Nerd Dollz

I don't normally do this, but I found this Etsy shop when I was browsing "Supernatural" things (talk about going down the rabbit hole... It all started because A Dog's Life Animal Rescue posted a Groupon, that charity coincidentally being one that Jared Padalecki endorses [I chose the charity as the one I wanted to donate some of my ebay proceeds to since it seemed cool and I <3 my dog... and then see that there is a random Supernatural connection to it, haha]).

I digress.

I found this shop, NerdDollz, on Etsy. Normally, I see something like this and am a bit "meh" about them, but not only are these dolls seemingly very well made and designed, but they are realistically priced. (I am NOT a fan of overpriced sh!t on Etsy... it, IMO, goes against the community feel). I am very tempted to buy myself an early present of these:

How awesome are those?! And they're just, like, $70 for all 3.

Also quite fabulous is this:

Yes, that is Ezio Auditore from Assassin's Creed. Cute, right?

Think of a nerdy character and this shop seems to have it! Star Wars, Harry Potter, Kick Ass, Avatar, Shrek... even Twilight. And I'd imagine the seller is open to suggestions as well.

I've seen other amigurumi (though not Sam, Dean & Cas) and am seriously inspired! I'm going to have to see if I can make anything nearly as cool (maybe as gifts, but also maybe just for me). And if & when I am unable to (whether it be skill or time lacking), I'm going to have to pay the awesome Shannon Nix from Shawnee, KS to make me some!

Speaking of fantastic crochet nerd amigurumi, I also wanted to plug PigCorner.com's ami patterns... She, too, has an Ezio that is awesome:

Pattern and video tutorial found here.

Creative and crafty nerds are so fun!

Pinterest & Fun and simple Hawaiian Flowers

So after seeing how fun and useful Pinterest appeared when my SIL, Beth (Paired Hearts/The Wondercraft), and Jesyka (Visual Vocabulary) were using it, I requested an invite of my own. 24 hours or so later, I was invited to join. It's a fantastic tool to organize inspiration boards of images! Where was it 2.5+ years ago when I was planning my wedding and had to create folders on my computer to organize images (favors, hairstyles, wedding dresses, etc.)?!



I've been enjoying creating boards and pinning things, like inspiration for crochet projects, design ideas for the house, "No Evil" figurines (I collect them), photos of wolves I like... I sent my husband an invitation to join too, and he's enjoying using it for things like design ideas for painting miniatures (D&D, tanks, etc.), reference photos for work/other projects. All in all, it's pretty darn cool!

And you can follow others' boards when you find people who have (a) board(s) you enjoy.

So, while I was looking in Google images for cool crochet things, I found these Hawaiian Flowers by Sarah London (and her blog, which has been added to the list of blogs I will follow!). She added the pattern in 4 parts as a mystery motif, but I've grabbed each of those and you can find them below.
Note: ***NOT MY PATTERN***

Written in British/Australian crochet, so double crochet is the American single crochet, etc.

Hawaiian Flowers by Sarah London
Chain 1, work 12 double crochet into ring, join with a slip stitch into first double crochet.
Fasten off.

Join a new colour into any double crochet, chain 1, work 1 double crochet  into the same stitch, * work 1 double crochet into the next stitch, chain 11, 1 double crochet into the same stitch, work 1 double crochet into the next stitch, chain 1, 1 double crochet into the next stitch, repeat from * around, omitting last 1 double crochet into the next stitch and join with a slip stitch into the first double crochet.

Join a new colour into any double crochet, chain 1, work 1 double crochet  into the same stitch, * work 1 double crochet into the next stitch, chain 11, 1 double crochet into the same stitch, work 1 double crochet into the next stitch, chain 1, 1 double crochet into the next stitch, repeat from * around, omitting last 1 double crochet into the next stitch and join with a slip stitch into the first double crochet.

Work a round of double crochet in a contrasting colour as such:
Work 9 double crochet up one side of the petal, chain 3, work 9 double crochet down the other side of the petal, work 1 double crochet into chain 1 space of round two, continue around, join with a slip stitch to end.
Fasten off.

