Busy Hands

I've had busy hands for the past few days. My friend said I should build up an inventory of ami to sell at our local Saturday markets so I've been working on that. So far, these are what I've come up with:

 I also finished the shrug I posted about before. I'll post a pic of it being modeled by the little girl I made it for when I give it to her since it doesn't look as good when it's not being worn.

I have a hard time listening when my hands are idle, so yesterday at church I started crocheting. I didn't decide what it was going to be until about the 10th round. I had seen some really cute pin cushions online which gave me the idea for what I came up with. I wish I could find the pattern again to give reference. Having said that, I did NOT follow a pattern but I DID get the idea from someone else and as soon as I find the page, I'll link to it. Anyway, here's what I came up with:

Feeling a little froggy.

After seeing the octopus I had been making, a friend of mine asked if I could make him a frog. Although I vigorously waved my magic wand and said the magic words..nothing happened. So off I went in search of a good (free and easy) pattern!

The first one I found was Amigaerumi by Erika Hughes. Fast and fairly easy to make all the parts I was really liking this one until it came time for assembly. I usually avoid patterns that require sewing, but I really wanted to make this frog. Anyway, here's what I came up with.

Not too bad, but I'm not especially happy with how the arms turned out and I think adding pipe cleaners inside the legs would have been a good idea so they'd be more pose able.

The next one I tried was Frog in "Paris" which is a DROPS design. He's a cute little thing, but once again I had some trouble with placement when adding the limbs.

After trying both designs I kind of mixed them up a bit and tried a little harder in getting the placement right and came up with this little guy.

He's a little cockeyed and has the "gangsta lean" going on, but I'm pretty happy with him. My friend liked all three and decided to buy them all! Not bad for a few days worth of crocheting here and there!

Balls

Ok, I think I've finally got the basic concept of crocheting balls down. Start with magic ring, increase a few rounds, sc a few rounds, and decrease the opposite of your increases. Easy peasy!

Now that I've figured this out I think I'll be making a bunch of hackey sacks for the group of kids in our local behavior treatment center. In the past 9 months of spending time there I've noticed a lot of the kids don't get regular visits from family if they get them at all. I usually have a small project there with me and they all get excited to see what I'm making. Today I had these two balls with me ( I whipped up the yellow one while sitting at the laudromat) and several got excited and asked if they were hackey sacks. They aren't, just stuffed with normal poly fill and the smaller one has a few bells in it. Anyway, it got me to thinking. At any given time there are 60 kids living in this building. I can whip these up pretty fast so I think I'll make a bunch and drop them off.

I also figure that just knowing the basic design for a sphere is a good jumping off point for learning to design my own amigurumi. We'll have to see what I can come up with.

Snuggly (Ugly) Bunny

I used the Snuggly Bunny pattern over at StormyzCrochet but mine just doesn't look like hers. I like how fast it worked up and thanks to tutorials over at PlanetJune's amigurumi help I think I did pretty a pretty good job attaching the pieces. The problem I had was with placement. I wish there had been more pics showing the placement of the different parts. As you can see, mine came out a bit crooked.

I'll chalk this one up as a learning experience and do some more reading of tutorials and practicing.