Ghostbusters Egon Amigurumi

This post has been sitting in my drafts for almost a year now, and I never expected the prompt for posting it would be the sad death of Harold Ramis :(
Egon is what my other half calls me when I wear my hair up in a rockabillly bouffant style, I forget normality sometimes and it can get a bit tall! Like smuggling kittens in it tall!

This was made in 2012 (yep, that long ago!) as a birthday gift.
He was easy to make, I just did a basic head, body and stumpy arms. The hair has a piece of foam inside to make it bouffant. To be honest the hair isn't very good but live and learn hey?!

From the back you can see I made the world's most basic proton pack, namely a rectangle with a little hose coming off it!

If there are requests I will dig out the pattern I made, but I think if you make ami's it is fairly self explanatory!

Twinkie Chan's Radish Amigurumi

Hello folks!

I'm sure everyone has heard of the crochet genius that is Twinkie Chan? Well if not you are missing out!

I brought her awesome book "Crochet goodies for fashion foodies" and wanted to make something very quickly to satisfy my need to crochet. So I made a variation on her radish scarf, to be a cat toy. The radish body is the same, I just didn't make the leaves as long.

It is stuffed with a carrier bag and the eyes are just sewn on with some embroidery floss.

I only wish that I had made the leaves a little bit longer so that when I am playing with the cat she doesn't get quite so close to my fingers!

Awww.... she's so adorable! I totally did not just sneak the radish in there for a photo op......

....but it sure does look cuter than when she is trying to  kill it!

Has anyone else made a Twinkie Chan pattern?

Did You Ever See A Llama....

....Kiss a llama, on the llama, llama's llama, taste of llama, llama llama duck.......

When I was in my teens (which feel like a rather long time ago!) I was a little obsessed with that wonderful gem about llamas, and with llamas in general. Now I have aged, the song is quite clearly annoying but my love for llamas is still there. Although I prefer alpacas and wish to smush my face into their soft fuzzy bodies!

But I digress, I took an exam back in June (Which I passed thank frick!) and as a celebration I decided to make a crochet llama as I saw a pattern on Pinterest. As you do. However I had also just brought a 9mm crochet hook which I was itching to use. The logical result of this was to make a GIANT LLAMA! I didn't have any super bulky wool so I just used 2 balls of cream DK and a ball of cream aran all at the same time, and with the brown yarn I just cut three lengths off to use simultaneously. So after a little bit of hooking I ended up with this beautiful bad boy!

He stands around 19" tall! How awesome is that?! I sewed his legs on a bit dodgily, but he still stands up so I haven't bothered to change them, if I make another one I will just be more mindful of the placement.

If you would like to make your own regular or giant llama toy, the pattern can be found HERE at crochet_goods.
If you do make one then I would love to see it, link me up in the comments!

Get A Life!

Just a quickie here ;) I found what I like to call "Mario green" wool and whipped up a 1up mushroom to add to the growing collection of Mario crochet. Pattern is the same as the one used here.

New Mario crochet!

Finally I can blog about these bad boys! As they were gifts I couldn't risk putting them on here in case they were seen and the surprise ruined!

First up is my version of a big Bob-omb, saw him on a google image search and fell in love with the moustachio!!

 

Big Bob-omb is about 9 inches tall at a guess without including his fuse. I actually used a mixture of patterns and genius to make him, the main part of the body was from this King Boo tutorial from the delightful Wolfdreamer OTH, and the rest was made using the normal Bob-omb tutorial which I have previously made here, as a rough guide and guesstimating it to fit the dimensions required!

I was supposed to make him a crown (found on the King Boo tutorial) but it kind of didn't happen!

I also made a Boo from the King Boo pattern but decided to stick to the non-regal variety.

I used felt and some scrap white fleece for the mouth, the eyes were done using a tulip pen as I'm not too good with the embroidery on stuffed toys. 

Finally I made a Luma (the star....yes I know it looks like a spiky tear drop but just go with me!) which is pretty cute. Wish it was a beanie (or in my case a popcornie as I'm not buying expensive poly pellets when the corns do the same thing) but the little legs wouldn't have coped with the weight.

The Luma also came from Wolfdreamer, it can be found here.

I think if I did it again the arms and legs could do with a few extra rows to make them bigger as mine did not come out the same as the pictured one on the tutorial!


There are a few other "easy" Mario tutorials I'm going to do before trying the hard stuff!
We were getting a little silly and ambitious last night dreaming up an entirely crocheted Mario world and doing crazy things like a rideable sized Yoshi! It would be cool but my wrists would probably give up entirely and err.... crochet hooks are kinda small.....and I don't have a million hours to commit to it at the moment! Perhaps one day!

One for the boys....

Mario crochet toys!!

A mushroom to make you grow bigger and a bombomb :D

Here's the mushroom next to Colin to give you an idea of scale, they didn't take very long, about an hour and a bit each so when I get some more yarn I'm going to make more mushrooms (green, yellow with red spots and a purple one, all my fellow geeks will know what they do!) and create my own Mario universe! Will eventually make the main characters but they're a bit more advanced than the level I'm at now.

