Catherine M Kage: Christmas Crochet

I taught myself how to crochet at the beginning of last year. Naturally, I decided that I would crochet some of my Christmas presents. I always like handmade presents over generic ones bought in the store, so crocheting gifts seemed like a pretty good idea.

Of course I had no idea how much work it would be, not to mention how time-consuming. But somehow I managed and I ended up making a whole bunch of amigurumis to give to friends and family.

My first amigurumi was a baby dragon. This little guy had been the main reason why I had wanted to learn how to crochet. He's just too cute. Of course, for an absolute beginner he's also pretty difficult to make. Had I known, I would have chosen a different animal as my first piece. As it happens, I crocheted all the parts for the little dragon, but than had no clue how to start assembling it. So I put it aside, and made a few different pieces before going back and sewing all the parts together.

My next project was a cupcake, which I intended to use as pincushion. Every time I sew, I drop the little box with my pins, so it was high time I found a solution for that problem anyway. The pincushion cupcake can be dropped many, many times, the pins stay where they are supposed to.

I couldn't find instructions that looked exactly like I wanted mine to look, so I even ended up inventing one of my own. I'm pretty proud of the result. I also made one with a birthday candle, since my sister's birthday is a week before Christmas.

For Christmas I ended up making three snowman, two penguins, two reindeers and one Santa. The Santa didn't end up as cute as I thought, but the other ones were all great.Unfortunately I didn't think to make pictures of all of them. I do have one of the snowman and one of the reindeer though and I will have to make at least one more penguin for the birthday of a friend, so I will make a picture of that one then.