Crochet Chameleons

My latest crochet addiction has been crocheting chameleons.

I've made four in total. The green one was my first attempt, followed by the multi-coloured purple one, then finally the two smaller, mirror image chameleons (although not actually mirror image because I gave one of them the wrong coloured head spike, oops).

The pattern I used is by Ami Amour and is available on the Amigurumi Patterns.net website. I was admiring this pattern for a long time before I decided to buy it. The pattern is obviously super cute, but I was also intrigued by the construction of the pac-man like mouth. The pattern comes with easy to follow instructions, with plenty of photos to show you how to create the open mouth. It was a lot simpler than I was expecting, but it is difficult to create a ninety degree angle. The mouths of my lizards don't bend a great deal; it's the top lip that forms the angle instead.

While the pattern is easy enough to make, I did find it took a while to sew all the pieces together in a way that I was happy with. In particular the legs need to be sewn on strongly to give the chameleon enough support to stand. As you can probably tell from the pictures, this didn't always work out for me - these poor lizards are not very good at staying on their feet! 

I had a lot of fun making these and they make a nice addition to my amigurumi collection. The pink and mint green ones live on my computer screen now (although they are regularly being knocked off by my cat when she decides to stand in front of my screen - which is often at the moment. Grrr.)

For the first time in a long time I'm not sure what to crochet next... I need some crochet inspiration! Let me know if you've seen any cute patterns lately because I'd love to give something new a try :-)

Crochet Catch Up

Soooooo it's been a long time since I've written a blog post... an embarrassingly long time... 

While I haven't been blogging, I've definitely been crocheting. To get back into it I wanted to catch you up on all the crochet I've been doing over the past few months. 

And here they are!

The first amigurimi I made was the pink bear and white bunny. I had been admiring the Cutie Bears pattern by Ami Amore for a while and finally decided to buy it earlier this year. I really love the proportions of this bear with its oversized head! I will be making some more of these as they are very quick to make and provide instant cuteness. It's also a really easy pattern to modify. I made a bunny with the pattern by changing the ears. I made four identical bunnies for Easter this year (three to give away and one for meeee!).

The second of these projects I made were the kangaroos. I made these for my cousins' kids when I visited them during my holiday to England back in June. The pattern is Katy and Kelvin kangaroo which I bought here. The pattern includes a baby kangaroo that sits in the pouch but sadly I ran out of time to make them. I ended up making five of kangaroos, one of which I was rushing to finish in the airport before going home! 

The next project was the crochet burger or as my friend named him, Junkfood Tuesday. The cool thing about this ami is its seamlessness. No sewing required! I made this with a friend who was learning how to crochet. It was a tough project to start with but it was great for teaching the basics of making amigurimi as it included lots of different techniques. The pattern is available for free too :-)

Directly after making the burger I made the slightly creepy looking ghost creature. This ami is a Japanese tree spirit from the movie Princess Mononoke. This crochet version has more cute and less creepy than the ones in the movie though. I made this for a friend who came to my house and was so allergic to my cat that I felt I needed to make it up to her with crochet. He now lives underneath a mushroom shaped lamp at my friend's house where I'm sure he is very happy. The pattern is free from Amigurumei.

The next project I made was a cherry blossom garland for my friend's hens party. I made this in a day and was really happy with how it turned out. I used two different patterns to make the flowers. Sadly I didn't note them down, but they were both free patterns that I found online. One day I will make one of these garlands for myself; it just looked so pretty hanging on my calendar!

The last ami I made was the blue triceratops. I made this for my little brother's birthday. He's currently going through a Jurassic Park phase and I couldn't resist crocheting him a dinosaur. The triceratops was my favourite dinosaur as a kid so picking a dinosaur was an easy decision. (Does anyone else remember the Land Before Time movies with the baby triceratops? So cute!). The pattern is by Awkward Soul on Etsy.

And that's everything I have crocheted since my last post... almost! I do have another project to share once I have taken some nice pictures.

Hopefully this marks the end of my blogging drought. I'm planning to blog a lot more regularly with more crochet and also trying something different with a few book reviews. (I have recently become addicted to watching book reviews on YouTube and I'm inspired to give book reviewing a go!)

Fingers crossed that I will be back soon with another post!

Crochet Pony

Have you ever found a crochet pattern that you couldn't stop making? I have! Ever since a preview of this pattern was posted I knew that I was going to make a few of them. The pattern in question is the crochet pony from All About Ami. 

My first pony.

