St. Patick's Day Ornaments Part 2

This is the last set of St. Patrick's day ornaments for my friend's business but I'm hoping to get some Easter ones made. Perhaps some bunnies and eggs. Sloth's are a particular favorite animal which is why I adapted a Halloween pattern I had into a St. Patrick's ornament. You can purchase the Halloween pattern here.

I generally prefer ami's with round heads, especially when you want to add things like hats but I had this pattern with a flat head, it was already fairly small so taking it to ornament size didn't disort the pattern so I decided to go with it rather than finding something new. Sloths were a must for this project.

This is made with Sinfonia Cotton yarn I picked up at Creative Yarn source when I was making lots of Ami's a while back. It was a great choice for this project. At some point I'd like to find a rounder Sloth for a different kind of project but this was well received and didn't actually make it to the tree.

Recently someone was kind enough to share a box of old crochet patterns that had been gifted to them. I chose this one because of the multiple holiday themed items included which I thought would make cute ornaments. For those of you interested the leaflet is from Annie's Attic Crochet Backpack Buddies 872853 by Michelle Wilcox. She has long been a favorite designer. There are some great ideas here for future tree decorations.

The original Halloween sloth pattern had a pumpkin between his legs. In order to make it work I really needed to replace the pumpkin with another item and the pot of gold seemed like a great idea. I wasn't as happy with the Orble pattern I used previously so after searching I settled on this free pattern you can find here.

Why the extra pot ornament you may ask? Well this is what happens when you mix and match patterns reducing to fit a tree ornament. I thought I reduced enough but I ended up needing to make the pot in thread to make it fit the sloth. Now I had another pot of gold for the tree. Hopefully it fosters luck on the business.

Irish Bunny

When I have the chance I try to add a few holiday decorations to my house. I try to keep them small as even small ones take up ever increasing space over time. I'm also an avid collector of out of print crochet leaflets and books. This bunny pattern is from an American School of Needlework leaflet Birthday Bunnies in Thread Crochet #1156. It was written by Jennie Black and published in 1993 for those of you who might be interested in the patterns.

While the title of the leaflet is Birthday Bunnies they are more holiday or monthly themed rather than what I have seen in other pattern books for birthday patterns. I have a pattern of doll outfits where each month has a different outfit dedicated to the birthday girl but not any specific holiday that occurs during that month. These seem much more holiday or event themed. June is a wedding dress and August has a bathing suit so not specific to a holiday but not what you'd normally think of as birthday either. That worked for me when I saw this at a second hand pattern site as I was looking for holiday themed amigurumi's rather than birthday outfits. I actually bought it with the November Pilgrim bunny pattern in mind but here I am making the March Irish bunny first.

The pattern calls for off white for the bunnies. I went with white as I wasn't sure how much thread I'd need and I have a giant size 10 white but only a standard off white partial. Having made one I think I will work the Easter one in off white should I get to that with all the other holiday projects I need to finish. I'm planning on making the May dress for the Easter outfit instead of the suggested Easter dress. I rather like the May dress for Easter and I'm planning on using the July dress for my Memorial Day through the end of summer decorations so it works out well. I'm hoping to have a bunny for each of the holidays. I'm even thinking of using January's for my ornament project for this year. We will have to see what happens.

Notes:

I used size 10 thread I had on hand with a 1.8mm Tulip Etimo thread hook.

I added a row to the hat and changed the black head band to yellow as I wanted a bit more color. I also had to add more chains to the band as the hat was wider.

The pattern calls for a single sided ear. I used the pattern to make an inner and outer ear one pink, one white and then crocheted them together before sewing to the head. I liked the added shaping and color.