Crochet Hamsters (Peachfuzz & Butter)

Welcome everybody, to our live crochet event. I'm Brenda KB Anderson, and today I'm hanging out in the studio with my buddies here, Butter and Peachfuzz. They're little cute crocheted hamsters. So I'm going to be talking my way through and demonstrating also all the techniques you need to know on how to make these guys. So you can download your pattern now, or you can wait till later after.

If you just wanna watch, that's totally fine, but it'll be available later too. You can download your pattern, you can just click on the link in the description, also in the chat box too, I guess. I think it's in there too. So after you get your pattern, you're going to be needing some yarn, of course. So for these little guys, I used three colors.

I used the main color, which is the head and the body. And then the contrast color one, which is his belly and his arms and his little nose. And then the third color, which are his hands, his feet, his tiny little stubby tail, which before this, I didn't actually even know that hamsters had tails, but I had to Google that of course, 'cause I didn't wanna be teaching a class on a hamster without a tail if that's not how they are, 'cause that would be so inaccurate, right? And then also, his little ears are the same color too. So I used two different main colors here for the two different hamsters, but don't feel restricted to these colors, you know?

Okay, hamsters come in lots of different colors, and honestly, a purple hamster would be super cute too. So you can go crazy with that. That's the fun thing with making toys. You just can make it however you want to and be creative about it, super fun. All right, so you're gonna need, actually, all the yarn requirements are listed in your pattern.

The exact type of yarn that I use is also listed in the pattern. But I used a acrylic wool blend, I think. Let's see, yes, 80% acrylic, 20% Merino wool blend. But you can certainly substitute with all acrylic if you have that, or all wool. If you would prefer that, that's totally fine.

You can definitely make substitutions on this project. And if you don't have the same weight, this is a worsted weight yarn, that's okay too. You'll just end up with the slightly bigger if it's thicker or slightly smaller if it's thinner yarn, project, and that's fine. That's another good thing about making toys. You don't really have to worry about the gauge too much.

But actually, having said that, I did list the gauge in the pattern. You make the circle at the beginning of the body, and then you measure it to get your gauge. So you don't have to do a separate gauge swatch, 'cause I'm real lazy about my gage swatches. If you've watched my other lives, you already know that. But I did list the gauge because it is very important that your fabric is stiff enough so that your stuffing doesn't come through.

And then it helps your creature keep its shape, okay. So, you know, if you take a look at this, I can hold it like this, and it's not gonna drape at all. It's pretty darn stiff. So that is more important than getting the correct number. You know, the correct inches or whatever that's listed.

So in your pattern, there's a list for abbreviations. So this will tell you what all those abbreviations in the pattern mean. And of course it has all the instructions on how to make it. But I'm gonna be walking you through everything. You will need the pattern though, in order to know the stitch counts and how many rounds you do things for, because I'm not gonna show every little step of this, because then I wouldn't finish it in an hour.

So I have worked things up in stages. We are gonna talk about each piece, and I'm gonna go through anything that seems like it might be kind of tricky to learn. So we'll be able to, you'll be able to just breeze through your pattern once you get to making this little guy, so I'm excited. All right, so this is a live event, of course. So please, you know, say hi in the comments section, or you can tell me what you're working on, or where you're crocheting from.

We have Judith Kane from Northern Ireland. Whoa, that's amazing. I actually went to Ireland, but I didn't get up to Northern Ireland, unfortunately. But it's so beautiful. Well, welcome.

And yeah, if anybody else wants to say hello, or if, of course, if you have questions, definitely put your questions in the box so that I can see what you're having trouble with and maybe I can do something again or elaborate on it so that we can all be on the same page and make this a little easier for you guys. So, all right, so we're gonna get started. We begin this pattern by working on the body. So this is what the body looks like before it's stuffed. It's a flat circle on the bottom.

And then we work straight up the side for a little ways, and then we start doing decreases up here. So I'm gonna show you how to do those parts. We're going to begin by using a magic ring, also called a magic loop, an adjustable loop. There's so many names for this, and there's lots of different ways to do it. This is just the way that I prefer to do it, 'cause I think it's straightforward to teach.

So you just draw yourself a little cursive e here, and then you fold the loop over on top of the strand of yarn that's connected to your ball, like that. And then you just put your hook underneath that loop in the middle, and then you can, I'm holding this right here where it all crosses, and you just kind of make it a little smaller. This is actually very similar to how I start out, just putting a loop on my hook to begin any project, but I just don't tighten it all the way. Then I'm just going to do one little yarn over chain, and that kind of anchors it to my loop. I'm gonna shorten that just a little, to make it a little less unwieldy.

Okay, so now we're gonna be working the first six stitches. They're all single crochet, right into the middle of that loop. So a single crochet, you insert your hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, and then pull through two. That's one single crochet. So we're gonna do five more of those.

Insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. Insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. Okay, we're gonna do that three more times. One, two, three. So we should have a total of six, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and we can tighten that up.

And for me, I actually like to leave my beginning yarn tail on the outside of my work. I just kind of bring it to the front, and let it hang on the outside. And then later on, I do that, you can leave it on the back, and that's fine. But if you're making a shape like this, and then you forget about your yarn tail, it might be hard to weave it in. And you might be thinking, why would we weave in our yarn tail, that's silly.

It's gonna be on the inside of his body. No one's gonna see that. But in case you're beginning loop starts to kind of open up a little bit. I mean, you just wanna avoid that. So I weave it back and forth a little bit anyway, and then tuck it to the inside, and you don't have to weave it in perfectly or anything like that, but.

So I'm gonna leave that on the outside here. And then we're going to work on round two of the body. So we're actually, let me show you, if you're newer to patterns, I wanted to point this out because sometimes people have trouble reading patterns, and they just like to watch the video, and then make things from the video, which is completely fine. But in this case, because I can't go through every single step, I wanna make sure that you understand how to read the pattern so that you can read it for yourself. So here we have round two.

