Amigurumi Patterns

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I learned to do some basic crochet from my mom and grandma when I was in junior high.  I did the usual scarf and dishrag.  I even got fancy enough to do some bookmarks and baby blankets--and then I put it away for a very long time.  When the Disney+ series The Mandalorian came out and there were no baby Yodas to be bought anywhere, I started thinking I could make one--and lo and behold, several other folks thought so too.  There are many patterns out there for making "The Child"--some were so good and so popular the big corporate Disney sent cease and desist notices.  I ended up making about 5 Baby Yoda crochet dolls (aka Amigurumi crochet), and I am finding it very satisfying to make them.  I picked up a kit at Sam's Club for Harry Potter and was debating the Disney Princess kit when I came across a pattern online.  

 
These are the only 2 dolls I've made so far, but they sure are fun.  If you want to try your hand at Baby Yoda, check out Hooked On Fandom's excellent pattern (free!).  I've tried it with a hook a size up as well as a size down and liked both results.  I tinkered with the pattern to make a 2/3 size "pocket" Yoda, and it was fun...but I have not developed good pattern making skills yet...too many errors in mine (which I've hidden with clothes).  For Baby Yoda, I decided I liked his robe being made out of fleece rather than crochet--which is probably not allowed in amigurumi, but I don't care.  It's my craft right?   



With Cinderella (which could also be Belle or Tinkerbelle pretty easily), the pattern of stitches is really good, however, the order of the instructions for construction/sewing was not good.  It looks like the original pattern was in Russian, and someone translated.  Even with some experience with the Yoda dolls, I found Cinderella and some of her construction pretty challenging (the hair band and the white dress flounce were the very hardest part).  

For both dolls, you will need to know how to do the Magic Circle--which is how you start any sphere shape.  I found the tutorial at Winding Road Crochet to be super easy to follow.   As a general tip for any project, make your first row, the chain-on row fairly loose.  Not sloppy, just not as tight as you would for any other row.  Otherwise its tough to get your hook back into those loops again. 

Here is my reorganization of the Cinderella pattern (check out her website for some great pics):

Materials:

• Yarn:  dress (blue), trim (white), black, flesh, hair (yellow)
• Safety eyes 6 mm
• Fiberfill
• Beads for a hair band (optional)
• Embroidery needle (long with large eye)

Abbreviations:
R = row
mc = magic circle
ch = chain
st = stitch
sc = single crochet

sk=skip stitch
DC = double crochet
TR = treble crochet
hdc =  half double crochet
htr = half treble crochet
sl st = slip stitch
inc = 2 sc in the next stitch
dec = single crochet 2 stitches together
BLO = back loop only
FLO = front loop only
( ) = number of stitches you should have at the end of the round/row
( )x6 = repeat whatever is between the brackets the number of times stated

 

Body + legs
With white yarn: First leg
R 1. 6 sc in mc (6)
R 2-6. 6 sc (6)

Second leg
R 1. 6 sc in mc(6)
R 2-6. 6 sc (6)

Don’t cut the yarn! Just leave it hanging so you can pick it up again later in the body.
R 7. Crochet 3 ch from the second leg and join it with the first leg, 6 sc on first leg, sc in next 3ch, 6 sc on second leg, sc in next 3ch (opposite side) (18)
R 8-10. 18 sc (18)
With DRESS yarn color:
R 11-12. 18 sc (18)
R 13. BLO 18 sc (18)
R 14. 18 sc (18)
With BODY color:
R 15. 18 sc (18)
R 16. (dec, 1 sc) х 6 (12)
With BLACK yarn make the necklace (if no necklace, continue with body color):
R 17. 12 sc (12)
Stuff the leg and body and set aside. 

Head
R 1. 6 sc in mc (6)
R 2. inc x 6 (12)
R 3. (inc, 1 sc) х 6 (18)
R 4.  (inc, 2 sc) х 6 (24)
R 5. (inc, 3 sc) х 6 (30)
R 6-13. 30 sc (30)

Find eye placement at the level of Rnd 10-11, at the distance of 5 stitches from each other. Don't attach eyes yet, first you should Embroider eyelashes, then put the backing on the eyes.  Stuff the head.
R 14. (dec, 3 sc) х 6 (24)
R 15. (dec, 2 sc) х 6 (18)
R 16. (dec, 1 sc) х 6 (12)
Finish stuffing the head. Leave a long tail of yarn for sewing head on much later. 

Dress
Go to the center back of the body – R13:
R1. FLO: 3 ch, (4 DC in next st, 2 DC in next st) x repeat to the end of row, sl st (54).
R2-5. 1 DC in every st to the end of row, sl st (54). 1 hdc, 1 sc to make hem look even. Finish off by slip-stitching around the entire dress.

