Peanutty

I made this elephant for my girlfriend's mom, who loves all things pachyderm. This elephant shares the same pattern as the green bear, but with a slightly different nose.

A bonus to working on this blog is the chance to improve and share my photography. For this photo shoot, my girlfriend emptied a bag of peanuts onto the elephant as I snapped away. After a hundred photos, everyone and everything was covered in peanut dust.

For the combination crochet/photography/food techies, this is the gear I used: a Red Heart 4mm crochet needle, a Canon Digital Rebel (EOS 350D) camera with a 50mm f/1.8 lens, and a 907g bag of The Produce Stand Salted Roasted Peanuts.

Peanutty!

Little Green Lumps

Along with helpful youtube videos, my first crochet creations were guided by a good book for beginners: Kyuuto! Japanese Crafts: Amigurumi by Tomoko Takamori. I followed her pattern for a tiny bear, and chose green yarn because I only had three yarn colours at the time.

I struggled to complete the bear's separate pieces (body, head, arms, legs and ears), and was discouraged when I ended up with green lumps of yarn. But as I stitched those little limbs together (using a tapestry needle), the thrill of seeing a smiling bear come to life was memorable and addictive.

I still have my stuffed bear from when I was 5 years old, and took a photo of "Fuzz" and my new green bear:

It's amazing how much personality we can lend to these little lumps and amazing how much personality they can hold.