Amigurumi Fun!

When I'm not working on my babette blanket, my crochet lately has taken me to the magical world of crocheted Japanese stuffed animals or Amigurumi. I let the kids all pick an animal since they are such a quick thing to whip up. They picked a monkey, a bear w/honey pot, a sandwich cookie and a jellyfish. Unfortunately the cookie and jellyfish are MIA, so no pictures of my handiwork there. But you can see them at a wonderfully cute blog I found which features the patterns I used. (Click on "patterns" under the labels section on the right to see all her patterns.) The mouse is for a dear now-four-year-old friend and as soon as I whip something up for her sister whose birthday is fast approaching, will be sending them both off.

The monkey came from a pattern book that I bought about 4 years ago. And yes, the pattern has its arms that long. The nose didn't come out right though. Looks a bit cow-ish to me, but Tank doesn't seem to mind.


Scoochy wanted the bear and honey pot. Also she asked if we could add the bow. How could I refuse such a cute addition? And yes, the head is supposed to be that big. :-)


Here's the little mouse. I think it is the cutest amigurumi I've made. Took this picture and then remembered that I wanted to add a bow but the picture turned out so cute I decided to show you anyway.


Miss Cute Mouse with her bow. Now she's ready for the ball.

Developing my eye

Part of cleaning up after Christmas is dragging out the "general decorations" box. That's where I put everything that I take down to make room for Christmas stuff.

Last year I was on a minimalistic thing and didn't want anything put back up. Sort of an extreme response to Christmas decorations that I didn't like. The cool thing is that there was stuff in the bottom of the box that I forgot I had.

A Taiwanese friend of mine, Janet, gave me three beautiful postcards. I wanted to use them. My daughter broke the glass that was holding her portrait. Since I couldn't put her siblings' pictures up without her, I decided to use the three remaining frames for the postcards! Perfecto!

The postcards were too small and I didn't have any matting, so I put black construction paper behind the postcard and slid it into the frame. It was okay, but that's it. I scanned the room, What could I use instead of the black paper? My eyes fell on an Urban Outfitters catalog, and then I knew.

I perused the pages, looking for color schemes that would go with the postcards overall look. When I found one that looked right, I traced the frame, cut it out and carefully taped the postcard to the new "matting."

Overall I'm super happy with the results. They look so much better than just plain-Jane black paper. I have to credit the beloved Mej for this. Previous to knowing her, I would have settled. But not now. Now I've seen too much to go back. I can never be who I was. Once you've tasted beauty, nothing else satisfies...

(How was that for over-dramatic?)