Stephanie from All About Ami designed the pattern to celebrate Chinese New Year as 2014 is year of the horse!

My second pony.

I've found two other free amigurumi patterns released for Chinese New Year if you're interested:

1. Horse Amigurumi by Little Things Blogged; and
2. Xiao MaEr Giddy by Ohana Craft.

I took these pictures close to Valentine's Day.

What makes Stephanie's pattern so unique is the crocheted mane. Most crochet or knitted horses have manes made from strands of yarn. I much prefer the solid, puffy manes in this pattern as the other kind can end up looking a little threadbare. 

Ponies four and five.

The design has so many cute details; the tiny curl of the mane, the pot belly, the curled eye lashes, the curved hooves and the adorable flame shaped tail. I'm sure you can see why I'm completely smitten with this pattern!

So far I have made five ponies. After making the first two ponies I learned a few things that make the design work a little better for me. 

Firstly I cut out round 4 when crocheting the head as I found it was making the piece too pointy. I like the look of the slightly rounder head better and found that I kept squishing the muzzles of my first pony in to achieve this shape. 

Pony number five, my smallest pony.

The second tip I've found is to use white yarn (or the same colour as the body) to sew the mane to the head. With my first pony I used the tail of the mane to attach it and the stitches ended up being visible. Using white yarn seems to help with this.

Pony family.

I'd also suggest using a thicker yarn or a bigger hook when crocheting the mane. The manes on a few of my ponies are a little small. The manes definitely look cuter when they are bigger and have a nice, pronounced curl at the front. 

I'm not ready to stop making this pattern yet. At least one more pony and then I'll stop... Maybe. There are just so many possible colour combinations!

The whole family!

Finished Object Friday: Amigurumi Giraffes

My first crochet project for the year!! Last week I decided to make a present for my friend's daughters. I'd actually started to make something last year only to realise that it wasn't a very baby safe pattern due to the safety eyes. Ooops! I will have to keep that project for myself! I spent some time browsing the internets for a baby friendly amigurumi pattern and settled on these amigurumi giraffes by Irene Strange. 

If you find yourself in the same position as me and want to know what options you have for baby friendly amigurumi, Stacey from Fresh Stitches has written a post about it here. Crocheted, embroidered, felt or french knot eyes are all good options. I liked this pattern as the embroidered eyes are a main feature of the design.

The pattern is are called Dreamy Giraffes and I found it on the amigurumipatterns.net website. They are so adorable! I hope you can see that their sleepy eyes in the pictures... the boyfriend thought that I had forgotten to put eyes on them! 

The pattern was easy to make and very quick. A lot of giraffe patterns require that you crochet circles to sew on - which would take forever! The spots on these giraffes are sewn on, which is not only faster, but allows you to make irregular shaped spots like a real giraffe... not that looking like real giraffes is particularly important to me as I made these in very unnatural colours! 

They turned out a lot smaller than I was expecting so I wouldn't give them to a very young child. They seem alright for a 2-3 year old though.  

It's a really sweet pattern. I'll have to make one for myself at some point! 

I'm linking up with Tami's Amis for Finished Object Friday. Have at look at her blog for more finished projects :-) 

Nerdy Adventures: Catch Up

It's time for a Nerdy Adventures catch up! It's almost been two months since I last blogged here (I've been a bit better at keeping my Tumblr blog up-to-date, but not a lot). Now that the new year is upon us, I plan to be a lot more dedicated to my blog. So here's what's been happening over the last two months:

Crochet

In November the awesome Amigurumipatterns.net hosted a design competition. This site has a great collection of patterns from loads of designers and I love their Zoomigurumi pattern books. The theme of the competition was "animals at work" and I couldn't resist entering because animals wearing clothes are the cutest. I decided to adapt my mini pug pattern into a bigger version which I could "dress up". I made my pug into a detective (I'm not really sure why...I originally wanted to make a roller-derby octopus or a bureaucrat bunny).

He's supposed to be a modern private investigator rather than a Sherlock Holmes type, hence the police tape which reads "crime scene - do not cross". I called him Dresden after Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. I'm so happy with him. I'm still amazed that I manged to get him finished in time for the competition deadline as I spent most of my free time in November on Nanowrimo. 

December was all about crocheting penguins. Sadly I didn't take enough photos of my penguins as all but one of them were gifts. I had lots of other Christmas projects planned but they were all taken over by penguins! This is the first one I made.

The pattern is available for free from Pierrott Yarns. I liked this guy so much I made a load more. As usual with crochet gifts, I finished them last minute and didn't have a chance to take pictures of them in the light box.

