Seahorse

I wanted a seahorse to send along with Eric Carle's Mister Seahorse for July's birthday box. I chose the pattern from How to Crochet Animals: Ocean and I found the pattern to be easy to make. I used worsted yarn and a D hook. I'm thinking about making a second one with sport yarn and a c hook to fit with the size of the rest of the ocean animals.

Swordfish

While I've added a number of ocean creatures that are common to ocean sets I've also tried to find some uncommon ones to include as well. The swordfish comes from Bathtime Buddies which I've used to make some of the other creatures for this project.

I found a ball of blue I wanted to use up and realized later this was Red Heart Sport yarn and thankfully I had another skein as I didn't have quite enough to finish the project with the original ball. I've been working on keeping these creatures smaller so I used a D hook for this ami.

The pattern gives you options for using terry towel material or felt for certain animals in the set. I'd never used terry so I wanted to try it. For the rest of the animals in this set that require cloth, I'm going to use felt. While I liked the textured look it creates, I didn't like the way the terry sheds.

I have some other creatures I need to finish in order to match up with the books I've included in this birthday box so you can expect to see those soon along with more doll clothes as I continue to prepare for the Christmas donation.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

I mentioned in a previous post I got distracted with new ideas for the birthday box and thus it went out a week late. Well this was one of the culprits. I came across two competing patterns for Goldilocks and the Three Bearsamigurumi sets. I'd already done puppets but the sets were both in their own ways interesting.

The first was from Amigurumi Fairy Tales: Crochet Your Own Enchanted Forest and I found the bears to be intriguing. These bears had personalities and props. They weren't random bear patterns thrown in to fit the fairy tale theme.

The more challenging issue was Goldilocks. I began to feel I was trying to cast a part in a play or movie. I liked this one's hair but the rest just wasn't right for the part. So I went back to hybrid design. Once Upon a Time... in Crochetalso had a Goldilocks set. The bears were fairly generic but the hair design for Goldilocks was something I hadn't encountered before and I liked it. Unfortunately I only liked the hair part of the Goldilocks pattern. The rest didn't work for me. I still liked the body from the Amigurumi Tales book better. Normally a switch out isn't much of an issue however, there was a slight problem the dolls were not exactly compatible to exchange in a one for one manner. So I kept the head and body from the Amigurumi Tales book and modified the hair from the Once Upon a time book to fit. I also brought along her porridge bowl. Goldilocks, the fish, the basket, and the apple are all done in sport weight yarn. The bears were done in worsted weight yarn.

In notes for myself regarding the bears if I make them again I'd ignore pattern and opt for a more traditional round ami head. After making the first one I thought it would be odd to correct it on the other two and I was rushing to finish, but I'd not make them this way again. I wasn't crazy about the bump at the top of the head due to smaller initial increases. This is something easily fixed.

As you can see I forgot Baby Bear's snout and I had already inserted the saftey nose when I realized my mistake. The challenges of late night crochet on a deadline. I had already attached his head when I realized what I had done so I didn't redo it as I'd have risked destroying his lower half as well as having to remake his head.

Note to self this went out with hand puppets and
Believe Me, Goldilocks Rocks!: The Story of the Three Bears as Told by Baby Bear and Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Three Billy Goats Gruff Small and Finished

I mailed the July birthday package a week late because I had one more project and then more. As a result I was so focused on crocheting I wrote nothing. I do like to keep records of what I made, who it went to and any important details for future efforts. Recently I've found myself going back to older projects that I made years ago now that I again have younger relatives that might enjoy such items and knowing what I did can help.

This was the last item I needed to complete The Three Billy Goats Gruff project. I was glad I left the smallest goat to the end. I worked on him while I began the next project and it kept me from not wanting to repeat the same project multiple times.

As I mentioned in my other posts about this project I chose to stick with worsted weight yarn I had on hand and returned to an f hook after going down to an e hook with the middle goat do to the yarn I was using.

The pattern for this set comes from Once Upon a Time... in Crochet: 30 amigurumi characters from your favorite fairytales although I used a free pattern for the troll. You can read about that in the troll post here.

The companion book to the one above I included with this set was Listen, My Bridge Is SO Cool!: The Story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff as Told by the Troll a note to myself.