Crochet Update: It's a Giraffe!

My good friends, Heather and Kevin, told me they were going to come down to Florida for their vacation this year. I was stoked! They have a 3 year old daughter (whom I have never met), so of course I had to ask what her favorite animal is to make a welcome gift for her. Nothing wrong with buying a kid's affection, right? Right. Apparently, she loves giraffes, so I finally got to use the pattern I had :)

Isn't he cute?! I made this guy using the Giraffe pattern from Crocheted Softies by Stacey Trock. I used some butter yellow colored Red Heart Super Saver yarn I've had since I don't know when (that means I might have bought this in high school - holy cow) as well as Everyday Worsted yarn in Chocolate Brown.

The actual pattern doesn't have the little mouth piece - It's kind of hard to see in the photo, but it's there - I added it from the Alpaca pattern from the same book. I think the mouth makes them a little friendlier :)

His spots go all the way around. I tried to make them as evenly spaced as possible - the ocd freak in me really came out on that - but with all the decreasing it was pretty difficult so the neck is not as evenly spaced. Oh well, I doubt that a 3 year old will even notice :)

And look at the little tail! The pattern has you make it all in one color, but I liked the contrast of using the brown.

So, I was finally able to hand over this giraffe on Saturday to its new owner. Morgan definitely liked him. She named him Buddy 2 - her favorite toy is another giraffe named Buddy so when we asked her what his name was she called him Buddy 2. lol I take that as a good sign. After they left on Monday, my friend Heather (Morgan's mom) sent me this picture. I think this seals the deal and I know she likes him. I'm so glad this gift was a success :)

Craft Book Review: Crocheted Softies by Stacey Trock

In keeping with my Craft Book Review segment, I decided to grab one of my favorites off my shelf: Crocheted Softies by Stacey Trock!

This is a book filled with the adorable animals that I post so often. I am always singing Stacey Trock's praises, but hear me out - this is a great book!

The book starts off with instructions on basic crochet stitches you will need to complete the patterns. The tells how to start, stop, increase, decrease, bobble stitch, loop stitch, and more. The instructions are all clearly illustrated plus there is a written description (i.e. insert hook, yarn over, pull through, yarn over, etc), so even if you can't make out the picture (I always have a hard time with them), you can fall back on the written instructions so it's pretty fool proof.

After the instructions section it jumps right into the main attraction: The patterns! The book includes 18 different animal patterns, which are:

• Fins the Fish
• Sting the Jelly Fish
• Hootie the Owl
• Kai the Kiwi
• Lala the Panda
• Mango the Orangutan
• Maple the Moose
• Mike the Microbe
• Milton the Slowpoke Snail
• Mr. Crabby
• Peanut the Elephant
• Salty the Crocodile
• Sherwin the Alpaca
• Slithers the Snake
• Stretch the Giraffe
• Tuskegee the Walrus
• Waddles the Penguin
• Zork the Alien

Each pattern is very easy to make, but just in case they each have a difficulty rating at the beginning. Of course, the more simple animals are at the beginning (the penguin, panda, and orangutan) and they progress through the book. The other neat thing about this book is that Stacey made sure to represent each continent with the animals, so it's like a little trip around the world :)

I have made 6 patterns from this book, and I definitely plan to make them all one day :) These are my guys. All of the particulars about them can be found on the "My Finished Projects" page if you're interested.

I really love this book and others pick it up and give it a shot too! You really won't regret it :)

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 :)

Crochet Update: Meet Sylvia Snail

And yet another illness-related crochet project - this is Sylvia :)

I made her using the Milton the Slowpoke Snail pattern from Crocheted Softies by Stacey Trock.

Don't you love her shell?

And her little snaily foot? I think the foot is cute even inf it does make it hard for her to stand up straight :)

I modified the pattern because I knew I wanted to make Sylvia super girly. I used the mouth piece from the alien pattern and then when attaching it I pinched it down to make the dimple on the top of the lip and sewed the yarn through from side to side to tighten it up and make a great pucker. For her eye lashes, I came up through the head (before I stuffed it) made a zig zag leaving the strings long above the eye (I went up, down then up again). Next I tied the lashes into the head before cutting the loops apart and putting fray check on the ends. I threaded the yarn through the loops on the back of the eye balls, which I am honestly not totally in love with but if I hadn't done that they wouldn't have stayed up like they do. I love the result from the front though :)

I absolutely love how my snaily gal came out! I think down the road I will have to make her a man friend snail :)

Crochet Update: It's a Alien!

There is a new alien in town...

This guy, I call Mort :) Isn't he cute? I just love his mouth - that's my favorite part. This pattern is from the book Crocheted Softies by Stacey Trock and I just love it.

Sorry for the whited out eyes in the photos - photoshop did not like that is eyes are the same color as my backdrop.

Isn't his little skirt thing funny? It's the same method as doing the ruffle on Willis the Monster.

This guy was quite an experience to make. I got my first crochet related injury. I was attaching the pupil in his eye when I noticed a red dot on the white yarn. It took me a second but I realized I was bleeding! I had sliced my thumb open with the plastic brad that fastens the eye on - you make the whole eye first and then try to shove the pieces up inside to put them on so I couldn't see what I was doing. Luckily the yarn was white so I was able to quickly squirt some hydrogen peroxide on it to get the blood off and that worked like a charm. If that hadn't worked, I would have had to redo the entire eye and that would have sucked. Also, I really need to read my patterns better - the shaft of under the eye was supposed to be green like the body but I didn't realize it until it was way too late to fix it.

In spite of my construction issues I still think he came out super cute :) Another FreshStitches pattern for the win!