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!

Crocheted Crochet Hook Case

Last year I bought a set of Clover Amour crochet hooks as a Christmas present to myself. These hooks seem to be a favourite among crochet bloggers and I read some very positive reviews before I bought them. I'm really glad I decided to try them because they are AMAZING! Not only are they the most comfortable hooks I've ever used, they are just so cheerful! Looking at them in this picture is enough to make me happy!  

Even for someone who's lucky enough not to get bad cramping from crocheting, the ergonomic handles make such a difference.  I actually think they make me crochet faster! As I'm sure you can tell by now, I'm really happy with these hooks. The set that I bought didn't come with a case so one of the first things I crocheted after getting them was a suitably pretty hook case.

The pattern I used is from an Etsy seller named Living In Amethyst. 

The pattern from Living In Amethyst is the prettiest one I found. It features a lace cover in a contrasting colour to the body of the hook case which makes it both sturdy and pretty. There are some nice free patterns out there which are similar, like this one which uses similar construction and this one which also has contrasting colours.

The pattern isn't written for crochet hooks with ergonomic handles unfortunately and I had to make quite a few alterations to make the pattern work for what I wanted. It also didn't help that I wanted to use finer yarn that what the pattern called for. I made a ten hook case instead of the pattern's twelve or eighteen hook design. I also added an extra row to each of the hook pockets to make sure that the hooks fit inside. 

The hardest part of the pattern to adjust was the lace cover. It was probably me (definitely me), but I found that I couldn't make the lace cover work... I ended up taking the basic lace stitch and making up the rest. My case came out a little wonky as a result (although it was less wonky than my first attempt where I followed the pattern). I really like the idea of a lace overlay, although if I was to make this again I'd use a different lace pattern (or use the correct ply yarn!). This one is pretty, but my stitches were too tight and the result isn't lacy enough to show the contrasting colour underneath... 

My case definitely doesn't have the same polish and finish as the pattern I used. Looking back at the pictures on Etsy, mine really does look wonky haha.  Still it should keep my lovely new hooks nice and safe :-)

Crochet Doily and Mandala

Over the holidays I decided to crochet some doilies. There are lots of patterns for vintage, traditional looking doilies on the internet. While these are nice, the modern colourful doilies are a lot more fun! Here are my doilies:

The light blue one is a more traditional style doily crocheted in cotton thread. It was a lot easier to make than it looks! The pattern I used is available on YouTube and the video demonstrates how to crochet each row. I made another one of these in cream four ply yarn and gave it away as a Christmas present. 

Here is the second doily I made. This style is also called a mandala. It was so much fun to make! It took me just over an hour and I was excited every time I added another colour in. It probably helped that I was using lovely wool that I had just bought. It's called Naturally Loyal; here's a link to the site. (I bought a few skeins of this yarn in different colours and I highly recommend it so far!) The bright pink in this mandala is such a nice colour. It makes me happy every time a look at it :-)

This mandala design comes from the blog Made in K-town. It's another free pattern so you should definitely give this a try! It's a great way to use up leftover bits of yarn too.

The mandala now lives on my bedroom wall. I'd like to make a few more of these and hang them up together. I'd also like to try a different design, like these from the blog A Creative Being. She also has some free mandala patterns on her website :-)

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.