a more simple pattern from Lion. It didn't look as cute as I hoped. So I made the flower and hat embellishments to try them on the other pattern but it still wasn't cute. Then the little encouraging voice in my head (the very quiet, shy one) whispered to just give the pattern I wanted to use a try because I had the yarn, I could pull it all out even if it didn't work and perhaps I should look to the Internet to find out what the terms I didn't know meant.  These are the first Amigurumi that I have added the toy eyes to... they are trickier than the crocheting.

I'm glad I've decided to listen to my positive self talk more often because I'd never have even tried this project otherwise. As I focus on turning my internal dialogue around to be more positive I am finding that I actually can do almost everything I try... I wonder why it took me almost 40 years to realise it.

Other crafting:
My thimble is still underway... I will try to get it finished this weekend and post it early next week. I'm also aiming to make 3 little Amigurumi Easter eggs for the kids in our family.

Also I woke up to homemade waffles this morning. Mr W, 9 years old, made them on his own... and they actually worked out, tasted delicious and the kitchen was still tidy. 11 out of 10 my boy. Here they are.

Toad Amigurumi

I've gotten a head cold over the last two days so my brain can't work in the small scale of Yubinuki and I don't want to touch my ball for Japan until I am feeling better... so this was what I did to amuse myself for today.


It would be boastful to say I have the hang of this whole Amigurumi thing so I most definitely will not claim that. I have tried two really basic designs and can happily report that they turned out ok. Mr W is more than pleased with his mouse and when I presented him with my latest project today after school he squealed with delight.

I got the pattern from http://wolfdreamer-oth.blogspot.com/2009/05/mario-brothers-mushrooms.html there are a large number of other free Mario patterns on this site that I am sure Mr W will be requesting when I feel more confident.

My First Amigurumi project

Let me start this post by telling you all that I cannot crochet. So while I have always thought Amigurumi was so cute I never considered making them because I cannot crochet.

Around New Years I went on a frenzy with the local library's request system. I started out looking for inspiring books to help with my TC 12 month flower sampler project (my temari is wrapped and marked but stalled just now). I started looking at flowers and then embroidery... a bit later I discovered a book about Kanzashi flowers and then Amigurumi. This is what happens when you type 'Japanese craft' into our library computer. I decided to request copies of all the books that struck my fancy.

Over the last few weeks the books have been arriving for collection. I picked this one up on Friday. I have a few of the ".... For Dummies" books but the title of this one struck me as offensively appropriate for me as my Grandmother has tried son several occasions over the years to teach me how to crochet.

Well as it turns out I couldn't quite get it from this book either (no fault of the Author) my brain needs to see what happens between the photos to work out what is going on so a surf through YouTube found me a video to help me with the details.



It isn't quite the most beautiful thing you will ever see (even if you stand back and squint) but considering I started out as being at a lower level than 'Complete Idiot' I did rather well. I know the pattern is a hamster but Mr W wanted a mouse instead so I added a tail. He is quite taken with it and has requested another one.

Sorry about the terrible photo, it is dusk now, the light inside is bad and Mr W is watching Avatar so he can't keep his hands still. You'll note that this posted is labelled (very optimistically) Amigurumi so I intend on making more of these crocheted creatures.

I'm going to try making mushrooms next... after I finish my temari for Japan which we are now going to be sending to the JTA via TT.