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Original Amigurumi Crochet Patterns

Tag Archives: penguin


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A Weekend at Home

Chanting the mantra ‘Rain, rain, go away, come back another day’ has had no effect whatsoever around here so it’s been a weekend tucked up indoors, catching up with much of my crochet works in progress. Well, it needs to be done and there are worse ways to spend rainy afternoons. In fact it’s rather nice to have some cosy time in the house. Mojo has found his new favorite spot. Staring wistfully out into the drizzle from the comfort of one of my new kitchen seat pads. There is an excellent view of the garden from there and Moji is making the most of it.

MojoKitchen

Minnie has nabbed herself a spot in a spotty, polka dotty, plastic picnic salad bowl!

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It’s barely big enough but she’s whiled away many hours snoozing in there, so it must be comfier than it looks.

I’ve spent a fair bit of time over the past few days designing a new alpaca pattern and then creating them in lots of colours. Here’s the production line in full swing. It’s my own personal alpaca farm. Six colours so far… well, I really enjoy working with the soft and fluffy textured yarns, and I just couldn’t seem to stop myself!

alpaca

They’ve got their eyes on those tasty strawberries by the looks of it.

3alpaca

I was busy making these last week, on a somewhat sunnier day.

strawbs

A little snack for me too. Alpacas aren’t the only ones who love strawberries!

Strawberries

Pogo often watches me crochet, sitting side by side on our squashy sofa. He’s just waiting for a yarn end to pounce on. Usually straight into my lap, huge claws and all!

pogo

There’s plenty of yarny entertainment for him as I finish up this latest batch.

alpacas

Lovely home days with all the cats for company make me very happy. Just time for a break to bake a loaf of bread ready for lunch. Oh yum. This butternut squash and parmesan bread filled the house with delicious smells that cheered us all up. It tasted amazing too! Chopped black olives and rosemary made it extra special and it’s great therapy for crunched up crochet hands as all the mixing and kneading gets the circulation flowing around my fingers again.

Bread

Bas’s  (Zabbez.com) Butterfly Bree and Baby Calin were finished up just in time for the proofreading deadline for the new Parent and Baby Animals book. I love the way the sparkly blues have worked out. This pattern would look fabulous in so many different colour combinations. One to let your imagination go wild with!

820Butterfly

820Bree

Here she is next to Bas’s original colourway. It sure was a lovely pattern to follow.

I found out a few days ago that Papa and Pierre have made it on to the front cover of the book. I’m so thrilled, it’s like the icing on the cake and I can’t wait to see the whole book layout. Joke always does such a fantastic job of compiling all the cute designs. Not long to wait now, as pre-sale will be starting in early September over at amigurumipatterns.net.

Amigurumi Parent and Baby Animals Book

Thanks to all who voted for Papa and Pierre.

Come rain or shine, have a great week folks!


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Creepy Crawlies, Butterflies and Flowers

It’s been a week of creepy crawlies! With my Katy the Caterpiller pattern so very nearly completed I’ve also been sent a pattern to test for the new ‘Parent and Baby’ amigurumipatterns.net book. I volunteered to proofread a random pattern and quite by chance have ended up with another caterpillar to crochet – this time complete with his butterfly mommy. This beautiful design by Bas den Braver is going to be a fun little project to keep me busy over the next few days.

Zabbez Bree and Calin

Awww – cute!!

Check out all of Bas’s other patterns on his Zabbez website. They’ll be sure to put a smile on your face! They certainly put one on mine with their floral themes and hot zingy colours. Don’t these little characters just make you want to get out in the garden and make it bloom?!

zabbez-flowers

I’d love to have a go at growing more and varied types of flowers in my tubs and pots (pansies and geraniums have been my best successes so far) but I’ve got a problem with slugs and snails – I can’t bring myself to ‘dispatch’ them in any way – so most of my green fingered efforts end up looking like this… An unholy holy mess for sure!

SnailLunch

Chilli plants are apparently delicious for lunch (if you’re a snail that is, I prefer a bit of iceberg lettuce myself). At least I know exactly who the culprits are this time. Sheldon and Shelby look rather pleased with themselves for finding such a tasty morsel but at least they had the manners to blush when I caught them red handed – or rather, green footed. But as cute as this pair is there’s a whole army of the more brown and slimy kind coming out every night to wreak havoc. Luckily I had the foresight to keep a few chilli plants inside on the kitchen windowsill, so if my outdoor ones don’t survive they’ll be my back up plan. If you have similar gardening disasters to mine you might take comfort in crocheting some of these flower people instead, secure in the knowledge that Bas’s tribute to the garden folks are totally snail proof!

