The eyes have it

I just couldn't resist the pun on a post about working with Safety eyes in Amigurumi.

There are a lot of different eyes that you can use without having to buy safety eyes and they aren't the thing to use in every situation. Buttons, felt, googly eyes and french knots can all be used for this purpose depending on the look you're going for or you can even crochet eyes in the round. most of the time though safety eyes are going to give you a more professional look to you amigurumi.

Googly eyes

French knots

Crocheted

Embroidery eyes

The Advantage of these kinds of eyes is that they use something you already have, yarn, or something you can easily get. Any Walmart or dollar store will sell googly eyes or buttons but for some people safety eyes are something they can only hope to get online and that can be quite intimidating if you don't know what you're doing.

Yet the look of a piece finished with the right eyes makes things look a lot more professional and clean.

Okay let's start with how to find these eyes. I was able to get mine at Hobby Lobby but there are a lot of them available on different Etsy shops including ones you can paint yourself. 

This is my collection of safety eyes and noses.

I have 3 different kinds of noses and 5 different kinds of eyes. By far the ones that I use the most are the 10mm black eyes and I've only ever used the smallest of the noses. Most of my animals tend to be small though if you're making larger animals you'll need large eyes. yes there are some buttons in there too but these ones I've never had a reason to use as eyes and I bought to use as closures on my magic deck boxes.

this is what the eyes look like before you attach them.

The actual eyes looks a bit like a push pin and there are plastic washers that snap on the back. I've heard of eyes that have metal washers on the back but they work the same way.

When using first I like to open up one of the holes between the stitches where you want the eyes to be.

I use a mechanical pencil with the led retracted for this. Keep in mind you're not trying to break apart the yarn itself just widen the space between two stitches. I tend to crochet something very tightly which is good for amigurumi and if you don't do this first you'll have trouble pushing the back of the eye through. this is also really helpful to make sure you have your placement right. You may be able to tell but in the picture above I started putting the eyes too close together and at this point that is an easy fix.

This part is a bit like drilling a pilot hole before hanging something on your wall as it's a tiny thing that will make things so much easier in the long run.

Next you push the back tack part of the eye through these holes until the eye is flush with the front of your work.

This is what that looks like from the inside part of your work. At this point you can still make changes if you're not happy. It will be hard to do so but it's still possible to push the eye out, and move it. you'll have to fuss with the hole you made a little to get it to close but because it is the hole between stitches to start with it can be made to close.

The next step is to add the washer on. For the kind of eyes I have you put the narrow part on first and it may take a little bit of elbow grease to get them on. I've never had one that was too stubborn but it helps if you put both thumbs on either side of the washer to push down. 

At this point you're committed to they eyes where they are. If you've made a mistake or you don't like it your only option is to frog the crochet down to where they eyes are, throw the eyes out and start all over with a fresh pair. that's why you make double sure you have them where you want them before you put the washer on. if there are other parts of the face like a nose or a muzzle try to add them before the eyes if possible and make a point to stuff the piece after you put the eyes in but before you attache the washers as the shape can change a lot based on stuffing.  

All you have left to do now is to finish off the piece according to the pattern.

If pigs can fly then all of us can master the use of safety eyes.

Making a Habbit

I've heard that if you can do something consistently for 30 days it becomes a habit. I've also heard the saying that it takes 6 to stick.

well clearly that's something that I need to try to work on. I know I'm no the first blogger to fall out of posting but I still have to posts rattling about in my head. I've had the pictures taken for my next craft post for over a month now and I've made progress in my weight lost though my original chart is now useless I think.

that's why for the month of November I'm going to try to not miss any posts (well I've already missed the one on the first but I can't travel back in time to that.) For December all bets are off just because of how crazy that time of year is but I'm hoping that.

One thing I have had no trouble at all picking up as a habit is Ravelry. For a crafter of yarn that place is like some sort of digital drug. I've already done the 30 days with that and check it each time i get on the computer to see if new patterns have been added and have stayed up way later than i should have poking around on it.

For any knitter or crocheter out there you need to be on that sight....just be cautious if your stash already exceeds your live expectancy than you're going into a very deep rabbit hole there.

okay so here's to setting good habits and not missing any posts.

This little Piggy

Okay now I have done several animals with balls starting as bodies mainly my bunnies and mouse that were mentioned in the post on redoing. This little guy was one of the first ideas I had as I thought he'd be quite easy.

A piglet as it was all one colour and with simple shapes. Snout lets and ears all being modifications on shapes I had used before.

