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It’s that time of the year again–let’s celebrate it with a Rock Lee amigurumi!!!
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Spent all of yesterday celebrating our brother’s birthday at the beach! Was thinking about posting this sooner…but then he’d see it and our little birthday amigurumi surprise would be ruined! Just like how he spoiled his own birthday surprise a few years ago when he spotted our R2D2 amigurumi with his crazy hawk eye for anything Star Wars…but this time we were successful!! 
:d
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Rock Lee is from Naruto, a ninja anime that’s been going on for many many years now. He’s supposed to bear a resemblance to Bruce Lee in both looks and fighting style. Making this Rock Lee amigurumi was very hard! Sure, he looks pretty plain and easy to make, but those bulging eyes, thick brows, eyelashes, and hair were a big pain to cut and make! Especially since it comes straight out of an anime where everything is drawn so that the characters look the same everyday.
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Cutting his hair was a lot of work too. I used up a lot of black felt and trimmed away quite a bit as well. At first, his bangs were too long and were covering up too much of his thick, luscious eyebrows so I had to trim them a bit so that he’d look less girly and more like the charmingly ugly Rock Lee that he’s supposed to be. At one point, I felt like his personal hairdresser! And then at another point, as I was wrapping his arm bandages, I felt like a nurse! This was one high maintenance Rock Lee amigurumi!!
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I even tied it in the signature Naruto style!
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The lines on his leg warmers were drawn on with a sharpie…so yeah, that took a very very long time to do. Same goes for the little leaf. I had to draw that a couple of times before I finally got one that I was satisfied with.
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Oh and by the way, today’s background is our brother’s painting that he did a long time ago at school. We figured that the usual girly polka dot backgrounds would not mix well with this character, so we thought why not use something masculine looking that the birthday boy drew himself?! Doesn’t it look nice? 
Very nice and fitting for a Rock Lee amigurumi right?
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Posted August 22nd, 2011 at 11:57pm (Comments: 3)
Filed under Amigurumi, Animals, anime, Chinese zodiac, Naruto, Spring
It’s time for the Monkey of the Month, and this month I’ve made an Easter Monkey Amigurumi! What else would you think of for the month of April? I was actually thinking of a rainy themed monkey, because “April showers bring May flowers” but Easter is just too cute to pass up!
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What makes this Easter Monkey Amigurumi, well, Easter-y, is the nest of eggs on its head. The nest is just a small cap-like shape, and the eggs I crocheted out of that super thin yarn I got from Taiwan (the same yarn I used to make the baby whale amigurumis). My sister and I trialed with so many different types of eggs before we settled with that nest of eggs! We first tried a felt plushie egg, but despite stuffing it, it still didn’t quite look three dimensional enough to look like an egg. Then we thought about crocheting a big egg with worsted weight yarn, but found it hard to make the Easter Monkey Amigurumi pose with such a large egg! So, finally my sister suggested I crochet three small eggs and put them in a nest on the Easter Monkey Amigurumi’s head. I was hesitant at first, because that’s a lot of work!! It doesn’t look like it, because they’re so small, but it’s actually a lot of stitches…just to crochet some eggs…BUT it did work out the best, so I shouldn’t have been so lazy heh.
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Can you guess what else makes this Easter Monkey Amigurumi so special?? You probably can’t tell from the pictures so far, but…
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TADA! It stands!! All on its own…awww…kinda like seeing your baby stand for the first time, huh? Haha not quite, but something like that.
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As you can see, it relies solely on the garden wire stuffed in its tail to stand, which is amazing to me because this Easter Monkey Amigurumi sure is mighty plump! I used my original pattern to crochet the body, and after I finished I realized that the body is way too big for a standing monkey. Future note to self, if monkey is to stand, give it lipo…
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And, just for kicks, let’s make the Easter Monkey Amigurumi look like Godzilla!
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I told my sister to take nice pictures of the Easter Monkey Amigurumi for me because she usually takes really good pictures. I was thinking white picket fence, grass, nice sky blue backdrop, some flowers…I got most of what I asked for, but somehow I also got small buildings that make the Easter Monkey Amigurumi look more like King Kong than a cute Easter-themed monkey…what can I say, she always likes to put her own little “cute but dangerous” twist on things <slaps forehead and rolls eyes>…
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Although, after looking at them for a while, they are nice pictures after all. As I say this, I just know she’s rolling her eyes at me too and thinking that I have “such common taste” with that all too familiar disgusted look on her face haha!
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Nice houses too. The house on the left was a birthday present from my mom, and the one on the right was a souvenir from San Francisco. So random that we have these things lying around the house!
