amigurumi Archives - Page 11 of 19

Eta, theta, iota…

Kappa!

Thanks to my darling husband for being the photog on this expedition.

A while ago I ordered some Japanese amigurumi books (and one embroidery book) on eBay. They arrived in two weeks, on an estimate of 3-6 weeks, wrapped splendidly with an origami paper crane. (On a related note, I wholeheartedly recommend Books Toron for all your Japanese book needs.)

One of the books was purchased almost entirely on the strength of the kappa pattern above. I learned a lot about amigurumi photos just from looking at the pages posted on eBay.

Accessorize! Shawls, hats, sunglasses, purses. Look at the little monkey with his banana-shaped satchel. Ack!

From Books Toron.
Make an army of your little guys and pose them all together. The only pattern in the book with the kappa that I cared about was the kappa itself, but I had to have that one, based on the cuteness of the picture.

Lions from Books Toron.
Make the background fun even if it is completely unrelated. My favorite was possibly the page below with amigurumi ostriches. The poses and background have nothing to do with ostriches, but they made me squee.

The four page pictures above are from various volumes of Amigurumi Collection, published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha.

I haven’t put any of these lessons into practice yet, but I’m certainly thinking about them. Between these sorts of observations and the various online photography courses and graphic design books I’m taking in, the way I think about composition of everything has changed. Once I am done with the curtain sewing job, my next major endeavor will be a light box and photography setup.

Mutant marshmallow bunny

My husband and I are in the habit of trading pet names of increasing ridiculousness, drawn from the grocery store. I occasionally like to crochet him representations of such names. This time, it was a chocolate-covered marshmallow rabbit. It came out a little stumpy, but since I wrote down the pattern as I went, here it is. As usual, crochet abbreviations and my pattern writing conventions may be found on the crochet reference page. Incidentally, I used sportweight yarn and a C hook (2.75mm). Note that I haven’t tested this at all.

Ears:
1. sc 4 in magic ring
2. 2sc, sc, 2sc, sc (6)
3-6. sc around (4 rnds)

Cut yarn on first ear and pull through. Leave yarn connected to second ear and continue crocheting with it. First, awkwardly sc the ears together with one sc (see photo below).

Head and body:
1. Sc around rem sts of ears to form one loop (10)
2. sc 4, 2sc, sc, 2sc, sc 2, 2sc (13)
3. 2sc, sc 2, 2sc, sc 6, 2sc, sc 2 (16)
4-5. sc around (2 rnds)
6. sc, 3sc, 3sc, sc 13 (20)
7. sc 2, dec, dec, sc 14 (18)
8. sc 2, dec, sc 13 (17)
9. sc around
10. *dec, sc 2* 4x, sc (13)
11. dec, sc 2, dec, sc 7 (11)
12. *2sc, sc* 5x, sc (16)
13-21. sc around (9 rnds)
22. sc 3, 3sc, sc 2, 3sc, sc 9 (20)
23. sc 6, dec, sc 10, dec (18)
24. dec, sc, sc3tog, sc, sc3tog, sc, sc 5 (12)
Stuff, sl st across bottom to close off.

Hippo Hunting

I like hippos. I like amigurumi. There should be ample hippo crochet patterns out there, no? No. At least, not realistic hippo crochet patterns. PlanetJune has one, but it’s not quite the shape I have in my head – in particular I like the hippos with their mouths open. Brigitte Read’s Super Super Cute Crochet has a cute open-mouthed hippo in it, but the pattern has errors. It starts at the rear and increases stitches so slowly that you get a hippo with a conical behind; I think there must be rounds missing from the beginning. The head/face pattern does what the photos indicate it should, but my “fix” of the body resulted in a spherical hippo:


Have you ever seen a hippopotamus fly?	Are you my mother?

I have been working off and on for quite some time to design a realistic open-mouthed hippo – with the sort of Chinese spoon shape to the jaws – but this weekend I decided to try for a thumbnail hippo, a tiny little guy. I ended up making two hippos Friday, neither of which is a final draft:

Believe it or not, the large one was supposed to be a thumbnail originally.

The bigger one has a better face shape, and just needs reproportioning to be something I would be happy showing to the world. The small one looks rather like a pig, and I plan to adapt the pattern both into a proper pig and into a proper hippo – and then make it in embroidery floss so it’s even smaller. I am extremely happy with how well my freehanding went in both cases, however.

They are on rocks because they are both chin-heavy.

Saturday I tried again with the wee one, and it came out better. I’m not sure I’m ready to call it final, but I think this time around someone looking at it would successfully guess it’s a hippo!

This time the rocks are in his body.