Whosit in the Making - Part 5 - What's in a Name?

One more thing to do for the little dog - she needs a name!  Her greeness is her most striking feature to me, so I was playing around with things related to "forest" or "tree" or "green" itself.  One very fun place to play with names is babynames.com (if you use the advanced search, you can look for names by meaning).  Some girly green names I liked were:

• Midori - Japanese for green
• Silvana - Latin for forest
• Ilana - Hebrew origin, meaning tree

But I think I'm going to call her Emerald (or Em for short).  She seems to be in agreement with me on that one!

Whosit in the Making - Part 4 - She's Here!

The little puppy is finally done!  I love making the faces best, because that's when the little critters seem to come to life!  I like to use a lot of heavy satin stitching for the eyes to really build them up.  I usually prefer to embroider yarn eyes, rather than using plastic safety eyes or beads, but I've seen some really engaging faces made on crochet animals with both of these.   I also use a little bit of "needle sculpting" -- moving the yarn back and forth through the crochet and stuffing and pulling it tight to shape the face.  I like to "ident" between the eyes, underneath the bridge of the nose to help create eye sockets.  Another tip -- I stuff the nose with black yarn instead of stuffing, so no white shows through.  :)

Picasa and her new cousin finally get to meet, nose to nose!

Whosit in the Making - Part 3 - Parts is Parts

The little dog's body parts are now all crocheted (from her nose and blaze to her little popcorn stitch toes).  So far, assembled, she looks like this -- we're getting there!

The next step is choosing a contrast color for the ears and tail.   Since the brown was toned down a bit, and the green predominates due to the additional heathering of the multi-tonal green yarn, I'm picking up the aqua accents from the sock yarn with this super soft wool found at my local Yarn Shop (LYS).

Let you know when the little mite is assembled and ready for naming!

Whosit in the Making - Part 2 - And the winner is...

We have a winner!  Working two strands together provided a much better "fabric" that was tighter and much easier to shape.  Plus I love the way the colors blended.  On top is the first attempt of making Picasa 2's body with just the sock yarn and the the bottom is the two strand results.  On to the rest of the body parts!

Whosit in the Making - Part 1B - Whoops!

Hm...experiment using stretchy sock yarn (superwash wool/nylon) with B hook for body... fail.   Stretches TOO much and very difficult to stuff evenly.  Also, stuffing firmly causes the polyfil to show through.  Either this type of yarn has too much give, or I need to use a smaller hook (now we're talking STEEL crochet hooks - the kind you use for doilies!), or maybe I was just having a loosey goosey crochet day. 

So let's try a different tack and use double yarn with that B hook.  Since brown is so predominant in the sock yarn, I'm going to try adding a very subtley variegated aqua/green fine weight wool I found on ebay.    Let's see how this works out!

Whosit in the Making - Part 1

I found this really cool hand-painted fingering yarn at http://knitpicks.com/ and I think it's the perfect candidate for my first Picasa dog in wool sock yarn.  So far, I've made a few Picasas in wildly patterned acrylic worsted weight yarn with an F hook.  Sock yarn will require a B hook to keep the stitching tight and prevent stuffing from showing through.  The fun thing about amigurumi, is, as long as you keep the yarn and crochet hook in proportion so you get a tight "fabric", you can make the same cute critter out of any weight yarn.   So we'll see how this mini-version of the Picasa comes out! 

See the original Picasa story here:  Picasa is Born...

"Tree Fort" Stroll Yarn - Superwash Merino Wool/Nylon

The original Picasa

Dachsie + Uniquely Patterned Yarn = Picasa Pup

What to do? The dachshund next door was out in the backyard running up & down the fence line barking at my dogs again (he actually has a path worn in the grass). Meanwhile I'd unearthed some wildly patterned worsted weight yarn while excavating through boxes (fuschia, copper, white, navy, aqua, red and self-striping) -- what the heck was I gonna make out of that?



Z-z-z-z-ing!!! Hit by INSPIRATION, out came Picasa the Puppy. I couldn't wait to finish and post her. So what do you think?





Find her in our etsy shop here: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=25576676

And to enjoy more fiber art, please check out Alpaca Farm Girl's blog: http://www.alpacafarmgirl.com