This just says two SC into each stitch around. And then right here it says 12 SC. What that means is we're doing two single crochets into each stitch around, and then we're gonna end up with 12 single crochets in that round, okay. So that's what we're doing. So we're gonna do our` single crochets, just like before, insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I'm using an F hook, 3.75 millimeter. That's what I needed to get this firm gauge for this project. But you can use whatever hook you need in order to make your gauge look how mine looked. It doesn't, you know, you could use a bigger hook or a smaller hook, it's no problem. So hi Dawn, from Washington State, oh, thank you for the compliment on my pattern.

I'm glad you joined us again. And Enid, hello from Florida, hi Enid. And Deb Staples is saying hi from Oklahoma. This is her first time, well, special welcome to you Deb. I'm glad that you're here.

And Dawn says she loves making cute amigurumis for Christmas bingo gifts, oh, like a bingo prize. Is that what it is? That's kind of awesome. Okay, so all right, back on track. Two single crochets into each stitch around.

So we did one and then a second one into that same stitch. So we're gonna do that again. Insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two, and then we're gonna make another single crochet into that same stitch. Okay, these are called increases. That's how we get the fabric to grow and get larger.

All right, I'm gonna have to count mine, 'cause I wasn't paying attention, and I should be using a stitch marker to mark the first stitch of the round. That makes it so much easier. All right, let's see, we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. All right, so we have 12 stitches, and now we're going to do round three. So round three, and so there's brackets, and this is what I particularly wanted to point out.

In the pattern, whenever there's brackets, whatever those instructions are within those brackets, it's kind of grouping those instructions. And then after the brackets, it'll tell you how many times or into, you know, everything in the bracket is gonna be worked into this stitch. Or it'll tell you something more right after the brackets about what to do with the information within the brackets. So in this case it says two single crochets into the next stitch, single crochet into the next stitch. So we do two single crochets into one stitch, then we do one single crochet into the next stitch.

And then we do that six times. We repeat what's within the bracket six times, and this will tell you your total amount of stitches. All right, so we're doing two single crochets in the next stitch, one, two. I'm gonna mark the first of those, and then one single crochet into the next stitch. Okay, two single crochets, one, two, one single crochet into the next stitch.

We're just repeating the same thing all the way around. One, two, one, one, two, one. One, two, one, oh Dawn says yes, bingo prizes. One, two, one. Yeah, people are gonna love those, Dawn, they're so cute.

All right, so we've made it all the way around. We have 18 stitches around. And I'm not gonna show you how to keep increasing like that because now that you know what it means, you know, when you're reading the pattern, what happens between the brackets, and the stitch counts and all that, that you guys can go ahead and work on all the rest of these rounds all the way up to round eight. I mean, you don't have to do that right now, but I'm just not gonna show that part. I'll just explain what happens.

So for every round, you're just increasing every time by six stitches. It's gonna grow by six stitches around every single round, all the way through round eight. And then what you end up with is a piece that looks like this, and you have 48 single crochets all the way around the edge. Then you can see for rounds nine through 14, you're just gonna single crochet in each stitch around. So that just means you just single crochet in every stitch.

You're not increasing or decreasing, you're just completely, you know, just working one in each. And then you'll end up with a piece that looks like this. So you can see here's our flat circle that we made at first, and then we just started single crocheting in each stitch of the round. And that's what made kind of the walls of this bowl shape. So then, after you've completed rounds nine through 14, rounds 15 through 22, it says single crochet around making two decreases per round.

So a decrease is when you, it's also called single crochet two together. There's lots of different ways to write that, but all it means is you are going to insert your hook and pull up a loop into the next stitch. And then you're gonna go in the following stitch, insert your hook and pull up a loop, yarn over, and pull through two, that is a basic single crochet stitch. And it makes this sort of diagonal right here, which is kind of easy to see. So I prefer to do what's an invisible decrease.

And you can certainly do that, honestly, they're so cute. Nobody's going to be looking at all these little decreases, but I'm kind of particular about things, and I wanna give you another option in case you wanna do it another way that's a little bit less visible. So you'll insert your hook underneath just the first, like the front loop of the next stitch. Then you will insert your hook directly underneath the next two stitches, yarn over, pull your loop through that stitch and through the first stitch as well. Then you'll yarn over and pull through two.

That just makes it look a little more like just a regular single crochet stitch, but you still were able to decrease there. And there are some other variations and versions of that type of decrease. But this is the one that I prefer the most. So I've already done one decrease for this round. So we're gonna do a second decrease.

And so when I write, you know, you're gonna make it two decreases per round. What that means is you're gonna choose where the decreases go, and try to space them out fairly evenly. So I made mine right away in that very first stitch. So I'm gonna try to put another decrease opposite it. So for this section, wherever I put my first decrease, I just kind of look at it when I'm putting my decrease there.

And then I will put my decrease on the opposite side of the circle for the next round, okay. So we'll just do single crochets across to the other side. And I have a note in the pattern not to put a decrease into another decrease, like try not to stack up your decreases on top of each other, because what happens then is it starts to call attention to the shaping, and it makes it look, it's really obvious then, to see where all your decreases are. And it doesn't look quite as uniformly round, starts to get sort of a faceted look almost. All right, we're almost halfway around, and then we'll do another decrease.

And Terry says hi from San Diego, and she's left-handed, and often cannot crochet a pattern without making changes. But this looks like it might work for you. Oh, I understand the whole left-handed thing. I get a lot of questions from left-handed people about how to do things, and it must be such a bummer to always be looking at a right-handed person demonstrating, but I do have to say that, oh, I think I put, I think this, I think I said the wrong name here. Oh yeah, okay, so that was Martha who said that.

I'm sorry, Tracy and Martha, I started reading one, and then the comment moved and then I just jumped to the next comment. So sorry, that was Martha who said that. The left-handed Martha. And if you are able to look in the mirror at what I'm doing, then that will be showing you exactly what you would look like, what a left-handed person would look like when they are making stuff from this pattern. And you don't need to worry, in this one, there isn't anything that says to the left or to the right or anything like that.

So you can just read the pattern as it's written, and make it from left to right how you normally crochet. So let's go back to Tracy. Tracy says hi from Nashville, Tennessee, and she's making her first crochet critter for her first grandchild, that's also exciting. Yes, I'm glad that you're here, Tracy. That's very exciting.

