Another fun, quick project! Last week I crocheted this amigurumi brain slug, as seen in Futurama, from a pattern by Alicia Ramirez of Hook and Needles.

Technical details of the yarn, hooks and my pattern changes on my Ravelry page

Recently I ran across this photograph from Salihan on flickr, and fell in love. Luckily it linked to a purchasable pattern so I could make my own giant pear!

Look at that face – don’t you just want to hug it? (It’s very huggable.)

I did use a different leaf design, modifying the “large leaf” part of this pattern by making it a bit bigger.

How giant is the pear? Approximately the size of a 5-month-old baby:

(Please excuse the dodgy quality of that last photo, our house is dimly lit and I can’t put Willow in the light tent!)

It’s a very easy pattern, and lots of fun! Highly recommended.

Technical details of pattern, yarn and hooks on my Ravelry page.

My newest crochet project was making a cozy for my iPad, so I can throw it in my bag without worrying about scratches from my keys and other bits and pieces. Believe it or not, despite the crafters’ habit of making cozies for everything (as immortalised in this awesome Sheldon comic), this is the first cozy I’ve ever made!

I used two balls of vintage fuzzy brushed wool from my stash, and a slightly smaller hook than I would normally use with this yarn to ensure a dense fabric and good scratch protection. The stitch pattern is called Catherine Wheel stitch, which I worked in the round from a base row of foundation single crochet.

P.S. Crocheters: Do you know about foundation crochet? I learned about it just before starting this project and it’s fantastic! No more awkward starting chains! Here’s a great tutorial from futuregirl.com.

I finished with a row of half double crochet, then a row of single crochet repeating the pattern (3 sc, sc2tog). Those decreases don’t make the top edge much smaller, but just bring it in neatly. I made the fit very snug so that no closures would be needed – even if you hold it upside down and shake the iPad is definitely not going to fall out.

In action it looks a little like a hot water bottle, but I’m really happy. I got to use up some yarn I wouldn’t use in any of my usual projects, and it works exactly how I intended! Hooray!

It’s finished!

I stitched the squares together using mattress stitch, and added a simple border to complement the detail in the squares.

I learned several valuable lessons from this first crochet blanket:

• At first I didn’t know the best ways to change colours and finish each round, so the later squares are definitely tidier! I picked up some great techniques from Sarah London’s Seamless + Symmetrical Tutorial and Minspiration’s Colour Change Tutorial.
• The colours are… not how I had pictured them. Everyone who visited and saw the pile of yarn I was working from and the finished squares agreed that the palette looked quite different when worked up. I regretted some of the choices while the blanket was in progress, but it pulled together at the end and I do like the result! I think that this pattern emphasizes contrast, so the brighter greens and teal really pop while the softer colours fade together.
• I haaaaate working with acrylic yarn. I already knew that, but I couldn’t find the colours I wanted in the local stores in wool yarns, so I picked up a few balls and constantly cursed myself. The super-cheap wool yarns weren’t great to work with either. Next time I’m just going to order Cascade Superwash 220 online, as it is reputed to be pleasantly soft and comes in a huge variety of shades.

There are some technical details on the pattern, yarn and border over on Ravelry for the crochet-minded!

I’ve got my next blanket entirely planned out now, but I can’t quite afford the yarn for it yet, so I’ll be doing a few small amigurumi projects from my stash while I wait :)

I’ve finished crocheting all the squares of my Circle of Friends lap blanket!

That’s 48 – I’ve been working on this since February so it’s taken a few months, but I got a lot faster towards the end.

The cats could not let any unusual activity go unobserved.

Monty "helped".

Of course, Pippin had to get in on the action too.

Hooray! I thought it might be difficult to arrange the squares evenly but once I laid them out randomly it only took a few swaps to distribute the colours.

Once I had the placement decided I grabbed my box of safety pins and some scrap paper, and set to labelling them…

Now they’re all labelled I’m ready to start stitching together!

I’ve wanted to make a granny square style crochet rug for a long time, and these last couple of weeks of putting my feet up have been the perfect opportunity.

I started by sorting through my yarn chest and decided to go with a cream/pink/mauve/green/teal/grey palette. I already had about a third as much as I needed in those colours, and bought another dozen or so balls to top up. (It’s pleasing to use up yarn I already had, especially as a lot of it was partial balls not suitable for starting whole projects with, but it’s also fun to shop for new yarn!)

I’m using the Circle of Friends pattern, which I found it by browsing through the flickr “granny square” tag until I found a design I liked the look of. It looks very plain on the pattern page but I like the effect when made with a variety of yarn colours.

So far I’ve made about a quarter of the squares I need for a generously sized lap rug. I won’t get it finished before the baby arrives (which could be any day now!) but that’s OK, I’m enjoying the process and not in any hurry.

P.S. If you’re a Ravelry member my project page has more information on the yarn, pattern, etc. This is the first time I’ve used Ravelry and I must admit it’s quite addictive!

I made a delightful amigurumi piglet over the weekend!

He is from a pattern in Amigurumi: Super Happy Crochet Cute by Elisabeth Doherty. I don’t often work from patterns, but this one was so sweet I couldn’t resist, and it used some interesting techniques. I love the snout shaping! This is my favourite crochet book, as it contains more complex and nuanced patterns than any other I’ve seen; no surprise considering the author is the genius behind Gourmet Amigurumi.

P.S. Of course, since this little guy isn’t my design he is not for sale. I’m keeping him for myself!