hoo... hoo... who?

first of all, just to let everyone know that i've settled down nicely in the new country and getting a hang of things here... my new life and new job here. 


oh, and the stuff i sent over via shipment has finally arrived, which includes my big box of crochet yarn! my fingers were just itching to hook something, so i decided to make these simple yet delightful owls!

it being december, i decided to use a more festive colour combination...

sleeping owl... if i had a christmas tree, i'd hang it up as a bauble! :)

rupert the owl pattern is purchased from reeneegurumi.

more wrist bag!

this seems to be a popular item, huh? i've received lots of requests for this wrist bag, both in pattern form as well as the finished product. well, here's another one, in "earthly blue & brown" as requested.

a simple "lunch tote" for a friend, who will be starting her new job real soon!

anyway, i'm sure most of you have noticed that my crafting output has dwindled down to a pathetic trickle... well, just to update everyone what i've been up to recently...

1st, i moved to a new apartment in july, so was busy packing, unpacking and organising my new nest. 

and then roughly one month later, i received a job offer in another country! so i'm now busy packing up again, settling all my other private and not-so-private affairs... :D

but not to worry! i'll be shipping all my crafting stuff over, and crafting will resume when i get settled down in the new place... stay tuned! :)

wrist rest kitty...

my junior designer is leaving us soon, so i made this little wrist rest for her to bring to her new work place... something for her to remember me by everyday! hehehe...

actually, this is my 2nd attempt making something for her. when she was interning with us previously, i made a little something for her at the end of her internship but it turned out rather hideous! so in the end, i bought something else for her instead. i'm glad it turned out ok this time round!

the eyes are supposed to look like this: n_n smiling happily. but i suck at embroidery, so i just went for the easy inverted "v". see, even the rounded "w" for its snout looks crooked and not symmetric! :P

this length should be ok...

what the tag said...

good and positive vibes in every stitch, here's wishing JR all the best in her future endeavors! :)

cat toy: chubby the fish

recently, i found out from a good friend that her cat, milo, has been diagnosed of feline leukemia... it's so sad, especially so for my friend, who's battling with cancer herself!

even though i've not met milo, i feel as if i've known him for a long time, as we get nearly daily updates of milo's antics/condition/progress/decline etc from my friend on facebook. sometimes it's good, sometimes bad...

so i decided to make a little toy for poor milo, in the form of chubby the fish. this free pattern was sent to me by another friend, who made one for her niece. i like the colour combination she used, so i used the same colours for milo's chubby.

chubby the fish for milo...

but this is to be a cat toy, and as we all know, cats are very fussy creatures. i was worried that milo might not like his new toy, so thought of stuffing some catnips into chubby. but then another idea came to me: how about making it like those doggie toys where we stuff food into them to torture let the dogs figure out how to get the food out?

so i made a slight modification to the original pattern, whereby i added in a hallow kinda tube that extends from the tail into chubby's stomach. that way, the catnips can be replaced often with fresh ones. milo's human can even stuff kibble or some cat biscuits into it, depending on milo's preference! :)

some minor modification in the tail...

but alas, sad news... before i can finish this, i got news that milo has passed on. well, i guess i should be glad that milo's misery has finally ended :'(

anyway, this chubby will be inherited by milo's successor, a certain grey stripey kitten called "abu dhabi labu labi"! :D

custom request: a very christmassy snowman!

my friend was looking through my craft album when she chanced upon a snowman that i made for another friend. immediately she requested for a similar snowman, but with an extra christmassy scarf, all green, red and gold!

err... a snowman in the middle of april?? ah well, whatever it takes to make her happy! :)

hope this is christmassy enough!

initially i had this idea of making pom-poms instead of balls for the ends, but they're so small and gold thread is so hard to work with! so in the end, had to crochet them into balls... came out quite well, though! ;)

the pattern for this snowman is free from lion brand yarn.

