Finished hotair balloon with blue bear

I must say, my balloon turned out to be rather oblong compared with the picture in Rimoli's "Amigurumi Two!", where I got the pattern. This will eventually hang in Stephen and Baby's room, once I get some kind of hook up to hold it.

Mobile for baby brother

I've been working on another design by Ana Paula Rimoli from her "Amigurumi World 2: Toys for Me and You and Baby Too." I wanted to make something for Stephen and New Baby (due in 10 days!!) and this model was just the thing. I changed the color scheme to blues and greens and I might make a different mini critter besides the white bear that she has with it.

Stephen saw me stuffing the balloon portion of the amigurumi with polyfill and he wanted to join in the fun. The balloon and basket are completed, but I haven't made the little critter to go in the basket yet. Will post those later :)

Happy Rain

My friends have four children, each with a unique "nature-y" name. Anna Rain will be celebrating her 4th birthday tomorrow, and I wanted to make her a little gift that reflected her pretty middle moniker. This is what I came up with...

To make a happy rain mobile, I went pretty random on the cloud. I'm afraid I couldn't replicate what I did if I tried. It involved adding stitches only on the top side to get the asymetrical bumpy look. The raindrops are more cut and dry:

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Happy drop

(Note, leave a long tail in the beginning to suspend drop from cloud.)

R1: ch 2, sc 3 in second chain from hook

R2: sc 2 in each (6 sts)

R3: sc 1, 2 sc repeated three times (9 sts)

R4: sc 2, 2 sc repeated 3 times (12 sts)

R5: sc 3, 2 sc repeated 3 times (15 sts)

R6: sc 4, 2 sc repeated 3 times (18 sts)

R7: sc 5, 2 sc repeated 3 timnes (21 sts)

R8: sc 6, 2 sc repeated 3 times (24 sts)

R9: add eyes, 5 sts apart and sc 24

R10-11: sc 24, embroider mouth

R12: sc 2, dec 1 repeat 6 times (18 sts)

R13: sc 1, dec 1 repeat 6 times (12 sts)

R14: sk 1, sc 1 repeated 6 times (6 sts)

R15: sk 1, sc1 repeat 3 times, tie off.

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Rainbow hanger
(Note: Be sure to leave tails at either of each color to sew rainbow to cloud's head.)
R1: ch 15 with purple yarn
R2: turn and sl st 14
R3: sc 1, 2 sc to end with blue yarn
R4: sc 2, 2 sc to end with green yarn
R5: sc 3, 2 sc to end with yellow yarn
R6: sc 4, 2 sc to end with reddish-orange yarn

Brown Bat

I had no idea how complicated it would be to make a bat amigurumi. And, actually, the head and body were a cinch... it was the wings that got a little complicated. I knew I didn't want to spend the time trying to come up with crocheted wings, but the felt I have is rather limp. There was also the problem of attatching the wings to the body... something I should have thought about before stuffing and closing the body and attaching it to the head.

My solution: Make crocheted arms for the bat with long tails for sewing. Double up the wings and sew some green craft wire into the wings along the top edge, hiding the stitches by sewing the crocheted arms over the location of the wire. I desperately need some lessons on sewing and embroidering, as I feel my wing edges are quite messy. The wings attach to the back where the arms are and near the bottom of the wings. This was sort of an afterthought when I realized how floppy the whole thing was. I cut two little slits in the front piece of felt of each wing using very tiny and very sharp sewing scissors. In retrospect, I would have cut these before sewing the wings together. After attaching the wings to the back at the arms, I ran the remaining tail through the slits and attached the wings further down the back. It would be difficult to actually sew on the wings while still crocheting the bat's body because they run most of the length of his back, so maybe my "mistake" was actually the most logical way to put this critter together.

OK, here's my attempt at providing a pattern for the crocheted parts:
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Head
Note: R1 is actually the bat's nose rather than the top of his head.
R1: ch 2, 3 sc in second ch from hook
R2: 2 sc in each (6 sts)
R3: 2 sc in each (12 sts)
R4: sc 1, 2 sc repeated 6 times (18 sts)
R5: sc 2, 2 sc repeated 6 times (24 sts)
R6: Sew on nose and add pony bead eyes about 8 stitches apart, sc 24 (24 sts)
R7-9: sc 24
R10: sc 2, dec 1 (18 sts)
R11: sc 18
R12: sc 1, dec 1 (12 sts)
R13-14: sk 1, sc 1 until you can close it off.
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Ears (make 2)
R1: ch 5
R2: turn, skip one stitch and sc back to the beginning of the chain; tie off and leave tail for sewing ears to head.
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Body
R1: ch 2, 7 sc in second chain from hook
R2: 2 sc in each (14 st)
R3: sc 1, 2 sc, repeated 7 times (21 st)
R4-7: sc 21
R8: sc 6, dec 1, repeated 3 times (18 sts)
R9-13: sc 18
R14: sc 5, dec 1, repeated 3 times (15 sts)
R15: sc 4, dec 1, repeated 3 times (12 sts)
R16: sk 1, sc 1, repeated 6 times (6 sts) tie off, leaving tail for sewing body to head.
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Arms (make 2)
R1: ch 14
R2: turn and sl st 12 starting from the second chain from hook, then sc 1. Tie off and leave long tail for sewing wings to back.
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Wings
Draw desired wing shape on paper, then cut out and use it as a pattern to make 4 wing shapes in beige felt. If you've got any pen marks on the wings, be sure to hide those sides on the inside of your wings. Measure out two pieces of craft wire so that when they are folded in half, they are just a little shorter than the top edge of your felt wings. Use a needle and thread to sew each wire to the inside of a wing. Make sure to sew the second wire to the opposite side of the second wing... since they should be mirror images of each other.  Then sew each crocheted arm to the wings, opposite the wire side, covering any messy stitches from where you sewed the wire. Cut two small slits in each wing front about an inch below the base of the crocheted arms. Use brown embroidery floss to sew wing fronts to wing backings.
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Attaching
Consider using straight pins or safety pins to position the wings where you want them. Next, using a smaller crochet hook (like D) weave the tails into the bat's back to attach the wings. String the remaining tail through the slits you cut in the wing and attach it to a lower point on the bat's back.
Brown bat may look a little frumpy at this point, but his wings can be reshaped by gently bending the wire to the desired angle.

Bob & Larry

Stephen is quite fond of Veggie Tales, and I thought Bob and Larry's spherical and cylindrical shapes would lend themselves to crocheting in the round. Larry was pretty easy. I think I started with 5 stitches in Round 1 and increased by five each round until I had 25 stitches. Then I just continued with 25 stitches until he seemed a good "Larry" length and decreased by five until I got down to ten, then skipped every other stitch to tie off. The eyes are black and white felt, the mouth black felt with an embroidered white tooth. I had to study Stephen's DVD boxes to get this to look right. I'm not terribly pleased with my embroidery skills though! The nose begins with R1: chain 2, 3 stitches. R2: 2 sc in each stitch. R3: 1 sc in each.

Bob has a really fat, flat head/body. He's about 22 rounds total. To get the flat top, I started R1 with 7 stitches and increased by 7 each round until I had 42 stitches. There's three rows of 42 after that, and then I decreased to 35 and held it at 35 stitches for a row. Then I decreased to 21 and held it at 21 for a second round. Then I decreased by 7 until I could tie off. Bob has bigger eyes than Larry, the same kind of nose and a simple embroidered mouth. He's also got a green felt star-shaped calyx sewn on the top of his head.

I should have written down the exact "recipe" for these guys, but I was making them in whatever spare bits of time I could find lately... which is not very much!