Okay, so we've worked around to the opposite side of where I did my first decrease, and we're gonna do another decrease. I'm gonna do that invisible decrease again. So I'm gonna insert my hook under just the front loop, and then insert my hook underneath both loops of the next stitch, yarn over, pull up a loop, and pull through that one, that we first, both stitches basically, is what I'm trying to say. And then you will yarn over and pull through two. Now if that's confusing, or if your hook starts getting stuck in your stitches, if you're a little newer to crocheting, don't worry about that.

You can just do a regular single crochet decrease. That's completely fine, this is just, you know, if you feel like you wanna overachieve a little bit. Okay, so we've made our decrease here and our decrease here, and then we're just gonna continue all the way across to the marker. So that would be one round with two decreases in it. So we would continue that from rounds 15 to rounds 22.

You just keep going around and around and placing your decreases, like on the next round we would maybe put it here and here, it doesn't have to be in a very specific spot, you just don't wanna put it right next to the ones we already did. So every round you just go around, and put your decreases opposite each other or opposite-ish, And then you'll just continue on that until you get a shape that looks about like this. The very last round of this, which I've already done, let's see, I think it's round 23. Yep, round 23, we are making eight decreases. So you do two decreases all the way up until you get to round 23.

And then at round 23, you will follow the instructions of single crocheting into two stitches, and then you do a single crochet two together, or an invisible decrease, however you wanna do that. So you do two regular stitches, and then one decrease. And you repeat that all the way around, you'll repeat what's in the brackets eight times. And you'll end up with 24 single crochet stitches, and it should look like this. And then you can just set the body aside.

Well actually, we're just gonna fasten off, Actually, let me make sure that I actually did that last round. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, okay, I did. I just was thinking why didn't I fasten this off already, but maybe I just wanted to show you how to fasten off. So you can just do a slip stitch into the next stitch, and then you can go through the loop on your hook, and yarn over and pull through. And, oh, I know why I did that, because I wanted to mention that this should be a longer piece because we're gonna be sewing the head onto the body using that piece of yarn, so.

All right. Okay, so we'll set that aside, and then we're gonna talk about the head. So the head, when we make this head, it looks about like this, this it mostly finished, we're gonna start the head by making a foundation chain that goes across here, and then we start working in spirals around the chain. So that's what makes it kind of a flatter seam here. Instead of just starting with a magic loop, see how the shapes look different.

This one is longer in this direction and narrower here. So that's why we're starting this with a foundation chain instead. So I'll just pull this out. Let's see, for the head, we're gonna chain 11 stitches to start. So you make your slip knot, and then you're going to chain 11.

So one, two, three, four, five, six seven, eight, nine, 10, 11. And then we're gonna start with the second chain from the hook, because that last chain counts as a turning chain. And we're gonna work into the bottom bump of our chain. So the bottom bump of your chain, if you roll it over, and you look at these little dash lines, those are the bottom bumps of your chain. So we're skipping the first one, and then we're gonna work underneath the second one.

We're gonna do a single crochet here. So yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. All right, so we're gonna do a single crochet all the way across, and that'll be 10 stitches, because that last chain that we did in the foundation chain, that was really just gonna count as a turning chain. And we are never gonna work into that chain. So once you make it, and you start working your single crochets, just completely ignore that chain like you never made it.

All right, two more stitches here. And now here comes the part that is very confusing to read on paper, which is why I'm so glad we have a video to show this part. All right, so we've worked our single crochet stitches across here. Now we're gonna rotate our piece 180 degrees like this. We're not turning it over to look at the other side, we're just rotating it like that.

So we're gonna look at the, this is the bottom side of that foundation chain right here, or the opposite side. All right, so we're gonna start working in that first loop right there, that first stitch, okay. There should be 10 stitches across, and we're gonna do three single crochet stitches into that first stitch. So insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. And I would say mark that right away, because this gets so confusing as to where you started if you don't mark it right away.

All right, so one, we're working in the same spot, two, three. Now we're gonna work eight single crochet stitches, just one in each stitch. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. And then we're gonna work three single crochet stitches into the last stitch, so one, two, three. And it's okay if your stitches kind of overlap that turning chain 'cause we didn't need it anyway, remember we were just gonna ignore it.

Now we're gonna work around on the opposite side. Now, we're working around in circles here. Okay, so our first stitch is here, and if it's confusing to where your first stitch is, you can count backwards from your stitch marker. That was the first stitch of the round, so we're not gonna count that. So we count one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10.

That's where you need to work. So you're gonna do three single crochet stitches into that stitch, one, two, three. And then you're gonna do one single crochet stitch into each of the next eight stitches, okay. So that'll lead you all the way across, except for there will be one stitch left over before that marked stitch. All right, so we have one stitch left, and we're gonna put three single crochets into that stitch.

One, two, three. Okay, and now we're just gonna keep going around and around and around. So beginning with this marked stitch, that's the first stitch of our round, we're gonna work one single crochet. Now we are on, let's see, round one, the first, that was the first, let's see, oh, round one was the round that we just did. That was the first complete round that we did.

So now we're on round number two. So we're gonna do a single crochet into the next stitch, two single crochets into the following stitch, single crochet into 10, the next 10 stitches, two single crochets into the next stitch, single crochet into the next stitch. If we didn't catch all that, that's okay 'cause I'm gonna show you. So we're gonna do one single crochet here. We're starting out with just one, put the marker back in, and then you're gonna do two single crochets into the next stitch, one, two.

Then we're gonna single crochet into 10 stitches. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. And then two single crochets into the next stitch, one, two. One single crochet into the next stitch. And then we repeat the whole thing that we just did.

So you do one single crochet here, two in the next, one, two, and then single crochet all the way across until there are two stitches left, before the marker, I should say. All right, and there's two stitches left, one, two. So we do two single crochets in the next stitch, and then one single crochet into the following stitch. Okay, and then the next two rounds are very similar to this. So on the next round you'll do two single crochets, then you'll do two into the next stitch, single crochet across, two into the next stitch, one single crochet into each of the next two.