The first thing i did was make the body. I put the safety eyes in when i had it half done. Normally I wait as long as I can to add them so i'm sure where I want them and I know I don't have to redo any of my work. If I was attaching the head to a separate body like on my coke bear I'd attach all the other facial features first and then the eyes stuffing and unstuffing it as I go to make sure you have the shape you want. For a sealed body like this you want to add the eyes while you'r working it but keep in mind that when you put the eyes on they are not going anywhere.

As you can see at this point he doesn't really look like much of anything. you could make a shape like this as a head for a larger doll it's really a matter of what you add to it as this point.

The snout was easy to make. Start with a magic ring. Then you do a round with 2 sc in each stitch. Then two rounds where you have one sc in each stitch. This is how you start off any shape that you want to be tube shaped. You can make them rounder or flatter on the end depending on how you stuff them. For anyone learning how to make amigurumi needs to learn the magic ring or some variation of it. it gives the best finish and keeps you from having a hole at the start from you slip knot.

The legs come next and not surprisingly they are just like the snout only you add more rounds of sc in each st to make them longer. it's good to keep in mind with any piece that you plan to attach to the body to keep a long tail on it after you tie it off. that will give you the yarn you need to attach it.

Remember these from the last post. yes they are the pigs ears and though simple shapes they do have a trick to making them but it makes them useful to make all kinds of ears.

First you make a magic ring again but you'r not going to continue to work in the round after you're done. No you're going to chain one and turn your work. then you put 2 HDC 2 DC and then 2 HDC and tie off. or if you want a similar shape but smaller you do 2 sc, 2 HDC and then 2 sc. The shorter stiches make up the sides of the ear and the taller ones the top.

These pictures show the ears from different views to give a clearer idea of how they are put together.

Last but not least we have the tail.

This was the easiest part. I just made an idiot cord and trimmed it to be a little over an inch and then curled it around itself. I tired different things to make it stay curly such as putting a wire in it but found that it did pretty good on it's as long as the cord was short to start with.

So now my piglet  was done but there's always room to add more. after all a piglet is cute but....

a dapper piglet is ready for a night on the town.

Pieces

Sorry for yet another long absence but tech issues and other RL issues have conspired to keep me with little free time. I will have a full craft post up on Tuesday for my latest critter creation but I had another project I'm working on that made me think of something else that I've learned as I've picked up crocheting.

That is to think of thinks in pieces.

Learning how to make different animals and characters started with learning how to make basic shapes. balls and cones and rods that kind of things. Really there is only about 6 or 7 shapes you need to learn to be able to lean to be able to make most things. Everything else seems to be layering and linking those shapes and with some practice you'll be able to see the pieces that you need to break things down into.

for example what is this a part of?

or what about this?

it takes a lot of practice to figure out the shapes you need to make but in my experience it's just as teachable as learning the proper stitches. I probably should mention that when it comes to more artistic things like drawing or painting I can't do that at all but I can colour and do paint by numbers and once you learn the shapes you need to make and how to adjust them for different situations you can make what ever you want.

Now as for the above pictures can anyone guess what they are from? well the second one is part of my project that I will have up on Tuesday but the other is a work in progress that I may have to set aside for a while due to needing to get Christmas gifts started and i've had a request for angry bird's plushies from my nephew.

so I'll give you a little hint to what that first one is.

Can you find that shape in this picture. it should be fairly easy.

That's all for me and here's hoping that i get back to doing this regularly.

Remake

I don't supose i have any steady followers yet to have anyone wondering where my posts have been but this has been a trying week as we have a member of my husband's family who has gone into Hospice care and we expect to pass any day now and I've just been trying to support my husband and his parents. My diet is more or less out the window at the momment and i don't have much interesting to say about things in general but I have done some crafting to pass time and i did have something interesting to say earlier so I'm goign to go with that even though it's a thrusday.

I think each thing you make is a learning experence particuly when starting out. I look now at the things I first made and cring at how poor they were. Yet I remember being so proud of thouse when I made them and I know if not for the mistakes i had made along the way the things I'm making now wouldn't be as good.

Yet the temptaion is there to just pull apart the old ones and make them as I could now and most of the time I find it better to just start from scratch and then at the very least I have the two to make side by side comparsions on.

A redo is normally the best option but every now and then it's better to just pull something out if there's one small thing you don't like. You may remember this little guy from a past post.

