Friday, May 29, 2009

Goomba's Gonna Eat You

Who doesn't love some good old Super Mario Brothers? Unfortunately I did not come up with the concept to do some amigurumi Mario Brothers stuff, but nonetheless, it's still a great idea and very fun. It's also a good way to get some guys to appreciate some yarn work. I've already made 1-up and power mushrooms for my husband and he keeps them at work for motivation.

At the start of my amigurumi craze, I wanted something quite easy to make and the goomba seemed like a good idea:



Unfortunately it requires a ton of felt work for the face detailing, but eventually I came up with this:


He doesn't look exact, but I thought it came out really cute. Kudos to Lion Brand Yarn for having the only yarn color close enough to a Goomba!

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Thursday, May 28, 2009

Jiji

I'm back and had a wonderful trip back home in New York! I've been inspired to do more amigurumi since my trip, but more on that later...

One of the projects I've been working on before I left is from a really old anime movie called Kiki's Delivery Service. It's from Hayao Miyazaki so it should be pretty well known, but it's one of my favorites growing up. It's pretty much about a girl, Kiki, who's a witch-in-training and she flies around on her broomstick delivering merchandise. Her cat Jiji is usually flying around on her broomstick with her and is the comic relief of the movie. I always liked Jiji.

Here's one of my inspiring pictures:



And a better picture of Jiji:



And here's my crochet version:


I think he came out super cute, although I really despise cutting out felt. His eyes kind of needed some felt detailing, but since I'm super OCD about making things perfectly round I'm never satisfied with cutting out felt by hand. My mom just bought a Cricut though and I'm excited to go over one of these days to use it for some precision felt cutting. Until then, you'll have to suffer with me. He does have a tail in the back that's not so visible from the picture.

Enjoy!

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Thursday, May 21, 2009

My Greatest Crochet Accomplishment Ever

My beautiful afghan throw (pardon the cruddy photography skills and blanket placement):



I made this from a book that I bought a really long time ago but never really tried to put it together. Every individual square is supposed to have a different pattern although somehow I repeated one by accident, but you can't really tell. Since purple is my favorite color I picked it out first and then chose some nice accent colors. I really liked how it came out and it has a permanent resting place on my couch. I also absolutely love a warm comfortable throw and probably own over a dozen of them for my tiny 2-bedroom condo. So it was definitely nice to be able to make one of my own.

It took me about a month to complete with tons and tons of yarn. I used a more expensive yarn, the Bernat Satin collection so I'm not so sure it's very cost effective, but definitely makes you feel accomplished, which is what I needed after a stressful time in my life. Crochet is really a great kind of therapy!

I'm taking a little break from the blog to go spend time in New York with my family, I'll be back next Wednesday, hopefully with some cute amigurumi!

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Wednesday, May 20, 2009

I'm a Bit Distracted..

I saw a cute Market Bag from my Lion Brand Yarn newsletter and I had to make it. So off to the yarn store I went. My store of choice is Loopy Yarns over on Polk and Dearborn. They have the best selection of super nice yarn (the kind that Michaels and Joann don't sell) and they're soo friendly. They also have a ton of space for their knitting and crochet classes and I would highly recommend taking a class over there. And even though I buy about 7 skeins of yarn, they will always wind it up for me!

A day later my bag is complete:




I only used a crochet hook one size smaller than suggested and it didn't seem to be long enough just following the pattern so i extended it by several rows. I initially was going to go with one color but when I got to the store and the two colors of yarn were hanging next to each other, I had to use both. There's a small strip of green on the handle just because I had a tiny bit of extra green yarn and didn't think it would be of any use for another project. I'll be off to New York on Friday and can't wait to use it as a travelling companion!

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Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Springtime Bear

When you live in Chicago long enough to experience a winter (especially the winters for the past two years, which have been extremely cold and snowy) you start to dream about the summer and wait for that one day for the weather to change. In my daydreams I crafted some crochet'd flowers and a butterfly hoping it will bring summer closer. I'm convinced that it worked and it's the reason why it didn't snow in May! Here's my inspirational Springtime Bear:


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Monday, May 18, 2009

Weekend Projects: Mr. Methane

My chemistry geekiness at its best:


I always wanted to do an organic structure, and of course the easiest to start with would be Methane, CH4. Just plain old methane looked kinda boring so I slapped on some eyes and a smirk and he became Mr. Methane. I think I must have readjusted his hydrogens a billion times to make it look right.

**not made to scale in atomic sizes, bonding length and bond angle symmetry, but optimized for maximum cuteness**

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Thursday, May 14, 2009

On My Way to Taiwan...

I got to visit one of my very many hometowns earlier this year in Taipei, Taiwan and came across this cute book in a Japanese bookstore in XiMenDing, a place where all the young kids hang out (and reminds me how old I am):




Hello Kitty Amigurumi apparently is all the rage, but I'm glad I bought my book from a real bookstore in Asia rather than Ebay or Etsy. The Kitties are all so cute! Although, I do think that a lot of the patterns have some kind of flaws which make the hello kitty heads kind of lopsided and slanted, but is easily fixed by modifying the pattern. And since I dont really read Japanese or even Chinese, I just manage to match up the characters to know what head or arm looks like. And here's a final product:


The Strawberry themed Hello Kitty is definitely one of my favorites.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Happy Chef

Inspired by my Top Chef addiction:



I especially like the eggs in the pan and his floppy spatula!

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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

The Black Bear

This is my cute little Black Bear using an original pattern. He's holding a beehive and I tried to accent it with some bumblebees and honey spilling out of the hive.



He came out pretty nicely considering he's my first bear!

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Friday, May 8, 2009

Its my first blog!

It's always hard to start blogging, but here it goes....

I figured I needed a form of sharing my amigurumi to friends and family and decided to branch out to everyone else. Hopefully there will be some cute pictures of my creations and knitting/crocheting adventures in the near future *crosses fingers*. I'll probably be getting into some sewing projects soon too. I'm taking an intro sewing class, which is a much needed experience since I probably haven't touched a sewing machine since Home Ec class waaaay back in middle school.

Here's to hoping I can keep it up!

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