And then you repeat that on your way back. So now that we know how to read this, and I have shown you basically how this works, you can work the next couple of rounds. I am gonna point out, however, in round four, round four it says make one single crochet to shift the beginning of the round. So all that means, I do this a lot in my patterns, and it's because when you're stitching around and around and around in a circle, every time you make your stitches, they kind of veer off a little more. If you're a right-handed person, they go slightly to the right with each round, the beginning of your rounds.

And if you're a left-handed crocheter, then they go slightly off to the left. And so I'm just counteracting that. So we are not on round four yet. You have to do, you know, another round here before you get to round four. But I'm just gonna show you on round four, you just make one single crochet just like that to shift the beginning of the round, and then the next stitch counts as the first stitch of the round, okay, So this would be the last stitch of your round.

You're not adding any stitches, you're just kind of shifting the beginning of the round by making one stitch and then calling the next stitch the beginning. Okay, so you'll have a piece that looks like this, only a little bit bigger. And then for rounds five through 11, you're just single crocheting around and around and around. So what that ends up looking like is this, and I am gonna point out something here too. This stitch marker right here.

I tell you in the instructions where exactly to place this. When you are in round seven, I mean round six, you will work 10 stitches in, and then mark that stitch. So that's where the stitch marker came from. And the whole reason I did that was to kind of help you center the eyes, when we place the eyes, which is what I'm gonna show you here. So right now, just to orient you, we have just worked through round 11.

We placed this when we worked round six, it was the 10th stitch that we made, and now we're gonna place our eyes. Now I wanna say something before I add these eyes, which is, these are not my favorite safety eyes ever, because they have a small backing, they're very tiny. Usually I buy my safety eyes from glasseyesonline.com, which is an awesome resource for safety eyes. I mean I almost always buy them there, but I just bought this kind of inexpensive pack, which is working fine, and they look very nice. I just feel like the backings are not quite as substantial, and they're definitely not as big.

And I worry that if you had a looser gauge than mine, that you know, someone would be able to rip the eye out. So I do also wanna say, when you're using safety eyes, even though they're called safety eyes, they're not actually that safe. So don't give this to a kid who could choke on it, because they can actually pull it through the work, or it could come on fastened, they could bite them off and choke on them. And it is, you know, that is definitely a possibility. And that would, I really want people to, wanna make sure that people know that there is that hazard even though they have this tricky name called safety eyes.

All right, so hi to Sonia C from Alabama. And hello Patricia from Dallas, and she likes the option on decreasing also. Thank you, I'm glad you liked it. And Anastasia says she's 55, and never realized that she crochets right-handed. Oh, and she's left-handed.

Until I tried to teach a lefty how to crochet. And yes, we just sat like a mirror image and she was able to get it. Oh, that's amazing, hah, wow. So you must have been taught by a right-handed crocheter, or maybe you just watched right-handed crocheters when you learned how to crochet, that's pretty impressive that you were able to do that 'cause I have tried to crochet left-handed just to see if I could show somebody, man that did not work. All right, so, oh, and we have someone from South Africa, Lydia Von Staden, hello Lydia, welcome.

And it's her winter vacation now. It's so hard for me to imagine that, since it was like 100 degrees here yesterday. I know, other side of the world, but still. All right, so this, so as I was saying before, this marker is gonna mark the center of the face. So let me show you here.

This is the project just a little bit further along. So that stitch marker was right here. So I'm showing you where the center of the face is with the stitch marker, and then you place the eyes. Now because everybody stitches a little bit differently, your stitches kind of twist at a, maybe at slightly different rate than mine. You may have a total of either seven or eight stitches between your posts that you're putting in, between the posts of the safety eyes.

So you know, this is a good guideline. Another good guideline is to look up from the ends of your foundation chain, and just sort of draw an imaginary line straight up to this point. And see that would be one, two, three, four. Let's just place one eye here. And I'm putting it between round six and round seven.

Round six is the round that has the marker in it, and round seven is the one above it. Okay, so we're gonna count, let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. So either between seven, seven or eight stitches in the middle. That's why I wrote seven or eight because really, you just wanna look at where the foundation chain is. And if it's looking like it's centered fairly well, then you can go ahead and put your backings on.

You can, you know, you can decide this, I know. Okay, I should also say, these eyes look very far apart, right? When you look at this hamster, they're definitely further apart, but that's because later, we are going to do a little stitching to make the ridge of the nose, and the eyes will come closer together. So don't worry about that. If they seem like extra far apart to you, or if you want them this far apart, then you're gonna have to put them out here, because just keep in mind, they're gonna get squished together a little bit.

All right, so I'm happy with the placement, and I'm gonna pop the safety eyes on. So whether you have sort of a bell shaped backing, or maybe it's more of like a plate, there is gonna be a bump that sticks out at the center of it. That bump goes away from the fabric, so it's kind of cupping around the back of the eye. So you'll just place it on there and give it a little pop, make sure that it's really stuck. See I like the ones from Glass Eyes Online because they're really hard to fasten, but when you get them fastened, you know they're never coming off, and they make this very satisfying click.

All right, so here we have our eyes in there, and then after we work this, we are going to start doing decreases. So we've already done up through round 11, and then we start doing decreases. And that's pretty much the same as when I instructed you on the body, except the pattern is going to tell you exactly where to put the decreases instead of just two each round. So you'll single crochet into eight, and then you'll do a decrease, and then you'll repeat that three more times around, okay. So you're just gonna follow the instructions here to do your decreases, and I will show you what that starts to look like.

See how it's getting smaller. When we do our decreases, it's really gonna be like a round circle. We're not matching what's down here, we're not gonna have a straight line on the top of the head. It's just for the bottom of the head that it's like that. So the rest of this is just like decreasing and closing it in to make a flat circular top of the head.

So here I think we have three more rounds left. Yeah, so we have just stuffed our head at round 14, and when you stuff it, you just wanna make sure you're kind of getting it into all the areas, and you can, you know, wiggle your fingers around in there to make sure it's evenly distributed in there before you start to close up the head. You can still add it until the last minute, but it gets a little harder. All right, so round 15, we're gonna work single crochet into the next stitch, and then we're gonna single crochet two together. I'm doing that invisible decrease again, and then another single crochet into the following stitch.

