Orca

The July birthday box started the journey to its new home last Friday. The Orca was the last ami to make it into the box.

The Orca pattern comes from Bathtime Buddies. I used Schachenmayr Catania sport cotton with a C hook to make this a smaller ami. I chose felt for the accents.

This was a fun project and I kept finding more projects I'd like to make at some point. However, it was time to mail this project off and get started with my fall birthday box and Halloween.

I know many of you are thinking but we just finished July 4th. I'm not looking to rush celebrating Halloween but I have 2 boxes to finish before October as well finishing off the doll donations by end of November. These are summer projects to be enjoyed in the fall and winter months. That doesn't even include the Thanksgiving box and the Christmas boxes. You can expect to see some fall decorations creeping into the blog in the not to distant future.

Narwhal

One of my goals when working on this ocean/sea themed project was to add some characters that aren't always found in traditional ocean/sea sets. The Narwhal was a good fit for that goal. I even included I'm a Narwhal to provide a little more age appropriate info about the Narwhal.

There are so many more patterns I'd love to add to this set but my time is winding down. I have one more ami to finish and then I have to wrap, pack and put the birthday box in the mail in order for the box to arrive on time.

The Narwhal pattern comes from Bathtime Buddies and I chose to make it in Schachenmayr Catania sport cotton with a C hook. I also chose to use felt instead of terry for the white features. This was a much better choice than what I did with the swordfish.

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.

Diver

This was actually the pattern that made me want to buy Bathtime Buddies when it first came out. This guy just stood out and made me laugh. I knew some day I was going to have to make him. When I thought about putting together this ocean set I realized he was going to have to be a part of it and thus the hunt began for the book I had lost.

The diver is made with Schachenmayr Catania sport cotton yarn and a D hook.

I added the eyes to the face plate before joining to the head as I wanted to use saftey eyes. This was something I learned after making the first head, which required me to make a second one. I make note of it should I decide to return to this project again. The hands are flat I made mine round.

Stingray

The Stingray was the first creature I made from Bathtime Buddies and I'm already trying to decide which ocean creature I'll be attacking next. I'm hoping to get the most out of my library loan before I need to get a PDF copy of the book from Ravelry here.

I used worsted weight acrylic yarn and a D hook to complete the Stingray.

I finished another portion of the island ocean bag and ordered some paracord to try to close the bag. I've never used paracord as a bag closure so we will see how it all works out.