More baby hats! Plus PATTERN: Bunny hat

I believe the last thing I was talking about making on here was the owl hat I was making for Kami. Well, I finished it! I was able to give it to her last week while at a friend's bridal shower.

Pretty sure I mentioned that it was inspired by another designer's hat, which is why I don't really feel right posting the pattern (I don't know how close it is to hers - I don't know what hers looks like - but I did look at photos of her design and try to create a pattern using it). There were some aspects of it that I really, really liked and will be mimicking in other hats, like the braids on the earflaps (made shorter for little ones just in case!) and the cute bits hanging off the ears.

Of course, it all helps that Kami is just so darn adorable. I mean, look at that little face! :)

I also made a little pink bunny hat with a face on it for my other friend's newborn daughter, Hannah, but didn't get a photo of it (yet? hehe). And... then I made another one, out of cotton this time, for my nephew, Orion. It's pretty simple, as one would expect a bunny hat to be, but I like how it turned out!

You can get the pattern at a discount if you like my facebook page and then click here (Regular Price is $1.30, Discount makes it $1):

Crochet Pattern Organization

I have no idea how everyone else organizes their patterns (maybe just on computers?), but I wanted to share my way. :)

For months (like, 12!), I was storing my favorite patterns on my kindle, mostly in PDF form. But the text of the PDFs was always too small, so I had to turn my kindle horizontal. Plus, at the time, the kindle didn't have their "collections"/folder option, so it was a PITA to organize them with all of my other ebooks. I also have a "Crochet Patterns" folder on my laptop where I have them saved into categories. And, of course, there is Ravelry.

But, and maybe I'm just old-school, I do enjoy having things like patterns in physical form. It's nice to be able to flip through my patterns and especially nice for when I don't have access to power (e.g. when the power went out last year while I was crocheting some play food and my laptop battery was crap and would die after 10 minutes without being plugged in and my kindle wasn't charged...).

So, how do I organize my patterns?
In this:

 

My crochet pattern binder!

It's a smaller 2" binder, measuring in at about 7" x 8" that I picked up at Office Depot for about $4. I'm still trying to figure out what type of cover I want for it, so excuse it's boring blue-ness! Inside, I have a bunch of those free patterns you can grab at Joann and Michael's and some 5"x7" and 5"x8" index cards where I print out or write out patterns.

Pocket has lined paper for notes & lists
(back pocket has free patterns that are for knitting - inspiration, mostly)

My "Home/Kitchen" section

My "Holiday" section, shown to show the design I use for the index cards

I only just today added the tabs! My binder was a mess before, but I hadn't found any dividers that would work all that well (A-Z is pretty useless). My index cards are the larger ones too, so I had to find something larger than them while small enough to fit my binder.

A project that I can't WAIT to finish so that it gives me more free time is an order I am fulfilling for 20,000 origami lucky stars. I'm about 8,000 stars in now, but I need to devote about 4 straight hours a day to folding them, minimum (that's about 500 stars a day). Why am I mentioning this here? Well, I ordered the paper from a printer (no way was I printing 500 sheets of paper here at home! WAY cheaper and faster to use a professional). And I had that paper pre-cut to be 5.5"x8.5". Ever 100 sheets of paper, there were cardboard sheets. Not only am I able to upcycle them, but they were just about the perfect size!

So I opened up photoshop and quickly made some colorful tabs with the sections I figured I'd need and printed them out onto an index card that hadn't printed correctly (yay for more recycling). Cut those out and taped them onto the dividers (glue would have likely been better, but I wasn't that patient). And voila!

That last one, Afghans, was one that I sort of forgot about when I was designing...
So it gets the handwritten treatment!

I want to do something with the blah brown-ness of the cardboard, but, like the blueness of the cover, it's got to wait until I decide what I want to do with it. I'll probably just cover the cardboard with scrapbook paper on the fronts.

Why are baby's hats so darn fun to make?

