Amigurumi of 2015

I have definitely slowed down on crocheting amigurumi since I accepted the fact that it makes my hands ache, but the benefit of waiting 8 months in between blog posts featuring amigurumi is that it looks like I am somewhat prolific!  Here are the amigurumi I have created since February:

Summertime Dolls #3 and 4

Spring Bunny

Kwazii, Kwazii, and Dashi (these patterns are amazing and worth every penny!!)

Frog (I just heard that a dog munched on this and I am going to attempt some repairs...)

Race car (I'm not happy with how the wheels turned out, but it was totally user error and not the pattern's fault!)

Hippo and Lion Loveys (both of these patterns are SERIOUSLY AMAZING and were written by genius pattern designers)

Yoda (from the incredibly awesome Star Wars crochet kit!!)

Chipmunk (Holy cow, how cute is he?!?)

And presenting.... MY FIRST KNITTED AMIGURUMI!!!!!  Wow, this bunny was hard for me.  Well, harder than crocheted amigurumi, anyway.  The bunny's dress marked the first (and still only time) I have attempted any sort of color work with knitting.  I think she turned out pretty nice!

I discovered, sadly, that knitting amigurumi also hurts my hands.  So, I have determined that I need to stop knitting and crocheting items in which the yarn needs to be pulled tightly.  Sad face.  I might try another knitted amigurumi with worsted weight yarn sometime with the hope that knitting this bunny hurt my hands because I was using sport weight yarn.  Hope springs eternal.

Katie's Captain Barnacles of the Octonauts

My previous attempt at crocheting Octonauts involved a lot of freehanding due to the lack of patterns available at the time (February 2013). I did an okay job, but I was unhappy with how the first few (like Kwazii and Captain Barnacles) turned out.  My foray into amigurumi had just begun, and I didn't know how best to shape body parts or how to go rogue to make small adjustments to an existing pattern that wasn't 100% what I wanted.  Since then, I have crocheted more amigurumi than you can shake a stick at, and when Niki's friend, Nancy, asked if I could make a Captain Barnacles for her daughter, Katie, I was eager to tackle the polar bear again.

Voila!

Yeah, his hat turned out a bit too tall, but other than that, I'm pretty happy!  I used a pattern that actually had been available during my previous attempt (but I had poo-pooed it for dumb reasons that were easily fixable).

I love the Octocompass that hangs on his belt.

Here he is, standing next to the Octocompass that comes with the toy Octopod (the ship that the Octonauts use as transportation and a home).

Compared to a picture from the cartoon (which is based on the hilarious books by Meomi), I think my Barnacles turned out much better this time!

I still need to work on making his head bigger in relation to his body, and his legs are a bit too chunky.  And don't even get me started on how hard it is to find that exact shade of marine blue in affordable yarn. But I'm getting closer!  It's hard to translate a drawing into a stuffed animal.  Even the official one sold on Amazon isn't all that accurate.  So, I should probably stop being so hard on myself!

Stay tuned for more Octonaut crochet projects in the next few months because I accepted the challenge to crochet all 8.  I'm pretty darn happy with how my original Tweak, Dashi, and Shellington turned out last year, but of course I had freehanded most of them and didn't write anything down.  Smooth move, Erin.

Erin's past projects

I first taught myself how to crochet right after grad school, in the summer of 2000, in an effort to combat boredom during the weeks between graduation and starting my job in Chicago.  For the next 9 years, I crocheted a lot of doilies and afghans, but I sometimes took a year off in between projects, so I wasn't all that prolific. Then, Sonia was born in the spring of 2009, and I stopped crocheting altogether.  My brain just couldn't handle childcare AND being creative.

But, as Sonia got older (she's about to turn 4), I started thinking about crocheting again.  Niki got me the Amineko book (which is utterly hilarious and awesome), so I picked up my hooks and gave crocheting another try.  The first blue amineko (that's Japanese for crochet cat) was a success, so I crocheted a little pink one.  Niki finally convinced me to give Pinterest a try during this past Christmas, and when I saw the insane amount of awesome free crochet patterns available on the internet these days, I got instantly and hopelessly addicted to crocheting once again.

Here are a few of the projects that I've made since Christmas:

Octonauts!!  Because Octonauts is a relatively new cartoon and series of books, the British and American crocheters of the world took it upon themselves to create their own toys.  People posted a bunch of free patterns!  I found Kwazii (the orange cat) here, Captain Barnacles (the polar bear) here, Tunip (the turnip-fish vegetal) here, Peso (the penguin) here, and I free-handed the rest. These guys were some of my first forays into the world of amigurumi (that's the Japanese word for crocheted or knitted plush figure), and now that I've completed a lot more amigurumi work, I kind of want to go back and re-do the Octonauts to make them better.  But Sonia barely even watches this show anymore (it was a brief love affair), so it seems like a bit of a waste.

Hello Kitty hats for my two favorite girls in the world, Sonia and Charlotte!  I found the pattern here.

Batman hat for Peter!  I found the pattern here.

After I made the Hello Kitty and Batman hats, I wanted to try to find a dragon hat to make for Sonia's BFF, Ike.  None of the patterns I found on the internet looked all that great (I couldn't even find a good pattern to buy!), so I decided to create one myself by copying an awesome crocheted dragon hat picture that I found on the internet. I used the Hello Kitty base hat design and then emulated the picture as well as I could.  Unfortunately, I only have cell phone pictures of the hat because I keep forgetting to take better pictures of Ike the Dragon!

Crocheted purse!  I made one for me and one for Niki....  She lined them both with her mad sewing skills.  Niki, we need to take pictures of the linings!  I bought the leather strap from Joann Fabrics and found the pattern for the purse here.

Ladybug backpack!  Free pattern from Red Heart Yarns, my favorite cheap yarn to use!

Owl change purse! I decided to try out using a clutch clasp that I found at Joann Fabrics by adding it to this pattern.

Ella's dinosaur purse!  This was completely freehanded because as far as I could tell, no crocheted dinosaur purse exists on the internet either for free or to buy....

Sonia's Easter basket.... Freehanded as well because I wasn't able to find a pattern that I liked.  I did model it after this pattern a bit.

Max's Yoda hat!  I still need to tweak the forehead wrinkles a bit, but it turned out okay.  I made it using a pattern posted on a craft forum, and the pattern wasn't entirely complete or detailed, so I had to do a lot of extrapolating.

This post just scratches the surface of all the crocheting I've done over the past 4 months....  When I find or take more pictures of my projects, I'll post them!