I discovered that unlike knitting, crochet is much kinder on my hands - hooray! But not knowing much about crochet, I attempted to teach myself from online videos.....(turns out a lot of these happen to be US based videos, a small little fact that had escaped my attention).
My mother-in-law & sister-in-law bought me a book of crochet toy patterns: "Crocheted Wild Animals: A Collection of Cuddly Creatures to Make from Scratch" by Vanessa Mooncie. I enthusiastically dug right in to make the elephant on the cover! Fast forward a few weeks.....and let's just say that Mr Elephant was not turning out much like the picture....he was more like an elongated eggplant of sorts. I would post pictures if only I had not unraveled the beast in a huge rush of fury! I am ashamed to say that it was only after my husband's insightful comment (he knows nothing-whatsoever about crochet) that I realised that DC (UK-lingo) was in fact SC (US-lingo)! [....of course amigurami is always SC oops!!, should have known that....]
So here is Mr Elephant take #2! Our daughter really likes him and I am very happy (to be fair she is not a harsh critic so it motivates me to make stuff for her). As a linguist, you would have thought that I may have realised just how important language is - go figure :)
Below is a little monkey I made for her some time ago, before Mr Elephant came to be - from a very helpful online pattern! I am ever so grateful for the patience and willingness of people to spend their time teaching complete strangers how to make stuff like this. It makes me wonder about my own teaching practice ....
My mother-in-law & sister-in-law bought me a book of crochet toy patterns: "Crocheted Wild Animals: A Collection of Cuddly Creatures to Make from Scratch" by Vanessa Mooncie. I enthusiastically dug right in to make the elephant on the cover! Fast forward a few weeks.....and let's just say that Mr Elephant was not turning out much like the picture....he was more like an elongated eggplant of sorts. I would post pictures if only I had not unraveled the beast in a huge rush of fury! I am ashamed to say that it was only after my husband's insightful comment (he knows nothing-whatsoever about crochet) that I realised that DC (UK-lingo) was in fact SC (US-lingo)! [....of course amigurami is always SC oops!!, should have known that....]
So here is Mr Elephant take #2! Our daughter really likes him and I am very happy (to be fair she is not a harsh critic so it motivates me to make stuff for her). As a linguist, you would have thought that I may have realised just how important language is - go figure :)
Below is a little monkey I made for her some time ago, before Mr Elephant came to be - from a very helpful online pattern! I am ever so grateful for the patience and willingness of people to spend their time teaching complete strangers how to make stuff like this. It makes me wonder about my own teaching practice ....