I'm gonna mark that first stitch of the round before I forget. And we're gonna repeat that six times. So single crochet, decrease, single crochet. Single crochet, decrease, single crochet. single crochet, decrease, and single crochet.

Single crochet. Whoops. I think somehow I might have decreased too many. Let me just check here. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12.

We're at 13. All right, so just for the sake of the video, I'm going to just go ahead and do another decrease here. And I think we might have one too many stitches. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. Yeah, we have 13 stitches instead of 12 in this video, but it should be 12, I think I just skipped a decrease, but that doesn't really matter because we're just gonna decrease around on this last round and then we will cinch it all together, and you'll never see it.

Sometimes it's okay to not go back and correct your mistake. That is one of the trickiest things I think, just to learn in crochet and in life. Like when you should go back and fix things, and when it's okay to just continue on, especially if you're somebody who's very particular about things. All right, so we're on the last round of the head, which is round 16, and we're just doing decreases all the way around until we get to six stitches. Let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, one more decrease, 'cause we're secretly gonna have seven stitches, but that's okay, we've forgiven ourselves, right.

All right, so then you're gonna wanna fasten off with a fairly long length here. Now it might seem kind of silly, but I'll show you why in just a minute. So we're gonna slip stitch into the next stitch and pull through. And we are going to use our yarn needle to close that up. All right, and we're gonna weave in, okay, so I'm just going through the top loop.

You can certainly go through both loops if you want, but this is just easier for me. I'm just sort of going through the front loop of each stitch all the way around. And then we're just gonna pull it tight to close up that hole at the top, just like that. All right, so now we're gonna take a little stitch, like kind of like we're weaving in our end here. We're just gonna go back and forth a little bit to make sure that this does not slide open.

Okay, and then we're gonna use this yarn tail. We're gonna go out next to the eye. So that's right here. Can you see my needle coming out, yeah. Right next to this eye, on the corner of the eye that's closest to where the bridge of the nose will be.

You're just gonna pop your needle out right there. And then we're gonna take a tiny little stitch here because if we don't, and we pull on this strand later, which we're going to do, we're gonna be pulling on this strand, it's going to connect all the way up into here, and it's gonna dent in the top of the head and do some strange things, we don't want that. So I'm just taking a couple, I'm like weaving in my end, just a tiny bit right here to anchor it, and make sure that when I pull on this strand, it is going to pull from this corner here, and it is not gonna pull all the way up from here, okay. So just weave it back and forth right there. Take a little stitch, and then we are going to push this in next to our eye.

Somewhere close to our eye, and it's gonna come out the back of the head down by the chin. So here's the eyes, this is the bottom of the head, and I think I say between what rows to have that come out, okay, between rounds three and four. So we can count, here's our center, that first preparation row. So one, two, three, would be here between three and four. So that's where my thumb is right there.

So we're just gonna push that needle through the head, and come out right here. Diane says she's thanking me for my explanations. You're welcome. And she's crocheted for a long time, but her grandchildren are pressuring her into learning how to make these cute critters. You go, grandchildren, convince her to do it, it's so fun.

All right, so then you're gonna take a little stitch here, and you're gonna come back out next to the other eye. So I'm coming out on the nose side of the next eye. So we don't care if this dents in, 'cause this is gonna be hidden when we sew the head to the body. So when you pull on this, it's gonna start pulling the eyes closer to this part of the head. And then we are also going to take a little stitch straight across from this corner of the eye to this corner of the eye, just like that.

And see what's happening, when I pull on that, it's making our face have that little ridge for the nose right there. And it's also kind of making the cheeks look a little chubbier down here, because we're doing that. All right, now we're gonna come back out in the same little dimple that we already made. And this may take a little while, you can go back and forth stitching, you know, stitching between these pieces until you feel like it looks just how you want it to look. It's okay if it, you know, you have to go back and forth a couple of times to get it to be just right.

All right, so that is cute to me. So I'm gonna stop there. So I'm just gonna weave in my end, and you can do it in a very messy fashion right here if you want to, because this is gonna be completely covered when we sew the body on. So I'm just making sure that I'm getting, I'm trying to split some of the yarns, to keep this from slipping. And by splitting the yarn, I mean I'm making the needle kind of go through the yarn, like each strand of the yarn, not just between strands, but like splitting the yarn.

All right, that's good enough for me, and we'll have it come out wherever you want and just snip it off. Look at that cute head. All right, so then we're gonna move on, and I'm gonna talk through the belly next. So that is just a little belly patch in white right here. So we're gonna begin this just by doing a chain, just how we did here on the bottom of the head.

And you're gonna work back and forth in rows of single crochet, I'll just show you here, back and forth in rows. And you can see this is going out on the sides. That's because some of the rows have increases at the end. So what that means is you're just doing two single crochet stitches in one stitch along these ends, and your pattern will tell you exactly where to do those things. So you're increasing here.

And then for a little section, you're just going back and forth and back and forth in turn rows. And then after that, you'll do decreases. So the decreases are just like I showed you before, but you can't do an invisible decrease because you're doing decreases on the right side of the work and on the wrong side of the work. So you would end up seeing some weird stuff. So you're just gonna do a regular decrease here, I'll pull this out and show you just a regular single crochet decrease.

And I wonder if you can see this because it's white. Let's see, here we go. So you're going to insert your hook, pull up a loop, and then in the next stitch you'll insert your hook and pull up a loop, yarn over and pull through everything, all three. So that's just a regular single crochet two together. Then at that point, you are going to turn your work, and work seven single crochet stitches along this section.

We're gonna mark this actually in the middle to divide this in half. Oh, so Anastasia's saying that her grandma was a rightie who taught her how to crochet. You just sat and crocheted together, just playing, no patterns. Yeah, so that's how you turn into a right handed crocheter. And if you didn't like it, you just pulled it out and you did something different.