I also made a larger penguin for a Christmas present using this pattern, which I adapted to have the same face as the smaller penguins. This guy turned out really well - it's a shame I don't have proper photos of him. He has adorable webbed feet which can't be seen in the one photo. Maybe I'll try this pattern again sometime.  

Excuse the plastic bag is the background... 

Gaming
I have so many games to play. So many. It's actually kind of crazy. The boyfriend gave me a PS3 for Christmas and I bought loads of PS3 exclusive games to play through. I've also got a few games for 3DS and PC to play as well. This post would end up being way too long if I talked about everything I'm playing at the moment, so I'll just focus on the two games that I actually managed to finish in December.

The first was The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds on 3DS. The game received really great reviews which I think are justified. The game is set in the same world as the Super Nintendo Zelda A Link to the Past, which I didn't know until I was playing it and started to feel like "hey, I've been here before." The game feels like it's a return to the "old school" Zelda games that I used to play on Gameboy compared to the previous titles on DS. I was expecting just another Zelda handheld game with and was pleasantly surprised. Link's new ability to turn himself into a painting seemed really silly when I first read about it, but it's actually a clever mechanic and introduced some interesting puzzles. The best part about the game however is it's emphasis on freedom. It sounds like a simple thing, but this is the first Zelda game that lets you attempt dungeons (other than the first one) in any order, and it really improves the experience. Instead of finding equipment in each dungeon that allows you to open the next area to explore, you are able to rent all the items in the game practically from the start. Several of my friends were playing the game at the same time and we all did things in a different order. I hope future games will continue with this. I definitely recommend playing this is you haven't already!

The second game I finished was the indie game Gone Home which I got in the Steam Sale - yay! I've wanted to play this for a while but the price tag of $20 was way too high for a game that is about two hours long. This is one of those games that some people like to argue isn't a game because all you really do is wander around a house and examine objects and listen to diary entries. Even if this isn't a game it's a worth while experience if you can buy it on sale. I don't want to talk about the story too much because it is a narrative based game and a lot of the fun of playing comes from unraveling it's mystery. Basically you take the role of Katie who returns home from an overseas holiday on a dark and stormy night to find that no one is home. The house is filled with objects that can be picked up and examined including books, letters and tissue boxes. The writing feels genuine and the voice acting is well done. Although it wasn't exactly what I was expecting in terms of the story, I'm glad that I finally played it.

Reading
I didn't read a lot during November and December for two reasons; firstly I was using up all my normal reading time making sure that I wrote 1667 words a day for Nanowrimo in order to reach the 50,000 word count and secondly because the book I was reading at the time was really long! It's happened to me a few times now where I've bought a book on Kindle only to realise how long it is when I've been reading for an hour and haven't even advanced the book by 1% (it must be noted that I do read pretty slowly :P). The book was The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. The book is essentially the life story of a famous/infamous hero. It starts with a framing narrative which sets up the legend surrounding the main character Kvothe, who has changed his name and is working as an innkeeper in an obscure village, and then then allows him to tell his story in first person. The book was a little slow to begin with, but from the moment Kvothe begins telling his story I was hooked. It's long and detailed and the story doesn't have a great deal of focus in terms of plot, but it's also engrossing and I found myself really invested in the story because I spent so much time with the character. It also has great world building and lovely writing which is at times poetic and moving. I will definitely be reading the next book in the series as the story is far from over when the first book ends.

Now I am pretty much up-to-date! As a final note I have to post my Nanowrimo winners badge because - I finished my 50,000 words. Woooooooo!! Now I just have to start writing it again...

   

Nerdy Adventures: 3 November 2013

First off, my adventures in Crochet this week...

I know it's late but,

Pretty much everything I have crocheted this week has been Halloween related. We had a Halloween raffle at work and I was asked to crochet something to make it Halloween themed. I made another tiny ghost using A Morning Cup of Jo's adorable pattern. I finished it in no time at all and thought that I should make something else as well. I decided on a pumpkin because it seemed like the easiest thing to make quickly. After a quick Google image search I found that there were loads of pumpkin designs out there. Lots of them appeared to be created by crocheting a ball and using a long tail of yarn pulled through the centre to create segments. The pumpkin turned out to be another really fast project. With the addition of a felt face, my pumpkin became a perfect Halloween ornament. I'm pretty impressed with it! The ghost and pumpkin in the picture aren't actually the ones I made for the raffle, I gave them away before I could take any pictures! To make up for it, I crocheted another pumpkin yesterday. This time I took LOTS of pictures.

