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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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Actually, my real goal was to make a monkey of every color of the rainbow, just for the fun of it!  My sister was always nagging at me to make a green monkey too, for what reason I have no idea…so St Patricks Day came just in time for me to make a green monkey.  Of course, every proper leprechaun should wear a nice hat too, and I even decorated the hat with a nice gold buckle!  The buckle is actually just some small pieces of gold trimming I found lying around the house.

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It’s so fun when you can make good use of random materials you find in your house that you never thought you’d end up using!  This happened before too when I made the R2D2 amigurumi.  All the silver trimmings and screws were cut from a silver wired ribbon roll we had bought so many years before.

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Another example of my thriftiness with this St Patricks Day monkey amigurumi was the heaping pot of gold.  Doesn’t it look so shiny and plentiful…and also a lot like Mardi Gras?  Yes!  I coiled a string of Mardi Gras beads on the top of the pot of gold to make it look extra shiny!  I was pleased with it, but later became a little sad when all people would remark about my St Patricks Day monkey amigurumi was that darned pot of gold!!  “Oh, nice monkey – whoa, is that a pot of gold?!” was my most common critique.  All that hard work to make a nice St Patricks Day monkey amigurumi complete with a nice leprechaun hat and cute 4-leaf clover felt plushy…and all people see is the GOLD!

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And of course, when I showed it to my dad, who is a die-hard Lakers fan, all he had to say was, “WHAT?!  Why did you make a Celtics monkey?!”  When I tried to explain it was for St Patricks Day and not associated with Boston or the Celtics, he said, “They’re the SAME THING!!” I felt like I had committed treason and was to be banished to another planet when all I did was crochet a harmless St Patricks Day monkey amigurumi…I swear if I left it somewhere with him, it’d probably disappear mysteriously <gulp>.

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Hopefully, others will look past it and see that this monkey would just like to celebrate St Patricks Day happily!  This monkey is available for purchase at my Etsy. Thanks for looking!

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!

This brilliant idea wasn’t mine actually…it was a custom order!  I would never have thought of making R5D4, but he definitely makes the cutest counterpart for R2D2! 

Making him was pretty difficult.  I had to start over so many times to get the head shape right.  I even made an extra body using an off-white colored yarn, because for some funny reason, I thought R5D4 was an off-white color…but actually he’s white.  It only looked off-white because of the reflection of the sand on his body.  Ha ha ha…I should have looked at him more carefully before I started darnit….

AND…R5D4 is so much fancier than R2D2!!  Look at all his fancy embellishments!  Those decked out disco-light neck squares, 3 eyeballs instead of 2 (and a glassy crystal eyeball too!), fancy rectangles on his body, and 4 different colors instead of 2 ooooh so special!  When I finished and compared him to R2D2, I almost felt sorry for R2D2 because he looked so empty and, well, naked all of a sudden!  Maybe we got a little carried away with our decorations on R5D4.  Oh well, it’s ok R2D2, you’re still our favorite!

Unfortunately, I didn’t write anything down so there’s no pattern, in case anyone’s wondering.  He was too hard to construct, and making a pattern with nice pictures and step-by-step instructions just seems too daunting for me!  Perhaps in the future when I have more time…

That’s all for now!  Went through quite a dry spell of not posting for a while, but I’ll be making more posts soon, so please visit again!

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!

Hi! I’m janama and I run this small little corner of the web called Cute Amigurumi! where I post pictures of all my latest cute cuddly crochet creations. I actually started out crocheting an R2D2 which got picked up all over the web and due to popular demand I opened up shop here and even created an Etsy account to share my patterns.

Please visit often as I will post my creations as I make them (when I have time of course, since this isn’t my main job) or better yet, subscribe to my RSS feed in your favorite RSS reader.

I always welcome any feedback and comments and of course any user-submitted creations, so don’t hesitate to contact me. I look forward to hearing from you!