That is how you learn, that is the best way I think. All right. Okay, so we're gonna be working seven single crochets here, seven single crochets here, and then we work across here, and do seven and seven. So this is just to kind of smooth out the side edge of your piece. Now when I'm doing this, I'm just putting my hook where it feels like it makes sense.

And actually, if you have more than seven or less than seven, that is completely fine. We have four right now, five, six, seven. Oh, I should put this behind it I think, so you guys can see it a little better. Okay, and then seven along here, one, oops, I went into a larger hole and just made it larger. So you wanna look for the tighter spaces when you're putting your hook in.

One, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. And then we work all the way across the top of the belly, just one stitch in each stitch. That was the foundation chain, or that was where we began this piece. And actually, you know, if you don't really feel like doing this edging, you don't have to do it 'cause you're just gonna whip stitch it onto the body anyway. But I felt like it gave me a better place to, it was just easier to whip stitch it on, and it just looked a little neater and tidier with this edging.

So you know, it's optional. All right, now we're gonna be doing seven stitches again, and then another seven. This is just, we're just working along the row ends here, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and seven more. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. All right, and then we fasten off with a long tail for stitching, just like that.

And then we will talk about the feet next. So the feet begin with a little circle of pink, and then we make these little bobbles for the toes. They're so cute. So we're gonna start with our adjustable loop, how we did before. And then we're gonna put six single crochets into the loop.

We've already done this on the beginning of the body. So we have three, four, five, six. And then we are going to do two stitches in each stitch. We've already done this, again, on the body. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10.

Oops, I missed that one. 10, 11, 12. All right, now here comes the round that's kind of exciting. You're gonna be making three single crochet stitches. So one, two, three.

And then in order to make a bobble in the next stitch, you'll yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two, and stop. We're gonna repeat that four more times. Yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, pull through two and stop. Yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, pull through two and stop. Okay, you should have six loops on your hook by the time you are ready to yarn over and pull through everything.

So we have six loops on our hook, yarn over and pull through everything. Then we're gonna do a single crochet into the next stitch. And try to make this kind of tight to make your bobble really pop. Now see my bobble flipped to the inside, but you could just poke it right back out with your finger, just like that. Okay, and then you're gonna continue this, one, two, three, four, five.

And then I think I lost a loop in there. One, two, three, four, okay, one more time, six loops on your hook, yarn over, pull through everything, and then do a single crochet in the next stitch. And then poke the bobble out towards you. See how we're making these little toes? And we'll do one more bobble here.

One, two, three, four, five, six loops on the hook. Yarn over, pull through everything. Single crochet into the next stitch. Pop the bobble out, there's the three toes. And then you just do single crochet into the next three stitches, one, two, three.

All right, and then on the next round, let's see, we're going to do decreases. So one single crochet into the next stitch, and then we do a decrease. So a single crochet and then a decrease. You can do invisible decreases. Or since this is kind of hard to hold onto, it's very small.

I like to hold onto it like this. It can be a little tricky to hold onto, just, you can just do regular decreases, of course, if it's a little tricky. All right, so I'm repeating all that, one single crochet in the next stitch. And then single crochet two together, which is the same thing as a decrease. And that's bringing our foot, you know, bringing our ankle in here a little bit.

Then we just do one single crochet all the way around, and we slip stitch and fasten off. And then we will use white to do one more round here of single crochet. We're doing two single crochets into each of those, the last round of pink stitches. So that makes it kind of flare out a little bit, and it's easier to attach it to the body. So I'm not gonna show that part.

But you already know how to do increases, two single crochet in each stitch. So that shouldn't be a problem. Now we're gonna talk about these little arms. So these are pretty straightforward. We've already done stuff like this.

You're going to start out with a magic ring or magic loop, adjustable loop. And then you do six single crochets just like we did before. And then you do one round of increases, which gives you nine stitches, 'cause you're doing a single crochet into one stitch, two into the next stitch to increase up to nine stitches. And then you're gonna do another round of the pink. And then you're gonna switch to white.

And then you can see here it flares out a little bit because you're doing one increase per round on that white. So you'll just have to refer to your pattern. That was the front paws and the arms. So those are connected to each other. You make the front paw first, and then you just fasten off, and then you continue with the other color to make the arm.

So you'll make two of those. And then we'll talk about, I think ears. Oh, I skipped over the ears. The ears are super simple. Let's see, where's the end of my yarn, there it is.

Okay, so for the ears, you're just gonna make your adjustable loop just like we have been doing. Whoops, here's my adjustable loop. And then you put six single crochets into your loop just like we've started so many of these things, so many amigurumi pieces start out with the exact same instructions. Make an adjustable loop, put six single crochets into your loop. All right, so let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six.

All right, so we've got six, and we can tighten that up. And we are not going to work in the round. So even though we made that adjustable loop. So we're gonna chain one, turn our work, and then we are going to work one single crochet in each stitch across, one, two, three, four. I think I gotta get caught up on my comments here.

Let's see, one, two, three, four, five, and six. Oh, Jan is asking how hard to stuff the pieces. So you're just gonna wanna stuff them until they really hold their shape. They don't have to be hard, you know, but this is fairly firm, it is really kind of personal preference. But if you don't stuff them enough, over time they will probably start to lose their shape.

So you don't wanna over stuff them and start to see the filling on the inside. That's a kind of a problem. So once you start seeing the filling coming out from between the holes, you've stuffed it too much. All right, so we've done six in the magic loop, then we did one single crochet in each stitch across. And then on the third round we turned our work, and we're gonna do two single crochets in each stitch across.

Okay, so we started out the ear, seemingly, like we were gonna work in the round, like how we've been working the body, and some of the other pieces, but we are not working in the round. We just started out like that so that we could have a lot of stitches coming out of the center. And we're just basically making a semi-circle, a half-circle here. Okay, so your piece will look like that. And fasten off with enough yarn so that you can sew the ear to the head.

All right, so the last piece is the tail, and then we'll talk about assembly. So the tail. You're going to start out with, let's see, seven, let me just check, so I don't tell you the wrong thing. I think it's to chain seven. Oh, chain six, okay, so we're gonna change six, one, two, three, four, five, six.

