woolly ideas

Bad taste amigurumi

2011-07-08T07:16:00.001-07:00

Hey. So its been a while.

All my knitting time has been taken up recently with an epic knitted sea side blacket for my father in law, Brian. I'm not that great at knitting in summer anyway - need the long winter nights to drive me to the needles.

In the meantime I thought I'd share the fruits of other people's efforts. These are the best bad taste amigurumi ever:

Crocheted neuron with Multiple Sclerosis damage (plus other anatomical treats here)

Cute toilet paper, with or without poo friend

Octopussy with insertable tampon

Knitted Royal Family

2011-03-11T08:04:00.000-08:00

As if the royal wedding wasn't exciting enough already, some clever soul has created a knitted version. I like.

Pink unicorn

2010-05-24T13:26:00.000-07:00

I made this pink unicorn fridge magnet in homage to Charlie the Unicorn. Apparently it's been bought by Disney so I hope they get angry and sue me.

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Felt friends

2010-04-21T13:18:00.001-07:00

Not sure if these should qualify as a 'woolly idea'. They are felt. I guess that's kind of woolly.

I made them to give away as presents but now husband has bonded with them. We are drowning in cute little critters!

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Tony Harrison

2010-04-04T00:13:00.001-07:00

Even when you use a pattern you can never tell exactly what the creation will look like. Actually another cephalopod for my collection, this striking pink little chap came out the spits of Tony Harrison from The Mighty Boosh.

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Padawan crotcheter

2010-04-02T10:21:00.000-07:00

Teaching my mum, a proficient and seasoned knitter and inspiration behind all my creations, to crochet this afternoon. Here is her first work. It's nice to be able to give something back. And be better than her for once.

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Cup cake pin friend

2010-03-24T16:11:00.000-07:00

I made this handsome little chap for my friend jess's birthday. She's got a beautiful vintage sewing machine that he can watch over and keep her pins neat and tidy in his minty icing head.

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The embodiment of evil

2010-03-20T17:18:00.000-07:00

Another chap from creepy cute. The patterns are really quick but have clever little touches like a self closing 'magic circle' for casting on in rounds.

This guy is cthulhu, a half octopus, half dragon sea beast, intent on world destruction.

I gave him extra long mouth tentacles.

He also reminds me of a fleshy be-tentacled beast from the dr who exhibition, the Ood, although the knitted version is much cuter. Also, the BBC complained about the last poor knitter who made a homage to these chaps so best not to dwell on that...

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my iPhone

Anthias turner

2010-03-07T02:34:00.000-08:00

Just came back from an amazing week in the red sea, finishing my PADI open water scuba course with my husband. It's like going to another world underwater, bobbing around with clouds of neon fish, flying over lush corals and spotting rays and turtles and even a reef shark in and around the bays of sharm el sheikh. We flew home from 38 degree heat to minus 3 in London last night and I set about making a thank you present for our instructors and guides at camel dive club. This fine orange lady is an anthias - I've called her anthias turner. Anthias are hermaphrodites - the most dominant female in a harem group changes sex to become male and if she dies another female steps up to the mantle. Fish feminism in action. They also swim directly into the current and seemed to be doing a much better job than me at mastering the forces of the sea.

Tea-45

2010-02-25T07:16:00.000-08:00

I'm getting ready to move on from to a new job. I love where I am at the moment but after the wedding and honeymoon last year it just felt like the right time to move forward, especially after 3 years here.

As a parting gift I've made them a tea cosy and cafetiere cosy, in exchange for my P45. Considering how much tea we get through in this office they may well prove more useful for productivity than I ever was!

Ming the Merciless, Emperor of Mongo

2010-02-24T06:27:00.000-08:00

Princess Aura: Look! Water is leaking from her eyes.

Emperor Ming: Its what they call tears. Its a sign of their weakness.

Slow loris

2010-02-23T03:48:00.000-08:00

Inspired by this classic Youtube vid , I created this little amigurumi loris for my boss as a secret santa present.

Slow loris are threatened because poachers kill them for their eyes, which they use as a traditional medicine. But the cute loris isn't without defence...

They have a poisonous bite and if that fails they can cunningly drop from their branch and roll away in a tight little ball. Too cute.

Back from the dead

2010-02-22T05:06:00.000-08:00

Spooky happenings over the weekend. A creature, given up for dead, emerged from the depths, drawn by the presence of its true master...

The story begins in the inhospitably cold days before Christmas. Hiding away from the un-godly weather, I turned the power of my opposable thumbs to crafting a creature of the night for my cousin Michael. He likes that sort of thing – monsters, zombies, skeleton armies etc etc. Rummaging through the endless scraps of DK I found just the right kind of knobbly ‘rotten flesh’ shade of tweedy wool and set about a pattern from Creepy Cute Crochet.

He turned out a treat. All drooling blood and brains, wobbly cadaverous head and dragging knuckles.

I took a couple of snaps for posterity but when I went to wrap him a few days later he was nowhere to be found... We searched the house, terrified of the horrific, evil acts he could be inflicting on other knitted creations, but to no avail. It was a mystery, only explainable by a possible accidental ejection amongst the recycling.

Months later, as Spring tried desperately to break through the bleak, black Winter... Michael came round for a game of Settlers of Catan (fun board game involving trading wheat, bricks etc to claim dominion over the island of Catan – try it sometime) and to watch Big Man Japan (weird Japanese monster movie involving a giant Gary Glitter look-a-like pummeling various monsters including a giant potato with an telescopic eye in place of his manhood and a family of cosmic looking giants that give a mean wedgie)

Within 5 mins of his arrival, I moved a cushion to make more seating room and out crawled the zombie from the nether regions of the couch, slightly squished and looking even more decomposed but otherwise still in good fettle. Or at least as much as the living dead can ever be.

It was like Thriller all over again.

Jim the giant squid

2010-02-19T04:20:00.000-08:00

Having knitted many a Jean Greenhowe character and crocheted lots of teeny animals for the tables at my wedding last year, I'm now of the mind that amigurumi are so much more fun to make than garments, which always seem to turn out a bit odd for me.

My brother bought me 'Amigurumi Knits' by Hansi Singh for Christmas and its got some cunning patterns in there and nifty techniques I haven't tried before, like short rows.

The hermit crab looks awesome but he's listed as a 'lengthy project' so I honed my needle skills on the mythical giant squid 'the kraken', in a fetching day glo green and yellow combo.

He turned out quite well. I was going to give him away as a present because my house is overrun with knitted creatures, but as soon as I gave him eyes I bonded with him and now he's staying. Admittedly I did have to crochet the eyes because trying to circular knit from just 3 cast on stitches reduced me to tears, but the end effect is still pretty faithful to the pattern.

He's called Jim.