The Easter Monkey Amigurumi is available for purchase at my Etsy. That’s it for now! Thanks for looking~!
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Posted April 12th, 2011 at 11:51pm (Comments: 2)
Filed under Amigurumi, Animals, Easter, Spring
I know it’s very late, but Happy Chinese New Year nonetheless, and to celebrate it I made a rabbit amigurumi for the year of the rabbit!
Here I made the rabbit amigurumi celebrate against a Chinese New Year-inspired backdrop. The fancy decorations in the background are actually red envelopes, and to top it off I added a little Chinese chocolate gold nugget too. May the new year bring much luck, happiness, and prosperity to us all!!
I think the most important part of this rabbit amigurumi is the shape of its ears. I basically crocheted a test tube shape (please excuse the crude image comparison, lab geek talking here), pinched the bottom open end of it to create a concave shape, and sewed it in place onto the head. I wanted to achieve a 3-D effect, rather than just a flat shape for the ears. To finish off this rabbit amigurumi’s ears, I cut out a smaller test tube shape from pink felt, lined the inner ears with it and glued it in place. Sounds pretty simple, but actually sewing the ears in place with that concave shape is kind of difficult, so if you’re ever going to do something similar, it may take a few tries but it’s so worth it!
Which reminds me, someone once asked me what kind of glue I use for my amigurumis. The answer is Aleene’s tacky glue, which I buy from either Michaels or Joann’s, whichever store is having a sale or gives me a coupon. The only reason I use it is that’s what was lying around the house at the time I started crafting. It is definitely much better than using regular school glue, a mistake I once made when I used school glue to stick felt polka dots onto a mushroom amigurumi I made for a friend’s birthday, only to find that all the dots fell off within 2 hours (that, and my friend wasn’t exactly “gentle” with my handiwork either…)! Just a little bit of tacky glue goes a long way too, because when you slather on a bunch onto a small piece of felt it soaks through to the other side of the felt and doesn’t stick very well because it’s so wet. The felt piece also hardens as it dries with too much glue, and maintaining the softness of the felt is important for both visual and tactile purposes. I’ve always wanted to try hot glue, but never got around to it. If anyone has better suggestions, please share!
Ok, I’ll stop talking about glue now. You’re probably thinking, “Gosh how much can someone talk to me about glue?!” I know I can be pretty wordy, but I just wanted to share my experiences with glue with you.
Back to the rabbit amigurumi…of course with Easter coming up and all, I couldn’t resist making this rabbit amigurumi an Easter rabbit too!
The eggs were cut from felt, stuffed and sewn together, and then decorated with some glittery glue. My sister’s handiwork – she’s so good with small details.
Oh, and the tail was crocheted from Joann Sensations Beautiful Yarn. It’s super soft, and so fuzzy – perfect for creating contrast with the worsted weight yarn I used for the body. I know it sounds wrong, but I find myself pinching the tail a lot because it’s so soft! Don’t worry, the rabbit hasn’t turned around to bite me yet so it’s all good.
Here’s a side view. Notice how the ears are sewn on in a concave shape.
After I made this rabbit amigurumi, I liked it so much I decided to make another type of rabbit – a floppy-ear rabbit amigurumi!
The body and everything else is exactly the same as the other bunny. The only difference is the ears. The ears on the floppy ear rabbit amigurumi are huge! If I were to ever make it again, I would definitely use a sport weight yarn instead of worsted weight yarn just for the ears. But it’s ok, the floppy ear rabbit amigurumi still has a special place in my heart, even if other people think it looks like a dog!
And here the rabbits are very happy together. All of a sudden, I can’t wait for spring to come! If you’re interested, you can purchase a plush rabbit amigurumi of any color you’d like at my Etsy.
As always, thank you for looking! Please stay tuned as I attempt to make all the animals of the Chinese zodiac! So far, I have more than half done and will be posting them as time permits. Oh, and one last bit of info – my monkey amigurumis were chosen for the 2012 Crochet Me Amigurumi Calendar! The patterns for the monkeys, and also a pattern for a polar bear (fondly named Polar Lucibear) will be included in the calendar! Thank you very much to all who have expressed interest in a pattern for the monkeys. Please wait patiently with me for publication of the calendar to get your copy of the pattern! I’ll be sure to update you on the calendar’s status.
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Posted February 22nd, 2011 at 5:28am (Comments: 9)
Filed under Amigurumi, Animals, Chinese zodiac, Easter, Spring
A couple years ago, when my mom was into making polymer clay crafts and I stole some and played with it for fun, I made these little monkeys with tails that held bananas on their heads, backs, in the air…almost anywhere! Thinking back to those and how cute they were, I thought why not make a monkey amigurumi too? So, that’s what I did. Except, this time around the monkeys are 5″ tall, whereas the polymer clay monkeys I made back then were a mere 1″ wide at the most!