Then we skip the first stitch, and we work three single crochets. We're working into the bottom bump, how we talked about before when we started working the head. So one, two, three, and then the last two chains we're gonna make half double crochets into. So a half double crochet is a yarn over, insert. Yarn over, pull up a loop.

Yarn over, pull through three. So we're gonna do that again. Yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through three. And then we're gonna chain two. I like to chain kind of tightly when I do my turning chains for half double crochet, 'cause I feel like they're often too tall.

And then we're gonna do three half double crochets across. One, two, three, and then a single crochet into each of the next two stitches. One, two, and then we'll chain one. And we're gonna turn, and do three single crochets. One, two, three, and then two half double crochets, one, two.

Now instead of, these are all the rows we need to do, but instead of fastening off, we're just gonna chain one and turn like we're gonna do that all over again, and we're gonna fold our piece. Actually doesn't really matter which way you fold it, you can fold it either way. I think I specify in the pattern, but it's just to avoid confusion. And then you're gonna put your hook underneath the front loop of whatever row's in front, and the back loop of whatever row's in back, okay. And yarn over, pull through loop, and pull it through the loop on your hook.

What we're doing here is we're just seaming by doing a slip stitch, and we're just using the loops that are the furthest away from each other, not the ones that are touching, to try and pull this tail in. And if you do these slip stitches a little tight, which you're probably naturally going to do them a little tight, most of us do slip stitches fairly tightly. It will start to curve your tail. You can see here it's curving just a little bit, and that makes it look even cuter. All right, so then you're just gonna fasten off, and you can take your yarn needle and kind of weave that in.

Or you can wait until you sew it onto the body later to weave it in. All right, so let's talk a little bit about assembling this guy. We're going to, first you wanna stuff his body like this, and you probably will need a little more stuffing than you think, 'cause you really have to, it really kind of packs in there pretty well. Just wanna make sure that it's stuffed enough that his head isn't gonna be kind of flopping over on his neck. All right, and then you're going to put his head on top of the body.

Doesn't matter where this yarn tail is, you can put it anywhere. I'm just gonna put it in the back. And then you can pin his head onto his body. So it should be at a little bit of an angle here, But with all amigurumi creatures, it's okay if it's not exactly like the picture. I mean, you may want it to be like the picture, and then you can look at the picture for every little nuance, and that's completely fine.

But you're making your own little critter, and it's really okay if it looks like it's own individual little guy. All right, so when you're sewing your pieces together, you're gonna do just a whip stitch, a regular whip stitch. So you'll take a little bite out of the head, and then come out through a stitch in the neck like that, and just do that all the way around to attach his head. And if I'm giving this to a kid, like you wouldn't wanna give it to a baby, who might choke on the eyes. But if you're giving it to a kid, or you know, really anyone, I try to sew things twice because you know, especially if it's a kid, you want them to play with this, right.

You don't want it to just sit on a shelf. You want them to love this thing and drag it around in the dirt. Or maybe not the dirt, but you know, you want the kid to just really love this thing. And you don't wanna have to worry about your precious hamster toy falling apart. You don't wanna wince every time you see them carry it around by one ear, you know, or its little bitty tail.

You wanna be like, yeah, I sewed that on so well, that I'm not even worried that that tail's gonna rip off. It's gonna be fine. So that's at least my theory on toys. I like, you know, there might be some toys that you make just for yourself and that's fine. And you don't have to maybe make it quite so rugged, but if you're making it for someone else, it's good to make it extra solid.

It looks like Deb Staples is having a question about the magic loop, I can show that one more time. All right, and then when you get to the end, and hopefully you've gone around twice like I did not, then you're just gonna weave in your end a couple of times so it won't unravel. And then you can cut it off, or you can send your yarn all the way through to the other side so you have a nice long yarn tail inside your piece and snip it off. Okay, so the magic loop, we're just going back for a second for Deb. We're gonna do the magic loop.

So this is the way I do it, but there's lots of different ways to do it. And if you look at the Creative Crochet Corner website, you'll see some other versions of this. So I just draw out a little loop like this, kind of like a cursive e, and then I fold my loop over onto the strand that's connected to the ball of yarn. And then I put my hook underneath it, and then I hold that part that's twisting with my finger and pull it in. And then I just do one little chain like that, and that anchors it.

And then I can start working into my loop. I hope that was helpful. All right, so the next thing you do is you're gonna sew, or pin and then sew the tummy on, actually some of these things you can do in opposite, in different orders. Like you can put the face together, and I'm just gonna, I'm not gonna sew this on, but I'll just pin it in place. You can see where it goes.

We're running a little short on time here, so. So this should connect to just the bottom of the chin, and it kind of cups around the bottom of his body just a little bit. So you would whip stitch all the way around all those edges, and then you can sew on the arms and the legs. So the arms, you just flatten the arm. And first if you want to you can whip stitch, here, I'll put this on a darker background.

You can whip stitch first through all those loops to flatten it or keep it flat, if that makes it a little easier, or you can just pin it on here, and then make sure you're going through all those strands. So you wanna go into the body just a little bit, but also into the tummy and both layers of the arm. And you're just gonna be placing them so that one corner of the arm is right up by the neck where the head meets the neck, and they kind of go at a little bit of an angle like that, and you just whip stitch it on while it's flat like that. So you'll do both sides. And then the legs, this really isn't a leg.

The foot that just comes right out of the body, you're gonna be placing that right in this bottom corner of the tummy. So you can put it, I thought it was cute if I put my feet kind of splayed out a little bit like that. See how they're twisted a little to the outside? You don't have to do it that way, of course, this is your critter, you're in charge. So, but just pin them on there and see how you like it.

Maybe you like the toes going straight up like that. Or maybe you want them to go a little bit out to the sides. Either way, his feet sticking out like that, if they're down at the bottom of the tummy, they will help him sit upright. So you'll pin those in place, and then just whip stitch around the edge there. And then the tail, you'll just whip stitch that to the back and I would put it on the table first to see about where that tail should come out of the body 'cause that also helps it.

