Crochet Update: It's Nemo!

When my cousin announced that his girlfriend was having a baby, I immediately knew I wanted to make them a stuffed animal :) The baby is a boy and he's due in July. They are making the baby room Finding Nemo/Under the Sea themed so I decided to try my hand at making a Nemo :)

He took some serious research and forethought to design. I used the Fins the Fish pattern from Crocheted Softies by Stacey Trock as the base and then just altered things from there. I thought I was being so smart using all yarn that I had on hand - Everyday Worsted in Black, Red Heart With Love in White and in Mango - that is, until I RAN OUT OF ORANGE!

Yep, that's right. I got as far as you see above - literally just had to make the tail - and I ran out of the orange yarn. I've never run out of yarn before, so I was really bummed. I had made the whole thing that you see above in just 2 nights, but with the yarn shortage it took another 3 weeks to finish! I ended up having to order the yarn from Joann's (instead of driving to Orlando just for that), so that's what took so long. Once I got the yarn I was able to finish it in about 1 hour and that's only because I would make a tail and then pull it all out because I didn't like the shape. I was so happy when it was finally done!

The Gordo helped me decide on eye ball size :) This was my husband's idea and the dog was less than thrilled about it, let me tell you, lol. But it was just too funny. The eyes are completely baby safe, made entirely of yarn with little french knots of white embroidery floss to add character. I hate just the plain black eyes (it makes them look kind of dead, in my opinion).

Anyway, back to the pattern. I basically just used the eyes and body shape from the pattern in the book and changed the rest. I eye-balled where the stripes should go and I made the center stripe twice as thick as the other two to be like a real clown fish. When the muzzle was done, I though the would look cute with a smile so I used excess black yarn and embroidered him one. I like how it came out :)

The color changes on the bottom came out nice a clean. Also here you can see the difference in the size of the fins. Nemo's right fin is his "lucky fin" and it's smaller than the other. I made sure that was pretty evident in my creation. I made the fins by making a chain of black about as long as I wanted, then doing 1 row of black all the way around the chain - as in on both sides of it. Then I would switch to orange and increase/decrease as I saw fit. That's how all the fin pieces were made and I think they came out pretty well. 

I'm seriously thrilled with how cute he is - I want one for myself! He's bigger than I thought he would be too, which means he's squish-able and awesome :) I'm bummed that I missed presenting him at the baby shower, but I hope they love him just the same! This is probably the most "designing" I've done thus far with my animals and I'm very proud of the result :)