Manta ray finger puppet

manta ray finger puppet close up
Hi there!

An early crochet effort of mine was trimming Roman Sock’s manta ray pattern down into a finger puppet, because I lack the attention span to do the full project. I have six rows of the full-size version, waiting.

For those of you who wish to follow suit, I believe I used an F-hook, though gauge isn’t important, and acrylic worsted-weight yarn from Jo-Ann’s – nothing fancy.

Working from the original pattern (crochet abbreviations):
gray side has 2 rows of 3 sc for head, and 6 rows with sc inc on each end for wings.
base of tail is 3 sc wide, has a second row of 3 sc and then decreases by omitting turning ch; when you get to 1 sc, ch 7.
sl st from there down the tail and to the tip of the wing, and then from the base of the tail on the opposite side (omitting the ch-7 part) to the opposite wing.

In cream I left out the tail.

manta ray finger puppet pieces

After embroidering the eyes with black embroidery floss, I used pink embroidery floss to whipstitch the two halves together on the inside of the mouth, then wound the floss horizontally around those stitches (in place of Brie’s pink felt, which would never fit in a finger puppet). Then I slip stitched between the side of the mouth and the base of the tail on each side to finish connecting the halves.

manta puppet

manta puppet

Hairy Green Monster

I am a member of the Amigurumi Army on Ravelry, and every month brings an amigurumi mission. February’s mission was dragons and serpents, and my effort is at the top of the picture of my embroidery floss animals. March’s mission was “green means go!”: create something, anything, green. I decided to create a green monster, using the brush crochet technique. I had recently acquired a dog slicker brush and read it works best on mohair and wool, so I got some Red Heart Stitch Nation Full o’ Sheep in “thyme”, picked out my E hook, thought about overall shape, and started stitching!

Stumpy the crocheted green monster

He turned out more complicated than I expected, so a pattern pdf will follow later, once I have time to put it together. Handwritten, the pattern is three and a half pages long! Not because it’s overly difficult; at least some of the length is due to separate left and right arm patterns, so they will be mirror images.

Rock Star Monster
Rock star

Embroidery floss crochet

I began crocheting in November of 2010, during a bout of insomnia, and made piles of hearts and goldfish. However, reading about crochet done with plarn (“yarn” made from plastic bags), old cassette and video tape, and strips of t-shirts made me think yarn was boring. Ribbon was promising, but I had no projects I wanted to make with it. Futuregirl wrote about crocheting with ordinary sewing thread, and I began roaming around my sewing room. Ultimately, I picked up my box of off-brand embroidery floss and the largest of my steel hooks (1/2.75mm).

I began ambitiously with Roman Sock’s pocket elephant. Legs of three obviously different diameters and Neanderthal brow ridges caused by upside-down safety eye backings give him character. Since then I have rarely been without an embroidery floss work in progress. Recently I got all my little guys together for a family photo. Click for a larger version; patterns linked below.

embroidery floss amigurumi

Top to bottom, left to right:
mighty & ferocious dragon, penguin ornament (feet freehanded by me), tiny whale, pocket elephant, Lion Brand fortune cookie (pink; registration required), Alicia Kachmar fortune cookie (beige), fishhead (freehanded by me), mini turtle, Falwyn’s little fox.

I had to increase the size of the turtle body to match the shell, though I had no such mismatch in yarn. Contradictorily, my fox is a fat little sausage. Stitch proportion tests will be made and reported on.