Notre Dame Cushion

This past Boxing Day (December 26th, 2014) was my sister’s birthday. It was her first birthday as a college student. I decided to make a special gift for her — a crocheted cushion with her school logo and her name.

The front of the cushion with the University of Notre Dame logo.

The back of the cushion with my sister’s name, Grace Chow. No one should be able to steal it! 🙂

Close up

I had worked on different crochet projects before, such as amigurumi (i.e. stuffed animals/dolls), hats, scarfs, blankets, afghans, etc. However, this was the first time I had ever incorporated tapestry crochet in my work. It took me a while to figure out how to do the reverse rows without using my left hand and I did miscalculate the dimension when I carried the extra yarn and had to make some adjustments. Although the result was not perfect (i.e. notice that the ND logo was taller than the original), I was satisfied with my creation, my learning experience, and the most important of all, my sister’s reaction. She was happy to add another ND item to her collection (yap! go Irish!). She planned to bring it with her to her dorm after winter break and joked that no one will be able to steal her cushion without getting caught (well, unless there is another Notre Dame student with the same name).  🙂

TweeCraft

Ladies and Gentlemen!

Check out TweeCraft (http://www.etsy.com/shop/TweeCraft)!!!

My sister recently opened a shop on Etsy to share her passion for craft. As of today, she has four polymer clay charms/keychains/necklace/earrings in the shop.

There are still more to come! Stay tune and we would greatly appreciate your support!

 

 

Amigurumi – Graduate

I know it has well passed the time of graduation for most students. However, it is never too late to share the gift I made for my brother, Eric, to celebrate his graduating from high school several months ago.

Eric was the Valedictorian of his class. Needless to say, our family was extremely excited about his graduation. Every one of us had spent months to deliberate over the graduation gifts. I wanted to make something special—something that shows my excitement and appreciation for his achievements. I decided to crochet a doll for Eric—a doll that represents him. It was the first time I had ever handmade a gift for him. (It’s also the first time I had ever handmade a gift for a boy. Ha ha!)

In the eye of the beholder (me!), the doll is chubby and cute. In my brother’s opinion, my creation became the following…

His first reaction upon receiving the doll: “My hair looks like this!?”

A moment later, he continued, “Dude, my head is a ball of rice!”

@_@

Well, there is nothing I can do about the “rice ball” head!

Side view

The back

Side view

Today, this prominent “rice-ball head” graduate stood on my brother’s bookshelf. I guess my gift is not that bad after all.

Amigurumi – Food

With my newfound addiction to making amigurumi, there was no doubt I didn’t pass the opportunity Father’s Day had to offer. I decided to make a collection of amigurumi with a unifying theme. I had considered a number of themes including farm animals, family, Chinese zodiac, playground, etc. and ended up dropping most of them except food mainly because I couldn’t find enough patterns to make a collection. Besides, I didn’t want to use any animal theme because I had already given an amigurumi elephant and hippo to my father on his birthday. I wanted something new.

Food, mainly desserts and pastries, came through for a couple reasons. First, there were tremendous amount of patterns on different kinds of food online. It not only made my job easier but also offered seemingly unlimited options. Second, my father loves food and he always says we live to eat. I don’t make enough to buy him a lot of fine cuisine and a denture for him to eat. Why not make a bunch of nice-looking foods, albeit fake, to make him happy?

Once I had decided on a theme, I started my quest for patterns. With a project this size, I didn’t wait until after Mother’s Day to begin. Indeed, I started the project in February to be sure I would have enough time to finish by early June. In addition, I spent around $30 on yarn to make sure it will be a colorful gift. In the same vein, I purposely include a variety of food, such as sushi, hamburger, pies, desserts, pastries, candies, and fruits.

Pie

Sushi

Fish

As I was busy crocheting, I thought about the presentation of my gift. Should I make a huge plate to hold everything? Or create a multi-layer lunch box and organize the foods by category? I consulted my younger sister and she suggested pastry boxes. I immediately liked the idea. Since none of the pastry boxes I found at my local retailers and grocery stores suited my need, I decided to make my own out of paper bags and clear plastic wrapping papers. With Elmer’s glue, a pencil, a ruler, and a pair of scissors, I constructed three pastry boxes. I also made a sushi box out of cardboard and construction papers. Nothing was impossible.

Paper Bags

Pastry Box Almost Completed

Finished

This is by far the largest gift by count I have ever given to my father. I was a little embarrassed when I presented it to my father. All he said was “Woah!” He used two cardboard boxes to store my gift.

Amigurumi – Giraffe

It has been months since I last blogged. Not that I hadn’t had time to crochet or work on interesting projects; in fact, quite the contrary, I was making a number of amigurumi in the last few months. It was just that I was too occupied (or, frankly, too lazy) to blog about the progress. The couple of months before Mother’s and Father’s Days have always been my busiest time of the year. My siblings and I have been keeping the tradition of hand making gifts for our parents on their important dates. I don’t know exactly when we started it but my guess is that I probably hand made my first Mother’s and Father’s Days’ gifts in kindergarten and carried on the “tradition” with my younger siblings ever since. Now that I am 24, I believe I will keep doing it as long as I have the time and ideas for handmade gifts.

