To help with my isolation woes, I bought the most amazing crochet book I have ever owned, I meant it – it’s amazing! Normally I flick through and see a couple of things I like and want to try but with this book I want to make everything! It’s called Animal Friends of Pica Pau and it is brilliant. The characters are very cute and the colour palette is 100% my cup of tea. It’s also given me lots of ideas for new shapes etc so maybe I can finally design something of my own!
I would recommend this book for crocheters at an intermediate level. The patterns are fairly straight forward but there are some techniques that you need that are a bit more complicated.
Colour blocking
When you’re changing colour (not horizontal stripes) and working in the round, you’ll find that after a couple of rows, you’re stitching doesn’t exactly match up. This is because every time you start a new round, the first stitch is slightly more back than the previous rows first stitch. To combat this, every 2-3 rows you can move your stitch marker, which is the starting point for your row, one stitch forward. Then continue with the pattern as normal. It’s not going to give you a perfectly straight line but you will see an improvement.
To make sure your stripes are in line or ‘jogless’ I use this really handy tutorial (method #2) and as you go along, for this particular pattern, tie your ends together after each row and snip the ends. This will stop them getting tangled when you’re changing colours.
Another thing that I do is to save all my snipped ends and mix them with the stuffing at the end. This saves mess and means you have to use less stuffing. It’s only really applicable to amigurumi made with 3mm or less hook, otherwise the gaps between two stitches are too wide and you’ll see the yarn ends.
As usual, this woodpecker will be on sale in my ebay shop, along with the other amigrumi that I’ve made. I usually only make one of each item and I’m not taking commissions at the moment.
Happy hooking!
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