So, here are my monkey amigurumi.
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hugging monkey amigurumi
I even gave the monkeys different poses and faces. For the brown monkey I used safety eyes and gave it a waving pose. The gray monkey has those cute happy squinting eyes so characteristic in anime characters. It also hugs instead of waves. Same pattern, but both monkey amigurumis have a unique look – that’s what I really like about them.
I even got a special order on them from my mom’s friend for her daughter’s birthday (her daughter was born in the year of the monkey). That was exciting! She wanted a plush brown version of the gray amigurumi monkey, and a small plush monkey amigurumi cell phone charm. Here are the finished products.
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monkey amigurumi cell phone charm
That’s a Nintendo DS by the way, because we all know how much monkeys like to play with DSes…
I put up these monkey amigurumi plushes for purchase on my Etsy. If you order one, I can make it in any pose, face, and color you want to make it uniquely yours! Even the bananas can be placed anywhere on the monkey to give it an extra cute edge!
I also entered these monkeys in the Interweave Crochet Me 2012 Amigurumi calendar contest. Let’s hope they make it into the calendar! That would be super awesome!!
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Posted October 28th, 2010 at 10:29pm (Comments: 11)
Filed under Amigurumi, Animals, Comics
It’s that time of year again!! My brother’s birthday…that’s what pretty much started it all for me. First present included R2D2 and Waluigi. Second present was Mario. This year, it’s none other than…
BOWSER!!
I guess we’re on a Mario characters making spree. Why Bowser of all the other characters? Because other than Waluigi, my brother usually chooses Bowser to run us over when we play Mario Kart. No, I’m not bitter at all!! Not at all…
Making Bowser took a whole month! Sounds long doesn’t it? Just imagine all the planning and crocheting and felting and sewing that went into this! One day I spent crocheting the jaw, mouth, and head. A second day just crocheting the body and shell. A third day on the legs. A fourth day on the arms, tail, and horns. A fifth day on the hair, and cutting out all the felt, and gluing it all on, and finally we were done! Oh wait…that was actually only five working days huh…and what a very productive fifth day we had too! I’ll confess that I wasn’t efficient, but I got discouraged during the process just looking at the pieces without a good vision of how the end-product would turn out. If it weren’t for my sister nagging at me and guilt-tripping me to finish, this may have taken even longer.
Anyway, enough of my whining. Let’s see how Bowser evolved!
This was the beginning. I basically made three small balls and sewed them up into this nose/mouth. Then made a tube to connect to another ball, and that made up his upper jaw.
Then I crocheted some more tubes and connected them together to make the lower jaw. To fill up the empty space on the lower jaw I crocheted a small patch and sewed it on, then glued red felt over it. I also glued some red felt to the top jaw and stuffed the empty space in his head.
Here’s the finished head with some really sharp teeth!
Whoa and all of a sudden he has a body! Sorry, I didn’t document much, but trust me, you aren’t missing out. Seeing those stray pieces lying around was actually kind of depressing.
Finally, when my sister put his eyes on he came to life! And I was excited to finish him again! I thought this part was funny because he looks angry. I could totally imagine him saying, “Gah! You better be putting on my horns right! Or else!! Raaaarrrgghgh!!” Calm down Bowser! You are in good hands.
Applying the finishing touches…
The finished product!!
Does it look like its original?
I think this is what Mario would see if he were standing right under Bowser. Speaking of Mario…
Don’t they look so friendly!
Mario got away…too close for comfort I guess. It’s okay, Bowser still has Boo!
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Posted September 5th, 2010 at 8:51pm (Comments: 18)
Filed under Amigurumi, Animals, Comics
So! It was that time of the year again (bro’s birthday) and we decided to crochet him his favorite game in the entire universe…..Super Mario Bros!!! Although we were 1 month and 3 days late in giving him his present, it still beats our original idea of making him an ewok…which he HATES. Don’t worry, I hate them too. No, I don’t hate them…they’re just annoyingly fuzzy and kickable. Sorry ewok, maybe another day. We made Waluigi 1 year ago and yeah, I think we’ve improved a lot since then.
This is the finished product. It took forever to cut out his face, his wonderful stache, and especially his hat. At first we stuffed his hat with stuffing, but for some reason it didn’t look very good and then it dawned on us: hats shouldn’t be stuffed, when you wear it, is there stuffing between your head and your hat? NO! mmm…genius.