I'm sure you can guess what i wasn't happy about with him. yes his wiskers.They were too dark, too thick and looked like tendrills coming off his face. I had made them with the wire form a  twist tie that I coated with glue and then wraped yarn around. However the only way i could see to start it was to hold the yarn under and wind aroudn it and  the wire for the first part wich left me with a fat end and a skinny end. Luckly they were easy to pull out and replease.

This one I'm much more pleased with. Doing the wiskers in white made them stand out less and this time  was able to get the yarn tight on both end by meerly coating half the wire, starting in the middle and wraping to the end and when that was set going the other way. Howerver this is not the first mouse I made. This is where the value of side by side comparsion comes in.

The big difference being the eyes, the ears and the body shape. Before I was able to find safety eyes I had to crochet eyes and oddly this was one of my best pairs as they didn't look that big in comparson to the face thanks to the ears. I wanted the ears bigger though to add to the cuitness so I simply made them with a larger hook. They body is thes same pattern worked differently. the first pattern book I got instructed to work only in the back loops witch makes your stiches taller but makes a line sprialing aroudn the outside of your work. Starting out this actually made things easier as it was quite easy to count my rows if I lost track of them by counting the lines. So when I started doing other patterns I assumed they were back looks as well and kept doing that on my own.

It was only later that I started to learn that it it was more common to work in both loops and why and I really did prefer the shape and more fabric texture you get from working in both loops. For my moust that ment a more round cubby body instead of a long thinner one that looked more like a rat. you may also notice i did something different for his wiskers too. On the first one I used black yard, frayed it and then coated each strand in glue. It was messy sticky work and they still droop slightly not giving me the effect i wanted at all.

Another creation that needed a minnor change was this one.

Yes that's a final fantasy Moogle the antena for his pom pom was where I first learned the trick with the wire and the yarn and i didn't care if it was a little thick.  this little guy was my first selfmade pattern  that I was 100% happy with when I made him....or rather about 95% happy with him as there was one small problem.

*cring* for thouse not familar with them Moogles have bat like wings that are tipically drawn in darker blue, pruple or even black. Scolops, or rather concave scolops are nerally imposable to do in such a small scale and to make matters worse the yarn that was the only thing close to the right colour that I had was thick and coarse and kind of rough. This had been my 5th attempt though and any look online showed that most people that made moogle dolls made felt wings for just this reason.

I resgined myself to this being the best I could do and put him aside as finished. Sometime later I find this lovely shade of purple in the clearance bin at Hobby Lobby and when I get it home realize this fine soft thread is the perfect shade for moogle wings. Five more atempts later and:

I don't know if the picture shows it clearly enough how much better this is than the last one though it did take another 5 ateptes to get there but the wing has a much better bat shape now.  Yes I made him a little scarf but just because this little guy is going to be one of my Craft Along donations for the Desert bus for Hope fundraiser and I figured he should were ther Loading Ready run colours for that.

I have two more redo's that I want to show the first is one done at aroudn the same time as the first and second mouse and for much the same reason as I now had safety eyes and wanted to work in both loops.

I have a friend very fond of rabbits and kind of disapointed that she can no longer keep one as a pet do to alergies. So when I first started to make patterns on my one making a bunny was the clear choice. I did learn a lot though, his eyes are really the same size as the ones on the first mouse but they look so much bigger due to not haveing the big ears above them and the front view of the ears being quite small. From that I knew I could get away with bigger eyes on the mouse then I could with the rabbit and used two different sizes.

My last picture for this post is of a simple something I made. A snow man christmas ornimant. This one is not my original pattern but i did modify it a bit but the orignal pattern can be found Here.

The original one on the right came out a bit more pointy than I wanted and...well frankly to me atleast looked more like a festive turd than a snow man. They guy on the right came out all round and jolly so I made him a little hat with and over sized pompom. I just wish I had some fluffy yarn to edge the hat in because using the same white I crochet the snow man in doens't give the contrast I wanted.

So what do you guys think? have these improvements been woth the extra work and the ability to be able to see how far I've come since i started?

Trending down

Okay this is going up later than i thought it would but today seems to be full of constant interruptions but I should be getting this one written the same time as the Saturday one so that shouldn't continue.

As of right now I've been on my "diet" for almost a month and I've only gotten two weigh ins and so far things are looking quite positive

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As this graph shows I've lost 2 pounds and am down to 239.2. the problem being that I know full well that statistically that 2 pounds doesn't mean that much and it's possible that i haven't really lost any real weight. It could just be fluids and likely is as I've tried to cut out a lot of processed (ie salty) foods.

