Well here we go again! It’s time for Zoomigurumi 8 already. Yet another fantastic collection of amigurumi toys to delight the young and the young at heart. I’m definitely in the second category these days but that’s a whole lot better than not being in either!
My Pablo the Parrot has made the grade this year and is featured on pages 63-69 where there are lots of photos of him showing off his wonderful plumage as well as some step by step pictures to help with making him.
Pablo likes dancing to Flamenco music. He reckons his frills and ruffs are a match for any of those man-made fancy pants outfits he’s seen the professional dancers wearing on the telly.
This chatty parrot will tell you all about himself and his hobbies if you take the time to ask him. To be honest, he’ll even tell you if you don’t ask him!
Pablo is keeping company with a host of other cute ‘n’ quirky creatures nestled within the pages of Zoomigurumi 8.
There’s the usual wide variety of styles and skill levels, though there’s nothing in there that a dedicated beginner couldn’t handle. That’s the joy of amigurumi… It’s very easy to get the hang of and once your flying with that hook it’s just so much fun honing those skills.
This time around I had the pleasure of testing out Elisa Sartori’s Woody the Beaver pattern. He’s such a sweetie. I adore his goofy teeth and that adorable flippy floppy tail finishes him off a treat.
You can see more of her lovely patterns at her Etsy shop – Elisa’s Crochet. It’s well worth a look if you like your amigurumis bursting with character!
This chap is Woody by name and Woody by nature. He loves to get his teeth stuck into anything made out of trees so, to save my furniture, I have added twigs and pine cones to the list of things to bring back from my river walks and they’re keeping him out of trouble so far!
Designing Pablo was a bit of a challenge as I wanted to work out a simple way to make the many different coloured ruffles without any sewing together.
It took a few attempts but I got there in the end and found a super simple solution. Working out the best maths for the decreases while still allowing for the correct number of stitches to create full rounds of shell stitches was the most difficult part but I landed on a very elegant equation and now I’ve done all the hard work so you don’t have to!
Picking out colours for this design was high up on my list of the fun things I got to do.
I have no shortage of yarn in every imaginable colour so I soon also had an alternative to Pablo’s brilliant blues.
As these little birds are so quick to whip up it wasn’t long until Pablo had found himself a buddy. I love a rainbow so, working with that idea, I came up with a simplified colour combo for a ruby macaw. She’s called Scarlett and the pair of them couldn’t be happier together!
Love is, quite literally, in the air. Aww, how tweet!
In fact things are going so well that Pablo has asked Scarlett to marry him.
And she said YES!
So then they asked Woody to be Best Man.
And he said YES! too. Happy Days!
No wonder Woody looks so insanely happy. I’m sure the parrots would too if it wasn’t for those awfully stiff beaks of theirs.
I have a feeling there are many more stories to be told by the characters in this book once they’ve jumped off the hook. I’d love to hear what yours get up to!
You can order paperback copies over at AmigurumiPatterns.Net where you’ll be able to download the PDF version too, so there’s nothing to stop you getting stuck in straight away. The perfect solution for keeping you busy while you await your precious package!
🙂 Wishing you a zillion hours of zany Zoomigurumi 8 fun 🙂