Back to the topic, I spent a huge chunk of time on crocheting amigurumi during the last few months. This year is busier than usual with my Valedictorian brother graduating from high school and my decision to crochet a little doll for him. Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun searching for and creating patterns and making the dolls. I promise I will share what I have done in this and my next couple posts.

Without further adieu, here comes my gift for Mother’s Day—an amigurumi giraffe. Its neck might be too short to look like a giraffe to you. Nonetheless, it is cute and my mother liked it. A friend of mine said it would make a perfect baby gift.

I made this amigurumi giraffe based on an incomplete Japanese pattern. I slightly modified the pattern and translated it to English. I am sharing the pattern here and I hope you like it. Please don’t hesitate to contact me or comment on my blog with any questions and suggestions.

Here is the pattern in PDF: Amigurumi Giraffe Pattern (English)

Amigurumi – Bunny

I should have posted some pictures of the very first amigurumi I made a long time ago. For some reason, I talked about the bunny in my last two posts about amigurumi but never shared any image of the product. My BAD! Now I finally remember it and have the time to do it, I would like to share with you my first amigurumi.

I chose to make a bunny for a few reasons. One, there was a tutorial available on YouTube by “cutesycrochet” that was easy to follow for a beginner. The instructor of the tutorial even taught us how to make glue-gun eyes that rival the ones you can buy from a craft store. Two, I intended to make a bunny for my father’s birthday because it is the Year of Rabbit. Three, I was born in the Year of Rabbit. (Oops, I sort of disclosed my age!)

I also made two flowers of different sizes to be stacked under the bunny. Again, I found the tutorials on YouTube.

For those of you who are interested in making your own bunny and flowers, here are the links to the tutorials I used for my own:

Amigurumi Blob Bunny Tutorial [Part 1 of 3]
Amigurumi Blob Bunny Tutorial [Part 2 of 3]
Amigurumi Blob Bunny Tutorial [Part 3 of 3]

How To Crochet Small Flower – Patons Pattern
How To Crochet Large Flower – Patons Pattern

Here are some images and video of my bunny and flowers:

I made a mistake by putting the wrong side out for the body.

With flowers

Flowers

The back of flowers

Stacked together

Amigurumi – Elephant

I found myself addicted to making amigurumi. Just a couple days after I completed the hippo project, I started making an amigurumi elephant with the same skein of yarn. This time, I followed a free pattern from Lion Brand. The result looked different from the one shown in the pattern. Specifically, I found that the nose was too long and therefore I curved the nose inward.

Side view

From top

It took me a while to write this post (please forgive my laziness). I already gave the elephant, along with the hippo I made earlier, to my father for his birthday. He seemed to like them. I also gave him my very first amigurumi bunny (which I will show in my next entry) to wish him good luck in the Year of Rabbit.

Here is an all-around view of the elephant:

Amigurumi – Hippo

I have been learning to crochet for a few years and, recently, I fell in love with making amigurumi. What is amigurumi? According to Wikipedia, the word is derived from two Japanese words that, when combined, means knitted or crocheted stuffed dolls. These stuffed dolls are cute little creatures that would attract any girl’s attention. They actually caught my attention many years ago when I was a kid. Yet, I didn’t know what they were called at that time, nor did I become interested in learning to create one on my own until recently.

It all started when I came across a tutorial on YouTube about making a bunny amigurumi. From the same author/instructor, I also learned how to make professional-looking doll eyes with a glue gun and sharpies. I then explored other resources on the Internet and taught myself various techniques, such as magic ring and invisible decrease. I also previewed several amigurumi books on Google Books (unfortunately, my local library doesn’t have any amigurumi books) and found a simple pattern for a hippopotamus. After hours of effort, my amigurumi hippo was born! It was my very first amigurumi that I made from a written pattern without the help of video tutorial. It was a great learning experience and the sense of accomplishment was worth the time I spent. I am going to give this hippo to my father for his birthday this year and I hope he will like it.

Here is an all-around view of the hippo:

3D Origami – Keroppi

I was trying to make a 3D Keroppi origami the other day. For those of you who don’t know who Keroppi is, he is a cartoon frog that was created in 1987. His full name is KeroKeroKeroppi. According to Sanrio Town, Keroppi is part of a triplet and lives in KeroKero house with his family. I didn’t know this information until I wrote this blog entry and was pleasantly surprise that Keroppi and I were born in the same year!

I decided to make a Keroppi origami simply because he is cute. With big eyes, a V-shaped mouth and chubby cheeks, Keroppi is one of my favorite cartoon characters. Often seen in a red and white suit, I suspect Keroppi is intended to be portrayed as a swimmer and I decided to employ this signage appearance on my 3D Keroppi origami.

Here are some images of the finished product:

3D Keroppi Origami.

Side view

The back

From top

My origami obviously failed to depict Keroppi’ chubby features. From certain angles, my Keroppi origami looked evil rather than happy. The V-shaped mouth turned into a broken U-shaped. Yet, I was quite satisfied with the red and white portion of the origami. Instead of using printing papers, I used construction papers for the body, which made the origami sturdier and denser.

Although the origami was far from perfection, it was a big step for me to try making something other than the classic 3D panda origami. I came up with the Keroppi pattern on my own and honestly did not find and use any tutorial.