Here is a quick tutorial on how to create the pumpkin shape.

The pattern is very customisable. You could use a crochet ball of any size or proportion. This one starts with six stitches, increases up to four stitches between every increase and has six rows of single crochet before decreasing back down to six stitches. The stalk is made by picking up a stitch in the centre between each segment. The stalk on my pumpkin has six stitches and is crocheted three rounds high.

I want to acknowledge that this design is heavily inspired by other pumpkins I found online. Even though I didn't specifically use these patterns the pumpkins from hip2thrift and Little Things Blogged where definitely inspiration - both are free patterns too if you'd like to make your own! Also these ones from Mohustore, which are so sweet and adorable, like all her designs!

***

My gaming adventures this week have been fairly scattered. I spent a lot of my week nights working on Halloween crochet and going out for dinner (which is actually rare for me on a week night, but this week I went twice!). Despite not having a huge amount of time for gaming I did start three new games. The first was Costume Quest. I had heard of this last year but I didn't have a chance to play it (probably because it was only on Xbox live and PC at the time). It was on sale on the app store for Halloween and I couldn't resist. The game is a cute little RPG about a brother and sister who go trick or treating and find that their night is ruined by monsters who are trying to steal all the candy. It sounds pretty childish, but it's cute and funny and the game's heroes turn into giant manifestations of their costumes when they go into turn based battles. I played the game for an hour or so on Halloween and it felt like exactly the right thing to do. At some point I'll find some time to finish it.

The next game I started playing is also by the developers behind Costume Quest - Double Fine Productions. It's called Middle Manager of Justice! and its available for free in the app store and on Android. This one is definitely worth checking out. It's hilarious (especially if you have worked in any kind of bureaucratic setting before) and is pretty good for a free to play game. The basic idea is to hire heroes, train them and send them off to battle bad guys, all the while making sure that your heroes stay motivated and the citizens under your protection are happy. I'll definitely be going back to this one when I have the time. One tip for new players: make sure you buy a rec room as soon as possible or you will have a lot of sad heroes on your hands!

Finally I have one more game to discuss; a point and click adventure called Lilly Looking Through. This one was on sale on Steam. I watched the trailer and was charmed by the beautiful animations and art style. The game has a demo, which I immediately downloaded. It's a standard point and click adventure about a small girl who is trying to rescue her friend; nothing new there. The puzzles are based around a mechanic of moving from past to present by putting on a pair of magic goggles. I don't feel like this mechanic is new either, but it is a nice touch in this game. The real strong point are the charming animations. Real care and attention has been put into all of Lilly's movements and gestures as she interacts with her environment. It's just gorgeous. I've only progressed through the first six puzzle scenes but I'm enjoying it so far though. I definitely want to see Lilly through to the end of her adventure.  

***

Despite all the gaming and crocheting I still found time for reading Dark Currents: Book One of the Agents of Hel series by Jacqueline Carey. I read this book for an online book club that I follow. I don't want to say the name of it because it's kind of rude and I worry that all the amigurumi on my blog would attract young readers and this is definitely an adults' book club. For age appropriate fans of fantasy romance books however, this book club is definitely worth your time!! It's hosted by Felicia Day (known for the Guild and her YouTube channel Geek and Sundry). The group has a panel discussion about a new book each month and posts it on YouTube. There are also forums on Good Reads to discuss the books.

Dark Currents is one of the better books that the club has read (in my opinion at least!). It's an urban fantasy murder mystery where the central character is a half-demon liaison to the Norse goddess Hel. The book strongly reminded me of the Sookie Stackhouse series, which I've read about six or seven of before I became bored with them. It's the same kind of idea; supernatural creatures coexisting with humans in a contemporary setting, multiple potential love interests... I prefer Jaqueline Carey's writing style however. I really enjoyed Dark Currents and will probably keep going with the series at some point.

That's it for this week. I'm not sure how full next week's post will be because Nanowrimo is in full swing! I've kept up with my word count so far, fingers crossed that I don't start slacking off!

Have a good week.
-Em.

Nerdy Adventures: 27 October 2013

Crochet...

It was a productive crochet week this week! I finished the tiny ghost pattern by A Morning Cup of Jo and made up my own pattern for a baby Squirtle. Here are a few pictures. I even made a Pokeball to brighten up the pictures.