You wouldn't think this little tail does much, but it does. It helps him sit up. So you can just stitch it to the back of his body. And then I am going to show you how to do one ear, and then we're gonna talk about the muzzle. So, or at least part of the ear.

So when I put the ears on, instead of putting them on like flat like this, I like to put them into sort of a C shape. I'm putting them kind of up at the corner of his head, maybe even slightly more towards the back, 'cause I thought it looked cuter back there. But you know, this is the kind of thing where you need to, you know, you're the artist, and you need to pin it to your piece and see if you like it and move it around a little bit. Take your time. All these little tiny adjustments that you make, they make a huge difference in what the personality of your little critter looks like.

It's surprising. I mean, you could move the eyes a quarter of an inch, and it looks like a totally different hamster. Okay, so I've pinned it on into that sort of the bottom, where the bottom of the ear where it connects to the head is in kind of a bent C shape where it's touching the head, and then you can just whip stitch your ear on just like this. I'm just taking a little bite out of the head, and then up through a little bite of the ear. Once you get that corner, you can take the pin out.

And I should say too, if you haven't done a lot of pinning or amigurumi, when you're pinning your pieces together, some people find that very, very frustrating. But I think that's before they learn that you are kind of sewing with your pins. You have to go in and out and in and out a little bit to attach your pin to the thing you're, you know, attach whatever parts together. You can't just sort of poke it in. You're not just going to be putting your pin like that to get it to be stuck.

You need to use it like you were sewing with a sewing needle and go in and out. So you would go in through the ear, into the head and back out like I'm taking a stitch. And that really helps hold things in the place that they're supposed to be in. Okay, and then you can just, I'm gonna go back and forth on this ear for a little, so I'm not gonna weave in my ends. But once you do that, you can weave in your ends, you'll have both ears.

And then we're gonna talk about the muzzle. Let's see. Where did my muzzle go? Hmm, looks like we have a missing muzzle, but luckily muzzles are fast. So what I'm talking about, the muzzle is the nose.

It's just this little piece right here. So we'll just whip one of those up. So what we're gonna do, we start with the magic loop once again, put that on our hook. And then we're gonna do six single crochets into our loop. One, two, three, four, five, and six.

Okay, and then on the next round we're gonna do 12. So that means two single crochets in each stitch. One, two, this should look familiar 'cause this is how we've begun many of the other projects. Seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. Okay, and then the third round of the muzzle is just one round of single crochet into each stitch.

And that's all there is. It's a pretty straightforward little piece. And then I'll show you how to make that little contrast color, or actually main color nose on the top of his face. All right, so we've made it all the way around, and we slip stitch and we're gonna fasten off, just like that. And you can put the yarn tail, kind of coil it up inside the muzzle.

And if you need to, you can add a little extra stuffing in there. You probably need a little bit, but I'm gonna pin it on here first. I like to pin it on so you know, you can take a look, see how his face changes if you put it down here, to a little bit of a longer face, a little shorter face. That's the thing, that's the kind of thing with amigurumi is you really need to, when you're putting the pieces together, you really need to take your time and really look at it when you, you know, pin it in one spot, move it around, pin it in another spot. All right, so I'm gonna put mine here, and we're just gonna whip stitch it onto the head.

All right, just taking a little bite out of the main color head fabric. And I actually, I should say, I'm gonna add a little bit of stuffing to this, but I like to start with not very much stuffing in it at first when I'm beginning. And then I'll add a little bit more when I get closer to the end to see how much it needs. But if there's too much stuffing, it can be kind of puffing away from your work, and hard to hold it there. You can use a lot of pins and that's helpful too, but, I don't know, it seems like it's a little easier to go a little lighter on the stuffing.

And then when you get close to all the way around, we're almost there. You can just tuck a little bit more inside there. Like, how I'm gonna do, add just a little bit here. I don't even think we can fit that much, just the tiniest bit. And you can kind of get it in the right spot, there we go.

And it doesn't, you know, we're gonna add a bunch of stitches into this, so it doesn't need to be like super packed full of stuffing, but a wispy amount of stuffing is probably going to get distorted once we start making those main color stitches into this piece. All right, so you would probably go around a second time if you were me, but we're pretty much out of time. I'm gonna show you a couple more little things, but that's why I'm not going around it twice. All right, so weave it back and forth. Isn't that cute?

Poor little one-eared guy. All right, so then we're gonna take a little bit of the main color yarn, and we're gonna just do a little stitching on the top of his nose. And this is what kind of brings the main color down onto his nose a bit. So you're just gonna use a yarn needle, and you can push that up through your piece wherever you want. And once it comes through, oops, we wanna just do one strand at a time, otherwise it might get kind of loopy.

As soon as it pops through, you can stop pulling and take a little stitch. We're just trying to weave in our end ahead of time. So we're just going back and forth, catching some yarn to make this, you know, not come undone later. Okay, so now we're going to make this little triangular piece right here. So you just can start anywhere really along the top.

And you're going to make, well, we'll come out over here, and we'll just sort of outline our triangle. I think that might make it more clear. So we'll do a little V stitch to just, so here's the center where we started our piece. So we're gonna do it just one stitch above that, and come out over here. And then we'll go back into that same place.

We're just taking some little stitches. We're basically making satin stitches in yarn. Just like this. And you will just fill this whole section in. Okay, you just keep doing your little stitches right to that center point.

And then when you're finished with that, the last thing you have to do is you just use a little bit of embroidery floss and a needle. And then you make one stitch here to outline the bottom of the nose, one stitch here, and then you make one little vertical stitch. And then a V, an upside down V right here. And I wanted it to smile, so I did this extra little tiny stitch here on the sides, that's totally optional. And then I added these little lines here with the embroidery floss just above the eyes.

So I just have one more little thing to show you, and if anybody has any last questions. Ooh. Yep. Looks like Rory made a giraffe once. Cute.

I'm glad you like the project. And I do also wanna mention too, that I'm gonna have a live Q&A just really soon coming up at 11:30. So please join me for that, and I will see you guys there. So if you have any more questions about this, or if you have any questions about just any general crochet things, then just let me know. Okay, come back later.

Thank you.