Arms (make 2)
With WHITE yarn:
R 1. 6 sc in mc (6)
R 2-4. 6 sc (6)
With body colour:
R 5-7. 6 sc (6)
Leave a long tail. Don’t stuff arms! Sew onto body.(if your doll doesn't have white gloves, use another color OR just body color)

Sleeve (make 2)
With WHITE yarn:
Make 9 ch.
From the 2nd ch from hook: 2 sl st, 4 sc in next 4 st, 2 sl st.
F.o., leaving a long tail. Sew sleeves to the body.

Dress band
With WHITE yarn:
Make 26 ch
From the 2nd ch from hook: sl st, (2 sc, 1 hdc and 1 DC in next st, 1 DC, 2 htr in next st, 3 TR in next st, 2 htr in next st, 1 DC, 1 DC and 1 hdc in next st, 1 sc), 3 sl st, (2 sc, 1 hdc and 1 DC in next st, 1 DC, 2 htr in next st, 3 TR in next st, 2 htr in next st, 1 DC, 1 DC and hdc in next st, 1 sc), sl st.

F.o., leaving a long tail. Sew to the dress.

Hair
R 1. 6 sc in mc (6)
R 2. inc x 6 (12)
R 3. (inc, 1 sc) х 6 (18)
R 4. (inc, 2 sc) х 6 (24)
R 5. (inc, 3 sc) х 6 (30)
R 6. (inc, 4 sc) х 6 (36)
R 7-10. 36 sc

As you continue to the next round, you will start the flap that will become the bangs:
R 11. (sk st, 5 DC in next st, sk st, 1 sc) x 5, 16 sc, turn.
R 12. 1 ch, 15 sc, turn. (repeat this row 6 times).
Make a roll and sew roll up.

Bun
R1. 6 sc in mc (6)
R2. inc x 6 (12)
R3. (inc, 1 sc) х 6 (18)
R4. (inc, 2 sc) х 6 (24)
R5-9. 24 sc (24)
Stuff. F.o., leaving a long tail.

Hair band
With blue yarn:
Make 25 ch
From the 2nd ch from hook: sl st, 3 DC, 2 sc, hdc, 10 DC, hdc, 2 sc, 4 sl st.
F.o., leaving a long tail. Sew to the hair.
Decorate with 2 beads.

Assemble Hair 

Place bun on the top-center of the hair and sew the bun to the hair cap. Now place hair on the head and find the position of the headband.  Once you are sure of the headband, remove the entire hair and sew the headband to the hair.  Once entire hairpiece is complete, sew to the head. 

Attach head to body

This is the most challenging part.  Center the head on the body and start sewing it in place.  You may need to use stitches that go from the head all the way through the body and then back up.  Just keep stitching until the head feels stable. 

Star Wars Day Painted Shoes

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Are you ready for May the 4th, aka Star Wars Day?  I was looking for ideas to celebrate and found this awesome blog called DoodleCraftBlog on painting shoes for Star Wars.  I looked around my house and I had all the things I needed (well, after looking for 45 minutes for the gold paint, which isn't where it was supposed to be and 15 minute trip to the store solved that...I'm sure to find the old bottle now).

I had a pair of shoes in the bin by the door that I slip on when I need to go outside to turn of the sprinkler or take out the trash.  Just some cheap canvas shoes.  If I had had lighter colored shoes, it would have been better--painting over the black was tricky.

Clean off the shoes (and by clean, I made sure there wasn't grass clippings still sticking to it).  Use a foam brush to paint the shoe.  I mixed my craft paint with a textile medium so that the paint will be more flexible (usually on the same racks as the craft paint).   I ended up with about 3 coats to cover the canvas.  I used a hair dryer to speed up the dry time between coats.


Just like on DoodleCraftBlog I sketched out the design with a Sharpie and painted the blue, red and then outlined everything with the black.  The next morning I covered the paint on the decorated end with clear coat to protect the design.

Funny thing, I had stopped by a thrift store looking for another accessory for Star Wars Day and saw the exact same pumps that DoodleCraftBlog used (I was tempted to purchase, but I am highly unlikely to wear them all day at work--I'm more of a flats kind of person).  I really enjoyed painting these shoes.  I might do it again, maybe Disney!

Star Wars Day--May the 4th Be With You!

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I love the original Star Wars movies, but Return of the Jedi holds a special place in my heart.  Daring rescues, cool light saber fights and adorable Ewoks!  I clearly remember going to see it in the summer of 1983.  I had gone on a trip to California with a singing group I was in--and came home to hear about lots of flooding in Salt Lake City.  So much flooding that they created a "river" right through downtown.  Our family went to see the river and then headed to the Century Movie theaters--these awesome theaters that were in dome shaped buildings (at least I thought they were awesome).  I even got to buy treats with my leftover trip money. It was a pretty great day.

