globetrotter amineko...

my colleague, a lover of all cats, had her birthday a few days ago, so i made her an amineko to be her travel companion when she goes a-globetrottering... 

ok, i lied, her birthday wasn't a few days ago, but was in end of feb! so i was a bit late, but better late than never, right? :P


by the way, compare this with my previous amineko and ami-inu. which do you like best?


oh, and the pattern for amineko is free! ;)

juz spreading a bit of lurv...

if you recall my previous post more than a month ago, where i've prepared some colourful hearts for valentine's day. well, it's finally v-day today, so i can post up what i did with them now.


they were actually for the goodies bags that i've prepared for a few of my colleagues whom i've come to see as more than mere colleagues. here are the stuff the went into each goodies bag.

the state of my table last night... was watching some tvb drama while preparing them.

guess what are these? teabags! this is actually a pattern for matchbook downloaded from all things simple, where i re-sized to teabag size and sewed the edges close with bright red yarns.

added a heart shaped tag to the teabag cord...

how sweet are these butterfly lollies, right? pattern was copied from skip to my lou...

some kinder chocolates... the wrappers were downloaded from anything but perfect and again, re-sized to the size of the chocs...

red heart bookmars, pattern from mmmcrafts...

bags of heart shape candies in 3 different flavours... plastic bags were bought from daiso...

lastly, the crocheted hearts...

everything into the paper goodies bags, also bought from daiso (pink ribbons optional)...

happy valentine's day, everyone! :)

in preparation for valentine's day...

yeah, i know it's more than a month away, but i suddenly felt like preparing something for valentine's day...

colourful hearts...

i just realized that there are more blue hearts than any other colour... well, i just wanted to make them colourful, with no intentions of wishing the recipients a "blue valentine's day"!

so, what am i planning to do with all these multi-coloured hearts? well, you'll have to wait till after valentine's day to find out, so stay tuned! ;)

amigurumi heart pattern is free from here.

recycled christmas angel ornaments

this is a backdated post... coz i forgot that paper-crafts are crafts too! LOL


anyway, it's a last minute craft, something i decided to make for all my colleagues in my department, on the last hour of the last day of work before christmas!

mass production of recycled angels...

this is a very easy pattern, found here. i printed it out on used paper and my artist helped cut them out for me to fold. stick a strip of tape at the back to hold the shape and attach a piece of ribbon and voila!

we made 15... here's mine!

bear bear bauble...

made this gift for a colleague friend. one thing good about birthdays in the year end is that there are so many gift inspirations around, due to christmas. so hope she understands why her birthday gift so resembles a bauble... coz it's really meant to be hung on the christmas tree as a bauble! :P

lil bear with a snug cozy scarf...

as usual, packaging is recycled...

pattern for bear bauble is from all about ami

gil the globetrotter ami-inu

i went for a bit of traveling recently, and as it’ll be a solo trip, it’d be quite difficult to have many pictures of myself. so as not to bore my friends with too many photos of sceneries, i thought maybe i should have a representative to pose in a few of those travel photos.

after thinking for a while, i thought i’d make an ami-inu (amigurumi inu, “inu” being the japanese word for “dog”). this ami-inu will look slightly different from the amineko i made previously, coz obviously, amineko is a cat (“neko” = japanese for “cat”).

meet gil (short for gilbert), the globetrotter ami-inu… as you can see, gil is slightly bigger than the pink amineko, coz i used loose stitches.

gil waiting for boarding… he’s slightly pissed, due to flight delays! :D

totally beat, he hogged the whole sleeping bag to himself!

ami-inu pattern is adapted from this free amineko pattern.

amineko

this is a very belated birthday present that i did up for a friend. she just received it in the mail today, so i can post the pics up now… :)

amineko taking a nap on my laptop…

  amineko with its various poses…

i love its expression of =_=’’’ hahaha… the pattern can be downloaded free here.

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! :)

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.

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...

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

crocheted tortoise 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 tortoise coaster pattern

crocheted hippo 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 hippo coaster pattern

crocheted doggie coaster

inspired by crochet spot's teddy bear coaster, i've been coming up with a few animal coasters of my own. it's easy to make, and they're great to give away as presents this coming christmas!

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 give me your link in the comment field. likewise, if you found any mistake or would just like to give me your feedback, drop me a comment!

download crocheted doggie coaster pattern