I've finally started on the Owl hat my friend wanted for her daughter, inspired by one she found online. I have several photos to go by and am really trying to recreate the hat as best I can. So far, I think I've done pretty darn well! And I'm not sure that it makes sense that people are trying to sell patterns for similarly designed hats for $5-10! IMO, patterns should only be sold if they required a bunch of frogging to design/create because, otherwise, it was easy enough to figure out that most anyone should be able to do it! If one really wants to charge for their pattern and it's pretty easy, make it a couple bucks at most! Or, at least, allow people to sell items they create with the simple pattern if you must charge them $10 for it.

I don't mean to be a tease, but I'll post my pattern (for free) when I am done and can post some photos along with it. Stay tuned!

Also on the agenda, a couple of stegosaurus hats for etsy customers. It's seemingly a hit among moms with boys, despite it being pretty darn cute on little girls too! (if a dinosaur can be blue and orange, why can't it be pink and purple?). I'm working on a green one with dark brown plates (spikes?) and then on to a light green hat with orange plates. Hmm, green seems to be the color of choice.

When I'm done with these, I'm totally itching to come up with some more! I want to make a bee hat and a flower hat, but will likely need to start focusing more on just bunny hats first. Fortunately, baby hats work up pretty quickly (2-3 hours for me, generally), but I still need to figure out colors and such! I also imagine that most people would prefer natural fibers to acrylic (honestly, I would LOVE to be able to  work basically solely with fibers like bamboo and silk, but it's just too $$$ :( ), so I will probably look into at least getting some more Peaches & Creme yarn in colors other than ombres and white & ecru.

Speaking of cotton yarn - anyone out there have any luck dying it? A few months ago, I wanted to see about naturally dying cotton yarn with things like dandelions & strawberries, but never got around to trying it.

Also, how about "tarn" (yarn made from t-shirts)? I have a rotary cutter and a self-healing mat and am itching to try to make some, but don't really have any shirts I want to cut up! (unfortunately, we've donated quite a few of my husband's old t-shirts over the years!) I guess I need to hit up some garage sales and thrift stores to find some...

Cookies!

I've gotten back to making some more play food for my friend's daughter. :)

Behold, chocolate chip cookies that do not look like weird frisbees: (and a christmas tree "sugar cookie").

 

And a vanilla ice cream cone (it's about 5" tall):

Castle Crashers!

This past month, I've had a couple of people ask for some custom items that I'd never done before for the game Castle Crashers.

First, I made a custom animal orb, Install Ball:

The finished product!

The image from CastleCrashers.com that I had to work with.

Then, a bit later, I had someone order 3 custom hats. The first was The Industrialist, the second the Ninja and the last was the Bear (Bipolar Bear, Bear Shaman... whatever you'd like to call him!). The Industrialist was probably the most difficult of the three for me and my least favorite of the hats (though Brian, my customer, was pleased with the results! :) ). I couldn't figure how to keep the pointed top of the hat from being a bit limp and teletubbie-like.


The Ninja was much easier and I quite enjoyed making the skull & crossbones for it. :)

And then there was my favorite, the Bear. I wanted to give him the furry texture the bear in the game so obviously had, but hadn't had much luck with any textured yarn I had tried (I had previously tried both Lion Brand Homespun and Joann Sensations Boucle and hated them both). So I researched a bit to see if I could find a way to pull it off. I was considering some of Red Heart's yarn and then wound up getting some I'd never even heard of before. My husband was the one who discovered it when we were at Michaels and I'm so glad he talked me into trying it out! I bought Red Heart Buttercup in white (tell me that color isn't being discontinued! I can't find it online anywhere... But I have bought about 8 skeins of it, just in case!).

At first, I was not enjoying the yarn any more than I had the others, even with my new 8.0mm bamboo crochet hook
(the recommended hook according to the label). But then I had an epiphany - the yarn was
textured and you couldn't really tell where the stitches was. Which was my problem, of course. But if I couldn't tell where the stitches were, how could an untrained eye? So I sort of fudged my way through, not always going through both front & back loops or even necessarily going through either properly. And, before I knew it, I was actually making the hat! Eventually, I did find my stitches more clearly and crocheted properly, but I do think that helped me get used to the tension to use and get over my frustrations.