long-overdue birthday gift: usahana

i took so long to complete this for my good friend's birthday... and even with months and months of lead time, i'm still more than one month late! hehe... sorry, M! hope you like it... ;)

usahana, the colourful girl bunny...

this is u*sa*ha*na (that's how they present her, with all those asterisks. don't ask me why...), one of hello kitty's friends from sanrio. before making this bunny, i didn't even know about this character... hello kitty has been hogging the limelight for too long! :P

anyway, with my limited knowledge in the japanese language, i think the name "usahana" is a combination of "usagi" (japanese for rabbit) and "hana" (japanese for flower). so that explains it being so colourful, like a flower. hehe... just my thoughts, not even sure if that's true!

custom request: tiny male angels

V recently contacted me for a pair of male angels, to commemorate his and his partner's 7th year anniversary of their being together. but he requested for them to be smaller then my normal angels, and actually i kinda regretted accepting this project.

i had to use a different yarn to get them into a smaller size, and this yarn is very difficult to work with! they're stiffer and made the angels look hard, unlike the usual soft stuffed toy effect that normal amigurumi has. also, this particular range of yarn does not have the cream colour for skin, so i had to make do with the closest colour possible, which is of a little darker tone.

and i was very very busy with other stuff, that i was really rushing these out. i wish i had more time to work on them, seeing that they're for a special occasion... and i'd love to embroider on their eyes, but i reckoned that will take time, again due to their size. so in the end, i went with tiny beads, which made the angels have this zoned out look! :P

anyway, these patterns were purchased from saplanet on etsy. originally, these angels are supposed to have legs, but due to their tiny size, the legs made them look a little weird. so i decided not to give them legs after all. male angels do wear white angel gowns too, after all! :P

photo courtesy of V. luckily he likes them, despite all the shortcomings... :)

custom request: little chef

my friend PC wanted to give an amigurumi doll to her friend for her birthday, and requested me to make something that looks like her friend. as her friend works as a chef, PC wants the doll to be in her friend's chef uniform. so this doll is currently on its way to the US now...

black chef uniform with buttons down the middle and green pants.

at first she wanted me to make the hair into a bun with a stick sticking out the bun... wah, so challenging! later she said it's ok with just a ponytail... i don't know how long her hair should be, so i just left it long and PC can later trim it herself if she finds it too long.

not sure if this expression fits her friend, but when i described it to PC (smiling happily, until can't even see her eyes), she seemed to like it! :P

hope her friend likes it...

crocheted tawashi...

a tawashi is japanese for "dish scrubbie" and i found this pattern quite nice and unique... i decided to make it since i've started washing my cutlery in my bathroom basin (as opposed to walking all the way to the kitchen - yes, i'm THAT lazy!) more and more.

this is a somewhat easy project, completed it in less than 2 hours. but looking back at the website, i realized i didn't close up the hole in the middle enough. so there a gaping hole... anyway, the yarn i used for the grey is of a different kind from the yarns in blue and cream, hence the more "ribbed" effect.

i've hung it up on my bathroom mirror right above the basin (so that the basin will catch all the water dripping from it and not wet my floor!) but i've not started using it. hope it'll be nice to use, like store-bought dish scrubbies, if not better!

actual size is around the size of our palm, but that solely depends on the yarns used...

first crocheted clothes item...

for the longest time, i've never had any interest to crochet clothes items... for one thing, it's such an obasan (japanese for aunty) thing to do, and for another, crocheting clothes takes such a long time that i'll never have the patience to see the whole project through.

but that all changed when i came across this japanese crochet pattern book at kinokuniya. one of the patterns is so pretty and seems easy enough to do... so i embarked on this project using a skein of baby yarn which i bought sometime ago but never had any excuse to use (in the end, i used up 6 skeins of this quite expensive baby yarn!).

i took my own sweet time making this, occasionally putting it aside to work on other projects, and then picking it up again when i have nothing else better to do... it sort of became my "back-up project", and took me about 6 months to complete.

