A Ladybug for Lila

Lila had been quite attached to a teeny beanie baby ladybug from McDonald's quite some time ago. She slept with it, carried it around, brought it along on errands, etc. When we went to see fireworks this year, the inevitable finally happened....the ladybug was left behind! Normally, I'm a fan of rescue missions, but it was lost on base which we only had access to through our neighbors. Dirk felt no need to even attempt to replace it as it is a lesson that he feels needs to be learned sooner or later anyways. I think I suffered as much as she did when she learned that he was forever lost. :-( Which is precisely why I HAD to make her a new ladybug. Since it isn't a direct replacement, Dirk felt ok with it. Sort of. ;-) This is another free pattern from LionBrand Yarn. Many of their patterns are hit or miss in my opinion, but when they are on, they are ON! Enjoy!

The ladybug "munching" on the remains of the tiny failed peapod.

The bottom of the ladybug Lila admiring her new ladybug

A Tiny Whale

We watched Pinocchio one night. I had forgotten how scary that movie can be for small children! Well, predictably Lila had nightmares about being eaten by a whale for a couple of nights. I looked online and found a quick and simple pattern for a tiny whale. I set everything else aside and whipped one up for Lila as quickly as I could. It was ready by that night and she was pleased to have her very own whale that she knew could not eat her. No more nightmares about whales! :-D I wish every solution in life was this easy....

A Wedding Amigurumi

I had to wait too long to be able to post this one! Now, I have a backlog! ;-) I made this one for my sister Elizabeth who just married the love of her life, Billy! The pattern was from LionBrand Yarn. Funny story, I made the peas first (the Billy pea is taller since Billy is so tall), then started on the pod. The yarn that I had was WAY too small and no amount of modifying was going to make it work, so I had to search high and low for a yarn that would work. I found some perfect yarn in a set of 3 complementing greens. Kind of wish I had found that set before I started in the first place, but not much good wishing for that now. Anyways, in the time that I spent searching for the new yarn, I forgot where I put the peas a number of times. As I made the pod from the new yarn, I made several trips up and down our stairs and always kept the peas and pod-in-progress together so I would not have that problem again. At one point, I realized that I had only 1 pea with me. I searched EVERYWHERE, but I could not find the "Elizabeth" pea!! I was panicking that I would have to redo a pea, then debated redoing both so I could use some of my new colors. After a couple of days of searching, I finally found the pea under a couch cushion. I was never happier to find a small green ball! Once the pod was finished, I added the accessories (the top hat includes a 1 Euro cent in the top since I kind of like that little tradition and the colored roses are the main wedding color, which was a nice coincidence). I haven't had much (ok, any) experience embroidering faces with yarn, so I had to redo Billy's face a couple of times. I finally got it to look pretty good. I intentionally left Elizabeth's eyes slanted because she has the type of eyes that disappear when she smiles, and I knew she would be doing a lot of smiling that day. :-) All in all, I think they turned out rather well.