The bombomb even has his own little key detail as well!

I got the patterns for the bombomb here, and the mushroom here.

I did alter the mushroom pattern by adding a few extra rows for the stalk/face part.

Prototype Rockabilly Amigurumi

Okay, this is what I got up to last night! I know I should have been finishing things but when an idea hits you, you've gotta go with it!
This is only a prototype of a design I made up, just wanted to test out various things such as hair (which previous to this I have never made) and lips.
Below is the front view, everything is a little bit wonky but I would sort this out on further versions.

The picture below shows the side view, I know the head placement is a little off. The polka dot pattern is made up with sewn on beads, perhaps when I am an expert crocheter I will know how to incorporate this pattern with the yarn alone, however as a beginner the beading suits me fine!

Last but not least, a close up of the face! I wish I could style my hair into such a magnificent pomp/bouffant but realistically speaking it would be about 6-8 inches tall! And a 2 inch one looks plenty tall enough whilst not getting weird looks in the street!
I think I will need to use some slightly larger eyes, had to use what I had in my stash though as it was late and I'm trying not to spend money on new things when I have enough stuff downstairs to open my own craft shop!
The lip shape could also use a bit of work but for a first attempt it isn't too bad!

The stitching joining the head to the body is also visible, obviously if it was one for sale I would put more effort into making it as invisible as possible.
I think that the next one I make will have to have more hair to go round the face and an additional strip of hair placed behind the pomp as when the hair is elevated it shows through to the white of the head.

But overall, I'm well proud of this! Hard to believe that less than a month ago all I could crochet was a dodgy chicken egg cosy....which does just about resemble a chicken but looks nothing like the picture in the magazine!

Part 1 of the finishing week!

You know how easy it is to get distracted from what you were doing by something new and shiny? Well I have been getting distracted by all sorts of things and ended up with a whole load of stuff that needed finishing off! Things vary from just started to practically done, with some things recently cast aside and others have been neglected for months!

I've finished quite a few things in the past couple of days, with plenty more to be sorted!

First up.....

.......A crochet cactus! Pictured here with my coconut Colin. As I can't seem to keep any real plants alive I decided a woolly one would be better! I have killed off three cacti before! I might make a few more cacti when I can afford some more yarn :)

Second up there is a skeleton groom amigurumi, which got included in finishing week because he finishes off the pair of bride and groom! The picture doesn't show it very well but he does have a little top hat on :D Unfortunately his days are numbered as his face is terrible even for me! Another problem is that the groom is significantly smaller than the bride. This is annoying because I thought I had bought the right thickness of wool and although it wasn't expensive I can't afford to go out and buy more :( So I also can't mix up the black wool or the white wool with any other wool I have in my stash - so annoying!!! Perhaps the new wool is the correct sort, the wool previously used came "free" with an expensive craft magazine's crochet issue, so I had assumed this would be the correct sort, it is only marginally thicker but makes a big difference when crocheted up. Really really annoying.

For some reason the damn picture thing won't appear to let me upload any more pics, will have to do the rest in part two!

Introducing Grim Rita!

Greetings to my second amigurumi from the creepy crochet book pictured in all her glory!
I had done most of it yesterday and finished her off tonight, it's getting easier to read the patterns now which is good and my ability to remember how many stitches I have done is also improving thank god! Nothing more frustrating than forgetting and having to unwind the thing for the fiftieth time.
Not sure which one I'm going to attempt next, would like to make the skeleton groom but that requires going into town to purchase some black yarn... which means I will put it off until I have about a million reasons to go and have no choice in the matter. Should probably finish off all the other things I have to do before starting another creepy cutie... but they're so quick (well a couple of hours) to make and sooooooo adorable!!

Amigurumi skeleton bride!

For my birthday I got a super cool book called 'Creepy Cute Crochet' by Christen Haden. It is full of the most adorable little amigurumi creations....sod kittens, I want a crochet zombie!!
For those of you who have never seen a crochet pattern it is basically a big enigma with sc's (in England we call them dc's - more confusion!) and inc's and all manner of coded mumbo jumbo. The picture guides of said mumbo jumbo make quantum theory look like a child's homework! So I had to start off with a beginner project from the selection including a skeleton groom to accompany the pictured bride, a ninja, a fuzzy alien and the grim reaper.
For future headaches and eye strain I can move up to intermediate, difficult or epic projects, epic projects including a Trojan, Spartan and cyber zombie!
You also have to learn how to make a magic ring, otherwise renamed in my house as the magic anus. This was problematic, frustrating and made me violent. Eventually I found a tutorial online that I understood and from there it was up, up, and amigurway!
Finished article is cute albeit wonky (what a surprise there...) and I'm almost done with a pink grim reaper (I had no suitable black yarn so improvised) but my eyes are about to explode so it will be finished tomorrow.