Tomorrow is May the 4th and to celebrate I decided to do some baking.  I went looking for inspiration on Pinterest and found a deliciously delightful blog called Yummy Crumble and knew this was the cake to make!  It didn't require a bunch of cake decorating skills like fondant or piping--but it is a multi-step messy process.  I made a few changes from the original because I couldn't find some of ingredients (and I didn't have a madeline cookie pan and neither did any of my neighbors).



Vanilla Bundt Cake
I liked the recipe on Yummy Crumble, so I'll send you over to her blog to get the recipe. Be sure to REALLY grease that bundt pan-mine was non-stick and I drowned it in non-stick spray and I still had one spot that didn't come out clean.  My cake took 43 minutes (I check it at 35 min and it was still really wet in the middle).  I did the cake first so that it could be cooling while I got the decoration stuff prepped.

"Sand" topping
Oatmeal cookies (the crunchy un-frosted kind from the cookie aisle)
Caramel topping (bottled from the ice cream section)





I used 12 cookies and pulverized them in the Vitamix.  Glaze the cake with a thin layer of caramel topping.  I spread it around with a rubber spatula and then pressed the cookie crumbs all over.  I did this while the cake was still on the cooling rack and on top of a cookie sheet to catch all the excess (and re-use the crumbs).

 

Sarlacc monster
Butterscotch chip jaws and tentacles
Almond slivers

I melted the chips in the microwave (heat in 30 second cycles and stir until all melty).   Put it in a zipper bag and clip the corner and pipe into 4 different fat squiggles for the tentacles.   For the mouth, I squeezed a rounded triangle shape onto a wax paper square and let it set for about 5 minutes and then draped it over a water bottle and popped it in the fridge (with a container on each side so it didn't roll around on me) to harden up. About 1 minute after it was in the fridge I used a butter knife to make some ridge marks on the back of the "monster." Honestly, this was the trickiest part--the water bottle really wanted to escape on me.  I used some white frosting to make teeth.




You stick the almond slivers around the inside, and then make a pile of frosting in the hole and set up the monster pieces.

I'll be serving this fine cake with some Yoda Soda (ginger ale) and some ice cubes from my fancy Darth Vader and Han Solo in Carbonite molds.  Should be a fun celebration.

Star Wars: May the 4th Printable

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Just a quick one today...I've been out doing yard work today with many of my awesome neighbors who came to help.  Tomorrow is May the 4th, and in case you didn't know, that is Star Wars day (you know, May the Fourth be with you...)  Anyway, I found some great images here, and I added a quick greeting and I'm done.  I think I'll put them with some cookies and take them to some of those awesome neighbors.

Look for the file called May the 4th and download it here:
https://sites.google.com/site/theprojectspot/downloads

Star Wars Palooza!

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Each year I celebrate "Day with Aunt Steph" with my brothers' kids.  I've learned that it isn't about fancy or expensive, its just about spending time together (and ditching the parents).  Our tradition includes lunch and a chocolate fountain. This year I thought I'd combine our  mutual love of Star Wars with our special day and did a Star Wars Palooza.

I've found tons of great Star Wars party ideas on Pinterest.  I have been adding to my kitchen collection of Star Wars supplies for a while.  From Williams-Sonoma, I have the cookie cutters, pancake molds and sandwich cutters.  From Amazon, I  found some silicone trays for ice cubes/chocolates (just do a search for Star Wars silicone tray).  As for entertainment, I thought a pinata would be cool, as well as light-sabers and then an outdoor movie. 

We started the day with Star Wars pancakes.  Couple of things to make this go smoothly.  First, if you have more than one person eating with you, start a bit earlier than when the kids are all sitting at the table waiting!  I used Krusteaz pancake mix and made it just a little thinner than usual (not really thin, just a bit more pourable) and put it in a large water bottle with a squeeze cap.  Preheat your griddle to around 250-300 degrees with the pancake molds sitting on the griddle (you want them to be hot too).  Spray them very generously with non-stick spray.  Squirt the batter into all the crevices.  Careful--you don't want to fill more than 1/2 full otherwise the batter puffs up over the top of the mold and then things get really messy and stuck.  Once the batter is fairly dry looking and bubbles have stopped, gently pull off the mold and then flip the pancake with a larger turner. 

This day took some advance prep, so I started with making the cookies and froze them.   Apparently I took no pictures of the process, but I modified this recipe by leaving out the espresso powder.  I also did 1/2 batch for Darth Vader and the other 1/2 batch for Yoda (so, how do you get 1/2 an egg?  you crack it open, scramble it and then divide it in half...since I was going to make two mini batches of cookie anyway, it worked out great).  Also used this blog post  and this one for help.

