It’s been a while since I’ve posted a word search so I thought I’d do one on my favourite type of crochet…amigurumi.
Here’s the just of cute critters –
BEAR CATERPILLAR DRAGON FOX BIRD DINOSAUR ELEPHANT OCTOPUS CAT DOG FISH RABBIT
Enjoy xxx
There’s something really cute about a crochet critter. Throw in a huge pair of eyes and perhaps tiny arms and legs and you’re onto a winner.
The first toy I ever crocheted was a wee teddy called snuggles. I made one, then another, and another then low and behold I was hooked (pardon the pun!) My daughters both had a few, their friends had some, we chose speckled yarn for one and it looked like it had chicken pox. I must have made loads that summer. I know at one point I simply refused to make more, I was so scunnered with it all.
Jump forward a decade or so and now I’m infatuated with Lalylala and Heidibears. I’ve been down the Totoro path and got my hands on a few Pokemon. There’s a posse of Melvin the misunderstood monsters living somewhere in the house. At night, I’m sure I can hear them singing 🙂
Out of all the things we crocheters can make, there’s nothing that beats amigurumi. Suitable for all ages, easily modified, great stash busters, and terribly, terribly cute (even the ugly ones) They make folk want to hug them.
Perhaps that’s why we like them so much. They remind us of our earliest friends, our childhood toys, the one’s who got hugged tightly and told secrets. The ones who listened to stories and came on adventures, the ones who watched over us while we slept. Even as I type this there’s the face of a long lost bear in my mind, I bet there’s one in yours too.
We get to bring them back, not in person, but in memory, for all the ‘adults’ that we crochet amigurumi for. We get to bring friends back, even for a little while. For children, we get to bring them new friends, loyal and immortal, to see them through childhood.
That’s not a bad achievement for a ball of yarn and a hook!
Pattern links
Totoro – free pattern from Ravelry
Melvin – so cute, highly recommend. Free pattern
Lalylala and Heidibears patterns can be found on Ravelry Here Both are paid patterns and worth every penny.
There’s tons of Pokemon patterns online but I found these by aphid777 to be the best and easiest to follow. The pictures are amazing and they’re free!
I’ve been planning my own crochet design for a while now and it just hasn’t been taking shape, until this morning. It was all about shapes, I was thinking in curves when I should have been looking for angles. It was like knocking down a brick wall and racing ahead. It was a literal block that I worked through, finally.
Breaking down a project to its base shapes takes the mystery out of it. A blanket can seem daunting but one square? easy peasy! Then another and another and voila you have a blanket. When I first started looking at crochet patterns like this, it was a revelation. It makes the impossible become possible. This was why I learnt to read charts, I wanted to see what the shape of things were and how they were built. Charts show you that in a way that a paragraph of instructions simply can’t.
Shape is only one thing that makes a pattern catch our eye. Colour, texture and size play a big role too. Although I’ve worked out my shape issue, and the colour’s already decided, I’m still swaying when it comes to size and texture. Its an animal design so any size could work, but I know somehow that there’s a perfect size, if only I could work it out. At the moment the prototype make you go hmm, that’s quite nice, but I want it to make people say OMG! how cute is that!!!!!
I guess its the difference between a crochet toy and amigurumi. They’re the same on paper, but in reality, one is a cute toy and the other is just way cuter.
The texture is dependant on the size, and plays a big part in the cuteness factor. Fluffy is cute, super smooth can be cute, but in between, meh!
I want to write more but the patterns just not quite ready to share. Neither am I, really. The idea of sharing my ideas and creations is really challenging me to finish pieces and be open about what I’m working on. One day soon, it’ll be finished and I’ll take a deep breath, probably close my eyes & press post. And that will be that.
I’ve been thinking about trying this for a while, so here goes. I love crochet and I love a good word search so why not try both.
The words you are looking for are:
bamboo hemp yarn wool tunisian pattern chart amigurumi crochet blanket stitch ripple puffstitch grannysquare guage
Enjoy & have a great weekend 🙂
I’ll post the answers on Sunday xx
Meet Doug, the energy saving caterpillar, courtesy of Greener Scotland
He’s retired now, but once was quite the celeb on British Wintertime TV. He spent many a night keeping the cold wind out while my family and I slept in our drafty old house. Fortunately, we now have a nice, new house and Doug gets to rest on the radiator, watching over us all and well out the way of visiting dogs. There’s something about the texture of knitted or crocheted toys that Jack Russell’s seem to really like.
I love Doug. I love that when I first read the pattern I thought “there’s no way I can knit with all these needles” DPN’s were a new and scary thing to me. I love that I was able to make something that was so recognisable & the colours were so cheery in a winter and house that was so cold and bleak. What I love the most about Doug isn’t his multicoloured wonder, or his Lego cute legs or even the fact that he has, on occasion, been worn around the house as a scarf! (I’m naming no names, they know who they are!)
It’s the fact that crafts – knitting this time – were once again brought into the mainstream consciousness. Not everyone knows how to knit but for a while at least, everyone knew Doug. Any child that visited that house left knowing ‘Doug off the TV’ – he lived in my house and he made us all smile. He still does.
I thought I’d take this opportunity to introduce myself a wee bit more and let you know the kind of things I’m working on at the moment.
I live in Northumberland, just a few short miles from the Scottish Border. I’ve lived here for 12 years now, with my partner and 3 teenage kids, although originally I come from Glasgow. I work as a community artist and arts & crafts tutor, which I love. I’ve been crafting as long as I can remember. I come from a huge creative family; woodworkers, mechanics, poets, illustrators, embroiderers, there was always something being made or fixed when I was younger.
Now, I pass the skills on to the next generation through my own kids and those I work with. There’s not a craft that I can think of that I haven’t at least tried! I’m not keen on card-making, or decoupage although I could do them if I had to. 🙂
I prefer making amigurumi and crochet toys mostly as I think they’re really cute, they make great presents, you can personalise them and so on. When my son was younger I knitted him a teddy bear just like Mr Bean’s and to this day he talks about it ( he gave it to his sisters a few years ago) I make blankets as well, recently I finished a mermaid tail Tunisian blanket, which is an amazing way to use up odd balls of yarn. My gran used to make crochet blankets (she taught me how to crochet) and my children still want their great granny’s “cosy” when they’re ill. It’s one of their precious items.
So, the things I’m working on just now. Like most creative people I have more than one W.I.P on the go because I get bored REALLY easily.
My youngest daughter wants to make her own prom dress, so that in the early stages just now. I’m working on a pixel blanket that was ordered recently – making over a thousand 3cm squares is no where near as much fun as it sounds! All those ends!
I made my first African violet hex crochet recently ( see I’ve been hexed!) and I’m creating a bundle of them to play about with and to establish the pattern in my muscle memory, I’m also working on preemie hats for a local hospital ( I do these while travelling) and some 20cm squares for the haberdashery department of John Lewis in Newcastle. These are being collected and used for charity items.
And I think that’s it for now, although my brothers birthday is in late August and I’m planning a Pokemon hat of some sort for him! Oh, and there’s a few designs I’d like to draft up & lalylala has a new pattern out & Heidibears & I saw a fab scarf recently that my mum would love, and my eldest daughter has asked for captain America sweater & & & …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… you get the idea!
agent crochet 