so ta-da! here it is at last... my first clothes item!

here i'm pairing it with a big baggy white pullover, which makes me look kinda chubby :(

gotta get some slim fitting, white long-sleeved blouse for this!

anyway, the finished item feels heavy... i reckon it will not be very suitable for our warm malaysian weather. ah well, maybe i'll just keep it for when i leave for japan! ;)

crocheted mary janes...

i've been rushing this last minute order to be sent out in time for the coming chinese new year... *phew*

3 baby booties, 2 in 5 inches size (blue and pink) and 1 in 4 inches size (pink). i'm using a different yarn this time round. something softer and which i think will be more gentle to the baby's skin. hence my gauge was off and i had to spend quite some time crocheting and then frogging (that's pulling out the yarns for the non-crocheters out there) and crocheting again to get the right stitch count and size. but at last, i managed to finish them last night.

the photo quality here is not so good, coz i snapped it at 2am and i was dead sleepy already! ;)

another wrist bag...

a friend wanted this bag too... and requested it to be in black with red flower, her favourite colour combination! so here it is...

do you think the flower's a tad too big, or is it just me?

i think the flower is too gory! seriously, every time i look at it, i shudder! so i actually made a smaller red flower for my friend. if she too can't stand the loudness of this giant red wheel of a flower, she just needs to cut it out and replace it with the smaller one.

for the pattern, go read my previous post on how you can get your hands on them!

wrist bag for my niece...

last chinese new year, my niece's little handbag was torn by her rowdy cousins, who must've played tug-a-war with it (girls nowadays! *rolls eyes*). when i knew about it, i secretly made up my mind to crochet a little bag for her... but as usual, i procrastinated. hehe... and now a year has passed! so i quickly put together a wrist bag in a sweet shade of pink for her, and adorned it with little purple/pink flowers. again, looks kinda japanese-ish, right? that's because i got the flower patterns from a japanese crochet book!

anyway, the pattern for this wrist bag is free but i think they've closed down the site. however, i still have a soft copy of the pattern, so if any of you wish to give this bag a try, just post me a comment with your e-mail addy and i'll just e-mail it over to you in a jiffy! ;)

hope my niece likes it!

starling handbag

got this pattern from futuregirl... if you want to give it a try, download it here.

i adorned it with clovers... don't you think it looks kinda japanese-ish? hehe...

anyway, i did not use the foundation single crochet in the pattern coz it looked kinda complicated. so i just stick to single crochets and it still came out ok.

and i put in lining for this bag. love it!

crocheted maneki neko

i just finished hooking this maneki neko (japanese for "beckoning cat") for a colleague, who is leaving my company to set up a company of her own. to make this, i combined 2 patterns together: maneki neko by Mountain Weaver and jiji the cat by a gamer's wife.

i made it a red cat because red symbolizes 'luck' in chinese. i also gave her a golden salmon tucked under her arms, gold symbolizing 'wealth' or 'fortune'.

 somehow, my maneki neko looks less 'beckoning', and more like saying "yeah! i found

a golden fish!" and the large eyes made her look like she's wearing a pair of spectacles!

 

instead of jiji the cat's long tail, i gave her a bob-tail instead... i find bob-tails
so much cuter than long swishy tails, but that's just my own weird preference! :P

i'm not quite satisfied with her facial expression, but because i ran out of time (it's my colleague's last day today!), i had to make do with it. given more time, i think i'll remove the big white eyes and just weave in a pair of chinky eyes to show her beaming happily and also a rounded 'w' shaped nose. ah well, there's always next time...

crocheted keropi coaster

feel free to use this pattern and share it with your friends, but please do not sell the pattern nor the finished coaster!

it'll be great if you could share with me some photos of your own finished coasters from working on this pattern. just copy your link onto the comment field. likwise, if you found any mistake or would just like to give me your feedback, drop me a comment!

download crocheted keropi coaster pattern