Of birds and eggs

The last weekends I was busy crocheting some Easter decoration: some little birds and some eggs.
And interestingly they are almost the same size. The birds are filled half with filling material and half with rice to give it better stability. Instead of safety eyes I used the ones to glue on, but that's not safe for little kids or pets as the eyes tend to fall off when touching.
The pattern for the little birdies including a little story can be found here.

For the eggs I followed this pattern here.

Two little owls and the beginning of a new blanket

The companion for the first owl is finished! I blogged about the first one here. Now there are two happy fellows who already found a new home. A friend of mine who came over to our place loved them so much I gave them to her.

So there is room for more amigurumi projects :-)

 

But first I am working on a new blanket project. It is a mixed pattern, stripy blanket. There are great tutorials out in the net and I am following the ones from the talented crocheters Hannah, Jules and Carina and Jessica. And my first few rows are looking like this:

I am using my stash of Schachenmayr Original Bravo that I blogged about earlier. I love working with this acrylic yarn as it is easy to crochet with, stitches are clearly defined, it is soft and machine washable. I chained 241 stitches using a 4 mm hook and doing the rows back and forth. Having so many colours to choose from I hope they will go together nicely.

Little owl

After crocheting one lovely hexagon after another for the last couple of weeks, trying out lots of new patterns and playing with colour combinations, I tried another amigurumi pattern once again.
But firstly here are the new hexagons I did for Natasja's crochet for kidneys project I blogged about earlier.

As it is time to send them in, I started to follow a pattern of the talented Becky for a little owl. Actually I thought the owl would be much much smaller. But for this I have to use a very small hook size and much lighter yarn. Still the size is ok for decoration. The little fellow below just measures 6 cm in height. I filled half the body with rice to give it better stability. The other half is filled with stuffing material.

 

Now I am crocheting another owl for the first one to have a companion :-)

Minion completed!

Another amigurumi finished! :-) This minion project consisted of  many details, tiny little things to crochet and to sew together, for example the fingers/ gloves. Did you know the minions only have three fingers? I wouldn't know if Stephanie from All about ami didn't write about it . I followed her pattern for the minion and got some inspiration for the face from Stephanie's crochet corner, a post with pictures of other crocheted minions.
Until I cut out the eyes from felt and stitched on the mouth it looked more like a giant medicine capsule. But a "face" changed it all! I used quite a bit of glue to attatch the eyes, the gloves and the pockets of the overall. With yellow yarn I did a little embroidery on the overall and it's pockets.

Then I put everything together. Contrary to the pattern I didn't used upper and lower eyelids. I crocheted them and tried to fix them onto the face. But I liked the look without eyelids much better. So this minion has none. The trademark goggles though are indispensable!

My sister wanted the minion to hold a heart just like in the picture from the crochet corner. So I crocheted a little heart too and fixed it onto the glove.

So there he is: minion with heart :-)

He is about 23 cm tall and needs something to rest his back in order to stand on his little feet. I should have used some rice to stuff the shoes instead of cotton only. But still, I love the minion very much.

Cute little amigurumi, looking forward to see the second part of your movie soon!

Minion - WIP

What happened to the minion, my new amigurumi crochet work in progress, I started two weeks ago? I finished the body part, stuffed it and added some hair. In order to keep the black strands of yarn from unravelling I used some glue and trimmed it. Then I started the overall which consists of little pieces of crocheted details. The main part of the overall though is crocheted like the body part, in rounds. Now I have to assemble the overall parts and continue with the arms, shoes and face.
The pattern for this amigurumi can be found on "All about Ami"

Minion - Work in progress

Have you seen the movie "Despicable me"? A computer-animated comedy film about a super villain who adopts three little girls who bring out the good side of him. I didn't know it until I visited my sister who watched the DVD with me. Actually the title and movie poster did not appeal to me at all. But the side characters, the minions, are very funny and adorable. And after watching the whole movie and all the extra features on the DVD I started to like them too. There are more mini film clips of the minions on YouTube and next year there will be a whole movie featuring the minions.

My sister and I then searched the web and found a pattern for a crocheted minion. Hurrah! Stephanie from "All about ami", the very talented amigurumi and crochet artist, wrote a pattern for a minion. As my sister loved it very much I promised to crochet one for her. So this is the start of a new amigurumi project.
I bought some yellow, blue, black and grey yarn and started to crochet the body. I just did on third of it and I am curious how it will turn out. What you see in the picture below is the upper part of the head

More Aminekos

I love to crochet amigurumis, especially aminekos (I wrote about them already here.) They are fun to crochet. The sizes range from 21 cm to 28 cm, depending on your hook size and yarn weight, so it just takes a few days to make them. I crocheted more of them until I got a whole gang of cats:

In fact, they take the place of one of our shelfs already. And Peter is starting to be afraid of me producing a plethora of crocheted cats which will slowly but steadily congest our whole book shelf.

No worries though, all of them will just stay temporarily with us, with the exception of the beige amineko, a gift from my sister which I will keep. The others will go to different homes of friends of mine to spread the amineko love.

Amineko Family

May I introduce you to Amineko or better to the Amineko family? I first heard about it from my sister who is a real cat lover. The word "Amineko" can be a colloquial abbreviation for 'amigurumi neko' which means anthropomorphic (designed with human characteristics) stuffed cat doll. 'Ami' refers to 'knitting or crocheting'.

Well, my sister bought an Amineko pattern book and crocheted the beige one with scarf. As I love amigurumis, I planend to crochet such a cat myself - and forgot about it. Then a few weeks ago I saw pictures of very cute Aminekos and wanted to do them right away. I bought some yarn (Red Heart Lisa) and a new crochet hook (3,0 mm) and searched the Internet. And how generous, the very talented Nekoyama, who wrote the pattern, has a website with an English tutorial! Thank you so much, Nekoyama!

It is a lot of fun crocheting Amineko. I did the second one right after finishing the petrol coloured one. This time with another yarn which is a bit thinner (Gründl Wolle Lisa). So our shelf is hosting a second amigurumi family (the first one is Totoro and his friends)

Totoro Family

Do you know the Japanese animated fantasy film "My neighbour Totoro"? It is very sweet and beautifully painted , suitable for young kids - and adults ;-) I have seen the DVD last year and I was so enchanted by the cute magical creatures that I was searching the Internet for a plush toy. What I found instead was even more fascinating: a crocheted Totoro! Instantly I wanted to crochet one myself, even though I had not taken up a hook in decades and the pattern was written in English in US crochet terms. I really had absolutely no idea how to do this. But the net is fantastic and provided me with tutorials and translations so I could manage to crochet Totoro and his friends, the little blue fellow and the tiny white one.

You can find the pattern here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/grey-totoro-amigurumi
Since I got to know Totoro via my sister who lent the DVD to me, I gave the first set of Totoros to her. And did a second set for myself:

My sister's cat loves Totoro too:

Crocheting the magical creature Totoro was the beginning of a renewed friendship between the crochet hook and me. (I have learned to crochet when I was six years old. My mother used to crochet curtains, table runners and beautiful dresses for me and my dolls. I just crocheted some trinkets for my toys but they never turned out as I wanted them to be, so I lost interest) 

I really enjoy to crochet, usually in front of the TV, it's so relaxing!

Crochet money owl

This is a birthday gift for a friend of mine who just wished for something for the piggy bank. So I did a crochet owl which carries a quiver...

with a note. In order for the owl not to lose the note in course of the party I crocheted a cover for the quiver as well.

The pattern for the owl can be found here: www.creadoo.com/Content82847 (it is written in German). The quiver with cover is my idea.