ZabbezFlowers

It’s not just the chilli plants that have suffered in my garden. I planted 20 marigolds and a sunflower seedling out in the border just over two weeks ago. Sad to say they’ve all vanished before they even got a proper root hold! Ah well, I never learn. I’m actually quite happy to resort to shop bought flowers to cheer the place up anyway. Hubby bought me these last weekend because they matched my Katy the Caterpillar project that I was working on at the time. How thoughtful 🙂 And what excellent rationale for choosing the colour scheme of my little gift. He knows the kind of details that make me happy!

Sunflower

Not a bad match at all!

caterpillar

And though the petals are starting to drop there’s still a lot of life left in my lovely bunch of summer sun.Sunflower2

Back to testing out the Butterfly Bree and Caterpillar Calin pattern – I thought I would change the colours slightly as I work through it, mainly because I bought some beautiful sparkly yarn recently with some Christmas makes in mind and I’m itching to try it out. I’m making my version of Bree look more like one of these Blue Morpho specimens. I love the depth of colour in these amazing creatures – I could just stare at that dreamy blue all day.

Morphos

But I don’t have time for too much staring at it, so even better than that I’ll crochet with it instead.

A quick rummage around the stash baskets and all materials are gathered together. Yarns at the ready…

Morpho-Yarn

…pattern printed, essential kit located… and we’re off!

Making-Bree

Papa Penguin and Baby Pierre are fascinated to meet two of their fellow stars from the new book. Pierre has already made plans to take Calin to the park to play on the swings and Papa is going to introduce Bree to the other parents at Pierre’s pre-school.

PapaBree

Hopefully I’ll have finished making them in time for my next post so you can see how they turned out. Papa and Pierre can’t wait – parent and toddler group is going to be so much more fun with new friends to take along!


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Papa Penguin and Baby Pierre

If you’ve been over to my Facebook page recently you might have read about the new design competition over at amigurumipatterns.net. This year’s competition is ‘parent and baby animals’. You can imagine how a theme like that just ups the amigurumi cuteness factor to stratospheric levels!

Everyone seems to be mad about penguins at the moment, and I have to confess, I’m no exception. So, inspired by the idea of a father and son combination I got myself busy designing and hooking up these two characters – Papa Penguin and Baby Pierre.

PapababyPenguin2-(2)

Papa Penguin is such a loving and conscientious father and will do anything to protect his new son. Mama Penguin happily goes off for a few weeks to feed on fish and build her strength back up after the exhausting effort of creating and laying such a fine large egg. She feels safe in the knowledge that Papa will be doing a great job of hatching and looking after their precious baby until she gets back.

But as dedicated to fatherhood as Papa is, no-one said being a first time parent was going to be easy! Baby Pierre cried a lot when he was first hatched. It seemed he just didn’t like the cold very much at all and was always trying to hitch a ride on Papas feet or whining to be picked up and carried. As his little chick grew bigger and became too heavy to carry, Papa had the brilliant idea of building a snug buggy from Pierre’s old egg shell. Pierre calls it his ‘snuggy’ and I think you can see how happy he is with his new present!

Papababypenguin3

And now Papa’s got his flippers free again. It’s a good job too because once Pierre’s friends saw him being pushed around in such fine style they all wanted a snuggy of their own. Papa’s been inundated with requests from all the other daddy penguins and has got quite a queue of orders building up already. Well, I’m not surprised, it does look very comfy in there and those antarctic winds can be fearsomely chilly!

PapababyPenguin1

Here’s Papa in his workshop busy making up his first order while Pierre and his friends argue about whose turn it is to sit in the buggy!

Penguin-Workshop

Pierre is growing up fast though, as chicks do, and is finally beginning to get used to the antarctic weather. These days you might even find him happily making snowballs and skating on the ice with his playmates from the nursery. Even a penguin who’s so prone to cold feet wants to join in the fun sometimes!Penguin-snowball-fight1

But he still loves to have a good snuggle in his re-purposed eggshell at the end of a busy day.

Pierre

When he outgrows it he’s going to put it by until he has chicks of his own to care for. Then he can tell them the tale of their clever grandpapa’s invention of the very first penguin pram!