Sunday, June 29, 2008

Amigurumi crochet, hemp jewelry and more.

CrochetandKnitting Newsletter - Amigurumi crochet, hemp jewelry and more.

CrochetandKnitting Newsletter
Sunday, June 29, 2008

Hello Everyone,

I hope you are enjoying summer. I just had a lovely
visit from my daughter. She lives 3000 miles away from
me, so I only get to see her once a year. We spent a lot
of time crocheting together.

I am still working on the crocheted vest for summer made
with 2 ply yarn, so it will be much lighter than the one I
designed with 4 ply yarn.

I tried to do a different design for it and it didn't work so
I had to rip it out and start all over. That's to be expected
when you are designing a new pattern.... :) As well, we
all have to "rip-it" now and then when working from a
pattern and we misunderstand the instructions.

I received a very nice email and photos from Alicia. She
sent me pictures of her Knitted Moccasin Slippers she made
from my pattern at
http://crochetandknitting.com/mocslipk.htm

Alicia is a new knitter. This is her first project. I was very
happy that she found the pattern to be easy for beginners.

I was doing some searching around for crochet patterns
and I came across Amigurumi crochet. I was thinking
"what the heck is that?" I had never heard such a term
before.

The patterns I found looked like they used only single
crochet and they were all little animals or dolls.

So then I did a search on the term and found that Amigurumi
is the Japanese art of crocheting small animals or toys. The
dolls are done in single crochet in the round. It's kept very
simple. Sometimes you don't even have to join at the end
of a round, simply go in a spiral.

I designed my own snow man and snow woman dolls for
Christmas before and that was a the way I did it. So I
guess I was doing Amigurumi crochet and didn't even
realize there was a name for it.. :)

Amigurumi is using your imagination and going with it. So
if you think you can't design a pattern, you might want to
try this and discover that you can!

Look at these Love Bugs. Aren't they cute!

And this little Amigurumi Chihuahua is so cute!

As well as this Amigurumi Butterfly.

Zach Swinehart sent me his article on "How To Make
Hemp Jewelry". I found it very interesting and sounds like
a lot of fun. Zach says, "This article will teach you everything
you need to know about macramé; (the art of weaving and
knotting cords—in this case, hemp—to make jewelry)."
You can read his article at:
http://crochetandknitting.com/articles/art159.htm

A couple more new articles have been added to the Craft
Articles section as well, "Tips to Learn How to Knit", and
"Reusing Yarn - Getting the Kinks of Out Yarn That Has
Already Been Knit". You can read them at
http://crochetandknitting.com/articles

That is all for today. Happy Crafting!


Sincerely,

Sue Norrad
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