 
For Darth Vader, I used regular cocoa powder and black gel food coloring.  Refrigerating the dough for 30 minutes before rolling out helped.  You need to pop the tray of cookies in the freezer before you bake them for about 10 minutes (this helps keep them from getting too puffy and losing their details while baking).

For Yoda, I reduced the cocoa to 1 Tablespoon and a few drops of regular green food coloring, which made for the perfect Yoda green (one of the recipes used green tea powder, but I didn't want to)!  I also chose to use lemon extract instead of vanilla on these cookies.  Ditto on the refrigerating the dough and freezing the tray before baking. 

I did think about making sandwich cookies out of these, but I suspected the kids would probably dunk them in the chocolate fountain anyway, so I didn't (no one cared that they had no frosting...come on, they look like Yoda and Darth Vader!)

Chocolates

Next on my prep list was the Star Wars chocolates.  I bought the molds from Amazon.com  They were each about $9.  I will say that the X-wing and R2D2 molds were disappointing.  They have such fine details and small parts that they did not unmold successfully.  Han Solo in carbonite and Darth Vader worked really, really well (so did the large Millennium Falcon).

I started with a tray of melting chocolate (OK, this party was for kids under the age of 12, so I did not spring for expensive chocolate).  I melted it up in the microwave right in its tray. 

I got all the molds ready and pulled out a spoon and some skewers.

 I filled each mold with the spoon and then used the skewer to make sure that chocolate filled in all the little details.

 You can see how the X Wing fighters are all broken.  Not one got the small wing tips out. 

Light Sabers

From http://havocmayhem.blogspot.com

I made Light Sabers for each of the kids out of pool noodles.  I used this tutorial:
http://www.jedibroadsquad.net/FoamSaber.html  Which while keeping an eye on  8 kids (4 of them are 3 yrs old) I didn't get a chance to snap any clear pics of the Light Sabers, oh well).

I found the shiny silver duct tape at WalMart and used it for covering the handle (the tutorial used black).  I used electrical tape to add the decorations around each handle.  Super easy and the kids loved whacking stuff with them, including the pinata!

Pinata

A pinata  you say? Yup, a big "hit" to be sure. The easiest one I could think of was a Death Star.  I got some punch ball balloons at WalMart because they are supposed to be round...but it was pretty oval shaped. Oh well.  If I were to do it again, I'd hit the dollar store for an inflatable beach ball instead.  The pinata took a whole day to make (luckily it was a sunny and windy day, so it dried quickly).

Mix up the glue; 2 c. water, 1 c. flour.  Tear up some strips of newspaper and smooth them all around the balloon.  I did this outside on the lawn in my work clothes, because this is messy. I had a large bowl to set the balloon in while I worked.  I hung the pinata to dry from the punch balloon rubber band.  When layer one was done, I did it again.  Since most of the kids would be under 8, two layers was plenty, but if they were older, you'd probably want 4 layers.

I sprayed the dried pinata with gray primer since that is what I had in the garage.  Once the paint was dry, I poked the balloon and let the air out.  I used black electrical tape to make the equator and some shiny duct tape to add the decor and large round spot.  I also used the duct tape to cover over the hole left at the top where I stuffed the candy.

I filled the pinata with some Star Wars chocolate coins that I found at WalMart at Christmas time and some other candy.  

The Food!

There are lots and lots of great ideas for Star Wars themed party food.  My brother and his wife even gave me the Star Wars cook book for my birthday.  I used the book for some of the food titles, some titles I found on other blogs and still others I just put together.  I was loved the classic Star Wars detailing of the food labels over at Hello My Sweet so I used them as inspiration for mine. I even did water bottle labels that I printed and taped on Costco brand water.  I'll be honest, I created LOTS more labels than I would have needed, and ended up trying to keep things simple.  After the kids had been playing at the park and a stop at the grocery store for fruit for dipping, they were starved, so I had to hustle to get things set out.  So, no fancy display table, but the kids didn't care one bit!

Wanna know the funniest?  Of all the items on the table, which one do you think got eaten up first and had none left over?  The broccoli from the veggie tray.  Hilarious (and what good sisters-in-law I have for teaching their kids to enjoy vegetables!) 

On the table:
Padowan Pizza
Vader Veggies w/ Droid Dip
Light Sabers (fat pretzel sticks, plain. The kids dipped them in dip or chocolate fountain)
Yoda/Darth Vader Cookies
Hoth Chocolates
The Force Fruit
Chewbaca's Chocolate Fountain (Hershey's Syrup in a fountain I found at Ross for $15)