Out of curiosity (and after running out and buying more skeins of this wonderfully soft and plush yarn!), I tried out some Homespun again, with the 8mm bamboo hook (despite having tried it and a 10mm hook previously). And I was able to make a bunny hat with it! I am so overjoyed at the fact that I can now use Homespun!! I've always loved the colors, the texture, and the softness (though not the squeakiness you get when you use aluminum or plastic hooks) and thought that was such a tease since the yarn was horrible to work with. And now I know how to use it properly!! I intend to use a bunch of it for hats in the near future and will no longer pass it up when I see the mill end bags for $6 at Big Lots.

And, just in case someone stumbles upon this because they are looking for any of the above, I may or may not have them listed in my etsy store, but that doesn't mean I won't make you one! Just convo me on etsy or e-mail me or leave a comment here!

Kami's Stegosaurus Hat

And the pink stegosaurus hat I made for my friend's daughter, Kami! :)

For this hat, I used Lion Brand Pound of Love in "Bubblegum" and Joann Sensations in a purple-pink gradient and a 5.0mm hook.

Hat:
1: 12 hdc into a magic circle
2: *1 hdc into st, 2 hdc into next, rep from * - 18 sts
3: *2 hdc into st, 2 hdc into next, rep from * - 24 sts
4: *3 hdc into st, 2 hdc into next, rep from * - 30 sts
5: *4 hdc into st, 2 hdc into next, rep from * - 36 sts
6-? Increase until diameter is the size you want. I increased to 48 sts at row 7 for a hat approx 3-6mos
?-12 (more if you're making the hat a bigger size, less if smaller size): hdc around all sts.

Plates:
1: 6sc into a magic circle
2: sc around - 6 sts
3: 2 sc, 2sc in next st, rep - 8 sts
4: 3 sc, 2sc in next st, rep - 10 sts
5: 4 sc, 2sc in next st, rep - 12 sts
(6: continue inc until desired size)

Been awhile!

Domo-Kun Hat
(note: I tried to list this on Etsy and was reported as having
violated copyright for Domo... Just FYI, the company who
owns the rights are nazis and not especially friendly people)

I have been crocheting, but I haven't been updating here for awhile! I've made quite a few Castle Crashers hats for fans on Etsy, as well as baby hats and starghans for friends and family. I also made a domo-kun hat with a bit of pseudo-intarsia.

And a dog sweater for my puppy (though he has since grown out of it, ha).

Right now, I'm working on play food again, this time for a different friend's daughter. I've been looking all over the internet again for inspiration and patterns and have, again, found several.

So far, I've made several more strawberries (what can I say? I like how they come out!), a few chocolate chip cookies (a different pattern than the one I did before smaller)

Christmas Tree Sugar Cookie (crappy cellphone photo - sorry!)

- a Christmas tree cookie: Created using Suzie's pattern for a tree here. My modifications:
For the bottom tree, I simply added another row to each section and adjusted the following rows accordingly (9hdc after row 3, 7hdc for row “4”, 11hdc after row 7, 9hdc for row “8”, 17hdc for the final row).
Then, I embroidered white lines to the front of the green tree and sewed the green tree to the bottom tree.


- A few fried eggs
- A donut
-Some sushi rolls:I intend to make some with red in the middle, some with red & green and maybe some with red, green & orange.

5sc into a magic ring with “filling” color(s)
ch1, 2sc into each sc with white, join w/sl st - 10 sts
ch1, 1 sc, 2sc all around, join w/sl st - 15 sts
ch1, Sc in fr loops only with brown, join w/sl st - 15 sts
5 - sc around - 15 sts
6 - ch1, sc in fr loops only with white - 15 sts
7 - ch1, sc, sc2tog - 10 sts
8 - ch1, sc2tog with “filling” color(s), finish off - 5 sts


I intend to also make another banana, probably another corn, some more cookies, maybe some pizza, toast, sandwich...