Frankly i would be surprised if I had lost more than that as right now I've only made minor changes to make things more manageable.

The first thing I've done is tried to cut back on my portion sizes. Most of the time I don't need seconds and if I am feeling still a little peckish I'll only take seconds of veggies. Oddly though a strange thing seems to be happening that when I eat less I feel more satisfied with the food I did eat. It seems so much of our modern world is built on excess and I've found that a lot of times I can over eat without even realizing it. I'm not starving myself by no means but listening to my body more about when I'm full and not assuming I have to finish everything on my plate because it's there even if I'll make myself sick doing so.

The second thing I've started doing is grazing more. In the past I know I've just had two big meals and that's it. I'm making a point to have breakfast even if it's just a yogurt or a few almonds and two to three sensible snacks a day. Little bags of popcorn, granola bars, nuts, fruit and if I want to really treat myself a small bowl of animal crackers as they have no where near the sugar or fat as other cookies and can be quite filling.

When it comes to drink it's something I haven't had too much trouble with. I don't like water but i do like crystal light and other sugar free drink mixes and I'm not a huge fan of sodas of any kind or alcoholic drinks so it's not much to cut those out but for as a rare treat.

One thing I have been having trouble with is exercise as I leave a very stationary life and something like a gym membership is simply out of my budget right now. I have been doing simple things to try to move a bit more. when I get a drink I only get a tiny amount then I have to get up and get more sooner or later. I also worked up quite a sweat dealing with the water leakage from the AC and that has motivated me to try to get my home organized. I have so much crud around the house that I don't need and never use just collecting dust and i do need to go through it all and get ready for a garage sale.

Well just to finish this on another recipe I have another simple one for a good snack that will make you feel like you're totally cheating. Hehe.

Chocolate Mouse (It's like a Moose only lighter)

- 2 boxes of sugar free chocolate pudding mix I tend to use the Jello kind but store brands work too they need to be sugar free though and i find you can't really taste that big a difference.
- 4 cups 1% milk (or 2% if you don't like 1% I don't taste a big difference between the two but don't use whole or skim milk. one has too much fat, the other is white water masquerading as milk)
- 1 tub of cool whip (light or sugar free)

Mix together the pudding mix and milk either with a hand mixer on low or a whisk. It will take 1-2 minutes for everything to be blended and lump free. A fork or spoon could be used too but it's more likely that you will have lumps. (or you could make in a big container with and air tight lid and shake the daylights out of it to get it mixed good. Fun job for the kids to do as long as you know it won't leak)
Stir in the cool whip with a spoon or the whisk but be a little gentle with it.
Spoon into individual serving cups or a nice serving bowl (if you didn't make it in the serving bowl) and chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour but preferably overnight.
Perfect for family or Church gatherings and any pot luck particularly if there are diabetics in the group. it makes quite a bit so if you want you can half the recipe and then use the other half a tub of cool whip to put on top of the cups.

Live delay

Now this has been a week that I'd love to take back. Though I suppose in the end it was a productive week just not productive on the things I had planed and wanted to do. The first thing that went to the way side was blogging then crafting and then my diet went out the window due to having no energy to make real food and then my husband brings home donuts and McDonald's on two different days.

Ironically this problem would have been nothing if we had seen it earlier though i don't suppose that's really ironic as most problems are that way. The problem being that gunk had built up in our AC unit in the bed room and had made the condensation it made not drain out onto the ground but into the window. The problem being we didn't notice right away as there is a desk and short book case in front of that window. It was only when the water seeped through the carpet to the front of the case the we were able to realize what a problem we had. cleaning the gunk out of the AC wasn't that hard as the hose did wonders with it  but the mess made in the house was another matter. It's only today that the carpet is dry and there was a huge amount of work involved in getting the book case moved to a new part of the room and all the papers sorted and organized. The latter had needed to be done for some time and always got put aside as it was always a self contained pocket of clean clutter.

So yes  was productive in getting that off my to do list and I'm likely going to move some other things around to keep this from ever happening again and may even look into steam cleaning the carpet because it feels rough after being damp.

The only crafting I've gotten done around all this was putting my finishing touches on my Desert Bus craft along items which I now have bundled up to ship and putting the pieces together on this little guy.

Yup that's a Coke bear with a crocheted coke bottle. I'm quite pleased with how he's turned out. This particular bear is a gift for a friend as I'm likely going to make a lot of Christmas gifts this year or at least part of the gift if I do buy something else.

This coming week should see the posts going back to normal with something going up on Thursday about my diet getting back on track.