Finished Object Friday: Tiny Crochet Ghost

I don't normally pay a lot of attention to Halloween; it's not really celebrated by anyone over the age of seven in Australia. For me it's an excuse to buy chocolate and lollies "just in case" someone in costume shows up... but more often than not I end up eating the whole lot myself and that is perfectly OK with me :-P This little ghost pattern from A Morning Cup of Jo is starting to change my mind about Halloween. I found the pattern yesterday and couldn't resist making it that evening. 

It's a great pattern; so cute and SO quick to make. I don't think I've ever finished a crochet project in one sitting before. It took me just over an hour from start to finish while watching TV. The best part of the design are the tiny arms which are created with a chain. That means the whole ghost is crocheted in one piece and there's no sewing required (aside from the mouth). It's also a great pattern for using up leftover white or cream yarn, which, for some reason, I seem to have a lot of! I will definitely be crocheting more tiny ghosts in the future. I'd like to make a garland of them in different sizes... maybe they could even have little hats!! Hmm.

The pattern suggests that you use pink fabric paint for the cheeks. I didn't have any so I used some felt instead. Luckily I had some ribbon lying around that I could use to turn the ghost into an ornament. (This might sound strange but a lot of the ribbon I collect comes from those weird little loops you get in dresses and shirts that are supposed to help your clothes stay on the hanger but end up annoying you by sticking out or making you itch. I've been cutting them out for years and one day decided I might as well keep them and put them to use... that's not that weird right?). 

I forgot to mention this is a free pattern. I recommend that you grab yourself a copy and whip up your own little ghost to decorate your house this Halloween!

Thanks for stopping by. If you'd like to see more finished objects, check out the blog Tami's Amis :-)

Crochet Catbug from Bravest Warriors

Have you heard of the YouTube series Bravest Warriors? I discovered it a few months ago and was instantly hooked. The series was created by Pendleton Ward who also created Adventure Time and it has the same wacky humour as the earlier show. For me the best part of the show is Catbug, a hyper adorable ladybrid who's voiced by a six-year-old (or there abouts).

Here is a picture of Catbug from the show. He's the cutest!

As soon as I saw him I decided that I wanted to crochet my own Catbug. After Googling "crocheted catbug" I found that there were already a few examples out there and even a couple of patterns, but none of them were exactly what I wanted. So I made up my own crochet Catbug!

I'm Catbug!

I'm really happy with how he turned out! I tried to reproduce this picture:

In one of the episodes of Bravest Warriors Catbug brings freshly baked peanut butter squares from another dimension and wears these cute pink gloves to carry them. The gloves are removable. 

I used felt to make the ladybird spots on Catbug's back, only I think I went overboard and added too many spots! Next time I will crochet spots and sew them on to avoid the raised edges on the felt circles.

The most difficult part of the whole design was embroidering the face. I usually use safety eyes for my amigurumi, but I'm glad that I gave stitching a go for this project.

I'm going to attempt to recreate my Catbug pattern and share it on this blog because the world needs more Catbugs! Aww, Catbug always makes me smile :-)

What is Amigurumi?

Most of what I crochet can be classified as amigurumi. As not everyone is familiar with the amigurimu style, I thought it would be a good idea to start this blog by answering the question - what is amigurumi?

The craft of making amigurumi came from Japan. The word amigurumi is a combination of the Japanese word ami meaning knitting or crochet and nuigurumi which means a "stuffed doll" (thanks wikipedia!). It's pronounced "ah-mee-goo-roo-mee". 

While the literal meaning is fairly broad, amigurumi tend to be animals or objects with anthropomorphic features. Typical amigurumi style is usually cartoonish and cute; animals have big eyes and disproportionately large heads and inanimate objects have happy, smiling faces. 

Amigurumi is most closely associated with crochet, but they can be knitted too. There are no real rules about what kind of crochet/knitted toy can be considered amigurumi, it's all about creating something that is cute and fun.

Here are some examples of amigurumi I have made in the past:

Lark the Monster by Tracey Strock

Modification of Spring Bunnies by Stephanie Lau

Snuggles the Penguin by Stephanie Lau

Spring Bunnies by Stephanie Lau

Tiny Chickens by Anna Hrachovec

Jack Russell from Ami Ami Dogs 2

Amineko Pattern

These patterns come from a range of different designers - some are free patterns :-) Click below the pictures for a link to the pattern page. The cat pattern is my own modification of the Spring Bunnies pattern (the blue bunny). 

Each design shows the amigurumi style in its own way and this is only a very small sample of the possibilities! Simply type "amigurumi" into Google to see the vast range of cute designs out there.