He’s flying…
into the wall…
nice view, right?
It’s the “I’m the winner” platform…..ish thing.
Go! Go! Mario! Save the princess!
See? They like each other, right? They even take trips to my privately owned Museum of Contemporary Art together. <3 No, I’m kidding I just stuck them there since my painting happened to look Mario-like.
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Posted September 24th, 2009 at 5:31pm (Comments: none)
Filed under Amigurumi
It was a family friend’s birthday party last weekend and I decided to make her an amigurumi of Hobbes as a present because:
I am a poor grad student
I noticed on her wish list that she wanted Calvin and Hobbes comic books
Therefore, she MUST like Hobbes
Instead of getting a gift straight from her wish list I wanted to add an element of SURPRISE!!
Hobbes would make a cute plushie…except I don’t even know where I could buy one
So, based on those excuses – oh I mean, “very sound reasons” – I set out to create Hobbes. The only thing holding me back was I had no idea what Calvin and Hobbes was about, except that Hobbes is a really skinny and tall tiger. Plus, the occasional Calvin bumper sticker that I see of him peeing on a cross stuck on some people’s cars…
Later, my brother incredulously filled me in on the story behind Calvin and Hobbes, bewildered that I had no idea who they were. That’s when I thought, “OHH! No wonder Hobbes looks so animated and long and skinny and twisty all the time!” And then, “Uh-oh, that does NOT sound pleasant to make into an amigurumi.” In the end, I just decided to not be so ambitious and just make whatever I can. Here’s what it looks like:
At first, the nose was also made of felt. Then, my bro said his face looked too flat, so I carefully scratched off the felt, cut a hole in the face, inserted the animal nose, unstuffed the head to fasten the nose, and restuffed it. So much work just to make his face look less flat, and I’m not even sure if it looks any more contoured!
As always, the intricate felt work was done by my sis. She also helped sculpt his scruffy white beard, which I made by attaching small strings of yarn to the head, like real hair! She’s also a great hair stylist by the way – she trims my bangs all the time! We both agree that the head is the best attribute of this Hobbes. It was unfortunate I didn’t know how to make his hands have fingers, because I think it’s an important part of Hobbes that makes him “alive.” Then again, my goal was not to be so ambitious…or else this would also go into my pile of failures!!
When my friend got around to opening our present for her, I was nervous. What if she complains that it’s not from her wish list? What if she thinks it belongs in the Pile of Failures too? What if she’s totally unimpressed, after all the hard work my sister and I put into it? Our worries were put to rest when she gleefully exclaimed, “OMG!” She really looked surprised and happy. Then, when I saw her cuddle with it, I knew all that hard work was well worth it. Hobbes, you did good!!
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Posted June 29th, 2009 at 2:21pm (Comments: none)
Filed under Amigurumi, Comics
Finally, the R2D2 amigurumi pattern is OUT!! You can find it at my etsy shop: janama.etsy.com
The story behind R2D2:
My brother’s birthday was coming up, and I needed to give him something. Buying presents for him was always a challenge, especially since I am still a poor grad student and he’s already working. It just so happened I started crocheting as a hobby, and decided making him something meaningful would be nicer than buying him something lame and cheap.
I knew he liked star wars a lot, so I started thinking of all the star wars characters I could make out of yarn. I surfed the web for star wars patterns, came across a lot of yodas and ewoks and other characters, and was blown away by their cuteness. I thought Artoo would definitely be cute since he’s a robot and no one would expect a robot to be made of yarn! Started searching for the pattern, and unfortunately, didn’t find any. So I was determined to make my own!
Of course, I needed some help. I had only started crocheting 2 months ago and still didn’t know how to sew limbs onto amigurumis very well. So I consulted my little sister, who is much better at sewing and cutting and being extra neat, to help me out. After much trial and error in getting the right proportions, and painstakingly cutting out laser-precise felt pieces, Artoo was finished.
But, before we actually gave it to my brother, we were adding some finishing touches, and he happened to catch a glimpse of it before I could smoothly hide it away! He immediately identified it as Artoo, and our surprise was spoiled, but he was still happy to have him finally on his birthday. He blogged about Artoo on coderetard.com, others blogged about it, and eventually Artoo made his way to the Official Star Wars Blog. It was truly an honor.
So, what started out simply as a birthday present for my star wars fan brother has become something I never would have imagined could happen. To have so many people see Artoo and enjoy him is very meaningful to me. Many thanks for everyone’s feedback and comments!
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Posted May 15th, 2009 at 1:37pm (Comments: 2)
Filed under Amigurumi, Pattern, Star Wars