I also want to finish making some rattles for another friend's daughter (donut type with the heads of Hello Kitty, Minnie Mouse, Princess Leia and perhaps a 4th girl one).

Pillow Forms and Throw Pillows, And a new Living Room

This is mostly a note for me, but I also thought I'd share it with anyone else who may find this blog. :)

We are redoing our living room quite a bit. We have/had a huge 36" Sony CRT that weighs 280lbs and equally huge speakers [4' tall - like you'd see at a rock concert] taking up a decent amount of space in our living room and now had a 55" Samsung LCD LED that is up on the wall above our fireplace and will have a much smaller 5.1 speaker setup. In order to mount the new TV on our wall, we had to take down the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that covered that wall and then paint it. We painted it Glidden's Soft Sapphire, a medium blue.

We're also getting a new sofa that will be a dark Royal microsuede blue that will go into the corner and open the room up considerably.

We currently have some grayish-blue throw pillows (to accent our medium-gray microfiber sofa & love seat) which will go with our new sofa, but I want some gray (our other walls will be Glidden's Polished Pewter and our carpet is a dark gray), silver and black and maybe some dark blue throw pillows. I picked some black ones up at Target ($9.99 each - yay!).

As this blog is, of course, a crochet projects blog, I'll get to the crochet project part! I'm making a small (12x16) pillow for my friend's daughter and bought a pillow form from Joann Fabric & Crafts last week while they were half off and that inspired me to crochet us some new throw pillows! I'll likely use Caron's Simply Soft and Red Heart's Soft yarns and am eyeing this Zig Zag pillow on Michaels.com.

Naturally, I don't want to spend a whole lot on these pillows (I'm cheap, remember?), so I've been trying to figure out where else to get cheap pillow form. I've been on the lookout for throw pillows at thrift stores (no luck), but and here is where I get to the point!: I found a good-sized pillow form at Target for $4.99!! It's part of their "cover your own throw pillow" thing, which is great. I'd say it's probably 18x18.

Buying Bulk (or Not!) Safety Eyes - Harvey's Hobby Hut or Glass Eyes Online?

Upon getting a request for Hello Kitty, I started looking into the best way to make her eyes (as she has slightly oval eyes that are bigger than the 8mm round safety eyes I have). I was thisclose to ordering from Harvey's Hobby Hut when I happened upon Glass Eyes Online. You can buy eyes by the pair there and they give bulk discounts depending on how many you buy. The nice thing is that you can get a variety of eye colors of the same size and get a discount. They also have yellow Hello Kitty noses, oval noses (or eyes) in a few different sizes and colors, pink heart noses (I have no clue what I'll put them on, but I got quite a few 'cause they're cute), triangular noses, "sparkle" eyes, and all sorts of other things. And if you spend more than $25, you get free shipping!

I still like Harvey's and will have to write a proper review when I receive the order I sent to Glass Eyes, but it was nice to not have to pay $5.35 for s&h.
GSO's eyes are a bit pricier for the amount you get at HHH:
Price per 25 pairs of 9mm safety eyes:
GSO = 19 cents per pair of 9mm safety eyes
HHH = 12 cents per pair for 25 pairs
But not when you consider s&h:
GSO = $8.35
HHH = $9.25
AND the fact that you could have 3 pairs of blue, 5 pairs of black, 7 pairs of green, 2 pairs of red and 3 pairs of orange for GSO's price rather than just 25 pairs of black.

HHH is in Idaho while GSO is in South Carolina, so it will be interesting to see how quickly I get my order! HHH got them out to me in a couple of days and they arrived a couple of days after that.

P.S. Naturally, I've made 3 cupcakes since I last posted and gave them away before photographing them! I had every intention of doing it this time, but didn't even finish sewing and stuffing the last two until literally a minute before arriving at my friend's surprise party! (10 minutes late, but thankfully 10 minutes before she arrived! And no, I wasn't driving :P) I made a tan/light blue one, a red/white one and a brown/pink one with embroidered faces on them.

Japanese Patterns - Chihuahua!

