Photo by Elizabeth MacAndrew.
So a little while ago, I wrote about crocheting through an anxiety spike. Part of what I worked on during that time was one of the projects I’m going to include in today’s update. To give a quick recap, after having tried my first Woobles kit in November and realizing I can maybe learn to crochet after all, I started more seriously teaching myself crochet with kits from Woobles in April. Those articles include: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. As in my previous updates, I would like to note that Woobles has not sent me any products for purposes of these articles. The non-Woobles yarn, tools, and patterns I refer to today were sometimes recommended by other crocheters in the Woobles Beginner Amigurumi Facebook Group, but no companies sent me anything.
With that noted, I’m going no now update my crochet goals list:
As a quick note, I adapted one of my goals again. I previously had using non-Woobles yarn on a non-Woobles pattern thinking I would do a non-Woobles pattern with Woobles yarn and then repeat it with non-Woobles so that only one part was new each time. I don’t believe I need to break that step down anymore, and believe I can just go to making stuff like other crocheters. I did complete two other goals though. So here’s a look at what I made:
As I was skilling up with Woobles, I was also flipping through my A Crochet World of Creepy Cryptids book that I got as a gift to encourage my new hobby. I realized that not only does writer and crocheter Rikki Gustafson write patterns close enough to Woobles that I could easily understand them, but that I was at a point where I could understand what the pattern was asking of me. I decided that her cute little Nessie pattern would be my first non-Woobles pattern. It made sense for a number of reasons: I read and understood the pattern, I would only need one color of the Woobles Easy Peasy Yarn to make it, I had plenty of filling, and I had leftover eyes from the Woobles kits that would work well so I really only needed to buy the yarn. These were all on hand when the anxiety spike hit that I decided to crochet through.
So how did it go now that I was doing a project where I didn’t have the step-by-step from the Woobles anymore?
It actually went really well, I knew all of the stitch types at this point and this was just a bigger project than I had done before. The hardest part may have been that this pattern gave specific directions on placing eyes, but didn’t tell you what row to put things like the tail or the flippers, so I had to sort of look at the picture, and place it based on where I thought it looked good. I used the big plastic hair curler pins for that and it worked pretty well.
By the end of the day, I had a Nessie and the feeling I could really do this.
The Skills Woobles taught me that I used included:
I love my little Nessie, and I will totally redo Nessie in blanket yarn too, but making a non-Woobles pattern with Woobles yarn is checked off the list!
Riding the crafter dopamine from completing Nessie, I decided to start my second version of Bjørn the same night I finished Nessie. Luckily, I had already bought the materials since I had pre-planned that Bjørn would be the best Woobles to remake. I picked him for a few reasons: I loved making him the first time, it would test some skills like crocheting pieces together and a color change (but wasn’t so tricky that I would feel overwhelmed doing it with plush yarn).
For the yarn, I went with Bernat Blanket for a few reasons: cost effective, nice and soft, large color options, easily available through several sources including the craft stores in town. It was also a yarn noted a lot in the Facebook group. Based on some of the advice given in that group about amigurumi projects usually wanting a smaller hook than the normal recommended size to make tighter stitches to keep stuffing in, I selected a Clover brand hook in 6 mm size. Again, the hook brand was popular in the group and the hook handle looked more ergonomic and closer to the Woobles style I was familiar with.
So how did it go? It was a little bit of a learning process, but I really got into it. In the beginning, I used a ton of Stitch Markers but after awhile I got good at feeling for the holes since the fuzzier fabric does make the V’s harder to see. Over time, I got better at it and would usually just mark certain sections based on what helps me. I find I need to mark every stitch in a magic circle because I more easily lose track of finding stitches while doing a lot of increasing stitches in row 2. However, if that magic circle of six breaks intro six set of stitches then I usually only need to mark the first in each set with a different color for the first.
I was so excited to finish my second version of Bjørn. After some group advice, I did end up doing a size estimate and going with 14mm eyes I found in a multi-pack on Amazon. Since I picked such a dark blue, I did choose to embroider a little highlight with some extra yarn to help the eyes pop. For colors, I selected Bernat Blanket in North Sea, Gold, and White.
Quick reminder on the skills the Bjørn kit included:
Redoing a Woobles pattern in non-Woobles yarn is checked off the goal list. That means next time, I’m going to cover the first non-Woobles in any way projects I did as well as taking on Kaida the Dragon.
This post was last modified on July 10, 2024 10:30 pm
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