unique

Asian Zodiac Animals

I finally finished the 3 dolls that my friend commissioned me to make! Each will be gifted this Christmas to a niece or nephew, and each represents the Asian Zodiac animal for his/her birth year. What a neat idea, right? I hope the kiddos like them! I’ve always wanted to make all the Zodiac animals so this was a good motivator to get me going on this project. I don’t foresee myself finishing all 12 animals anytime in the near future, but I think I’ve got a pretty good start already. Let’s see, the 12 animals are the Rat, Cow, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig.

My plan is to eventually make new Zodiac versions of each animal. In the meantime, I can use existing dolls to represent the animals… ie. Mochi or Wasabi for Year of the Rabbit would work nicely! I’ve got a long way to go to make all the signs. No worries though! As long as I’ve got the animal done for the current year, I’m happy. Which animal sign are you? I’m a Cow (ok, that doesn’t sound so nice) and my husband is a Tiger. According to the horoscope, I am supposedly hard working and persistent. Hmmm I’m not sure if that’s completely accurate! My tiger husband is supposedly confidant, courageous, and dynamic. That’s probably true. But I’m not really one to be superstitious!! 🙂

Making Spike the Dragon

Phew!! Finally, finally I have finished up Spike! I started him back in May (!!) of this year and never got around to writing his pattern because the color changes were so tricky for me. Remember, I like to make everything up as I go and I really don’t have any good idea of how color changes should formally be written up. Chalk it up to laziness, I guess. I just want to go! go! go! when I’m crocheting and I don’t have the patience to try to sit down and see how others have written up their patterns! For a while now, I’ve been getting many inquiries from interested crocheters about when the dragon pattern was coming out so I am so happy to say “Here it is!!” I will be uploading it to my usual shops by tomorrow at the latest! Thank you all for being so darn patient and as always, I am so grateful for your interest and kind words of support!

And as you may know from my previous post, I am also doing this because my friend had requested a custom order of a dragon doll for his nephew who happens to be born in the Year of the Dragon. So here is my contribution towards my Little Muggles “Zodiac Collection”. I hope you like him!

In my pattern, I’ve also included a little tutorial about how to make color changes with smooth transitions. This is a MUST when making the belly of Spike. A lot of you probably already know the technique, but I made my own picture tutorial. I do intend to add a Tutorial section for my website sometime soon so please check back for it! Until then, have a fantastic day and as usual, Happy Crocheting!!

Another doll completed!

Ok, so I’m finally done with the 3rd doll in this collection! Now I’m completely at a loss as to what the 4th character should be… I’ll have to play around with some sketches and figure it out. It’ll come to me…. hopefully! Anyways, take a look at my newest creation! I’m pretty happy with it because all my previous attempts at making cows were pretty disastrous. I don’t know what it is.. I usually mess up the snout part somehow, but thankfully it seems to have come out ok this time around!

Early on, I made this sketch of a few of the dolls I envisioned. See how the 4th doll is missing? Even early on, I had no clue as to what I was going to make. All I know is that I want 4 in the collection. Why? I have no idea! There is no rhyme or reason for it.

Now I’m going to take a short break from this collection to work on a few other crochet projects that I have to finish up! Talk to ya soon!!