So I have a few crochet pattern books that are entirely in Japanese. I just realized I might have been able to ask my "cousin-in-law" (who knows the language) for help, but no need! I was intimidated by them for awhile, figuring I needed to know how to translate Japanese to English. It took me needed to make a Chihuahua amigurumi for a friend to finally look into how to read it - And I'm SO glad I finally did! It's way easier than I thought since they use a bunch of charts with symbols and numbers are universal. I was a bit weary when I looked up symbols and realized that the ones in the Ami Ami Dogs book I have were nowhere to be found, but it was pretty easy to figure out what /x\ meant.

I used large shank buttons for the eyes and embroidered his nose and mouth with black yarn. The bow collar is removable (it's "closure" is a hoop that loops around the bow).

I give you, Melanie's Chihuahua:

PATTERN: Toast Play Food or Dog Toy

My husband & I drove to Phoenix the first week of January 2010 to visit our friends Jason and Beth and I crocheted during the 6-7 hour drive and a bit while visiting. Their dog, Raiden, kept grabbing my balls of yarn, so I decided to use the toast I was making into a toy for him.

For a dog toy, I would highly recommend sewing the rounded tops of the toast together more so that there aren't loose spaces between the triple crochets (Raiden pulled those apart pretty quickly, proving them to be definite vulnerabilities!). I used 4 pieces of toast for this toy and crocheted them together.

For play food, I think it would be fine to only use 2 pieces of toast with stuffing in between. Reinforcement isn't as necessary.


I used worsted weight yarn and a 5.5mm hook.

Toast: (make two or four)
ch16
Row 1: starting in 2nd st, sc 15 - 16 sts
Row 2-8: ch2, dc 16 - 16 sts
Row 9: ch1, 7 tr in 4th st, sl st in 6th st, sc 2, 7 tr in 4th st from end, sl st & fasten off

For play food, sc border in a darker brown on both.
For dog toy, sc border in a darker brown on two of four.

Butter: With yellow, ch6
Row 2-4: sc 5 across
Row 5: sc 5 across, Fasten off.

Assembly: For dog toy, reinforce tr. Sew butter patch(es) to desired pieces. Sc together all 4 pieces of toast with dark brown. Add jingle bell or two in between middle pieces if desired.
For play food, sew butter patch(es) to desired pieces. sc together with dark brown, stuffing before the final stitches.

PATTERNS: Play Food!

It's been a busy couple of weeks with hats and photos! But I fortunately finished up my most recent order on Thursday and had enough time to make some crochet play food for my friends' daughter for her 4th birthday.

I do not have photos (sadly) of any of my handiwork this time since I wanted to spend my time making food for her instead of documenting. I made her:
- A banana and corn (with faces, using THIS fantastic pattern!)
- A giant chocolate chip cookie (I winged this one: start with 6sc into a magic circle and increase until it's the size you want. Make two of those, embroider "chips", then stuff and sc together)

---

- A set of duos and "oreo" sandwich cookies:
I basically did 3 layers - cookie, cream filling, cookie - all the same and sewed them together.

Rnd 1: 12sc into magic/adjustable ring (12 sts)
Rnd 2: 2sc into each st (24 sts)
Rnd 3: Sc through both loops all around. Fasten off. (24 sts).
Sew cookies with “wrong” side out so that you get the texture.

While I feared they may be too flat, I think that making the filling the same size as the cookies helped keep it from disappearing (I’m not sure if others do it that way as well as I didn’t really look around much).

---

- A cupcake (using THIS pattern, modifying it only slightly by combining the first 2 rnds into: 12 dc into a magic ring for both the cake and the frosting.
- A piece of cake (using THIS pattern with white cake/pink frosting/"raspberry" filling and a flower as decor)

---

- And three strawberries ("body"/red part of strawberry uses THIS pattern, but I made up my own stem & leaves:
My leaves & stem:
Rnd 1: ch2, 6sc into 2nd chain from hook, do not join (6 sts)
Rnd 2: 2sc into each st, do not join (12 sts)
Rnd 3: ch4, sl st into same st, sl st into next st, ch3, sl st into same st, rep from with all sts. Fasten off.
Stem: Join yarn to a st in the center of the leaves ON THE “WRONG” SIDE (one of your sc from rnd 1), ch 5, sc back 4, sl st into another st in center of leaves, fasten off. Pull stem through center of leaves.

My stem and leaves need to be sewn to the top of the strawberry and means skipped rnds 7-9 of the Easy Peasy pattern.

---

They were well received! :) I'll likely make some more and post photos of my handiwork eventually. :)

More Castle Crashers Hats!

So I got a few more requests for Castle Crashers hats! I didn't get to snap a photo of the beanie I made (no ear flaps or tassels), but it's recipient was happy with it, so that's more than an enough for me. :)

These hats were made for someone in a forum who requested them. It took me 4 days to make these 3, the beanie and a kindle cover, but I did it! I was a bit of a factory this weekend! :D

Get your own custom Castle Crashers hat from my shop: CrazyStars Handmade

Ctrl Alt Delete Esc Coasters!

I'm not exactly sure where the inspiration came from for this little guy, but boy was he an exercise! His trunk is pose-able (fun, no?) and I'm likely going to attach a heart to his hands that can hold a love note or gift of some sort. :)

These are currently available in my Etsy store!





These are currently available in my Etsy store!


CTRL ALT DEL ESC Coasters by Samantha Bilodeau is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

White Elephant for Valentine's Day

I'm not exactly sure where the inspiration came from for this little guy, but boy was he an exercise! His trunk is pose-able (fun, no?) and I'm likely going to attach a heart to his hands that can hold a love note or gift of some sort. :)

He is currently available in my Etsy store!




He is currently available in my Etsy store!

Puppy With a Big Heart

On etsy: Pup

A little break from posting projects: Amigurumi Eyes!

So I have made a few things with eyes and I know that eyes for craft projects are something many people experiment with.

Suggestions I've seen (and have not necessarily tried!):
- Sewn-n small black (and white) pom-poms. Available at most craft stores, great for baby, small child and animal toys.
- "Safety eyes" (little plastic screw-like bits complete with "nut" to screw onto the back). These can get fairly pricey, IMO, but are great if you want a certain look. The best place to get these online in bulk is Harvey's Hobby Hut. Otherwise, you can get a pack of 10 eyes (5 pairs) for a couple of bucks at Joann Fabric & Craft.
- Embroidered yarn eyes. I've done this a few times with varying results (I'm not the best at embroidery!). For baby, small child and animal toys, this is also a great option.
- Sculpey/clay eyes. Create eyes out of clay and glue or sew them on.
- Plastic "wiggle" eyes. I've used these a couple of times so far and like the look and the price.
- Button eyes. I've used buttons a few times, though I'll admit it's not always easy to find eyes that work exactly how you want (my experience stemming from purchasing 11+ pounds of various buttons and sifting through them even after I've sorted them by size and color!). Definitely nice for larger projects (i.e. hats) and can be painted if you want pupils.
- Crochet or felt eyes. Crochet a circle the right size or cut some felt the right size. Sew or glew them on. Definitely not a bad option.
- Yarn knot eyes. I haven't used this method exactly yet (I have made french knots and attached those, however), but it looks promising! Knitty Cat Knot Eyes (scoll to the bottom of the page for the PDF.

PATTERN: Scarves for my in-laws

Both of these were improvised (no patterns used). I used a 6.5mm/K hook with bulky yarn. I used about 1.5 skeins of the suede yarn (approx. 180 yards) and an entire skein of the homespun (approx. 180 yards) and each one took 6-8 hours.
ch17
Row 1: sc in 2nd chain from hook, sc in all sts - 16 sts
Row 2: ch1, turn, sc in all sts - 16 sts
Row 3-70: ch2, turn, dc in all sts - 16 sts
Row 71: ch1, turn, sc in all sts - 16 sts
Row 72: ch1, turn, sc in all sts, fasten off & weave in end - 16 sts




Lion Brand Suede in teal for my father-in-law





Lion Brand Homespun in rose for my mother-in-law