Little Chicken (Low-Sew Amigurumi)

Hi everybody, welcome to our live event. My name is Brenda KB Anderson, and I'm a crochet, knit and sewing instructor and designer, and I often teach these live tutorials, um, where I show you how to make something that I dreamed up. So I'm glad that you guys are here, glad you're excited, uh, to make some Amagaumi or check out some cute little chickens. Um, so yeah, this is gonna be a fun one, you guys. I really, really love making Amagurumi, um, that, that just means like a crochet or knitted toy.

Um, it's just such a fun experience to take something like, you know, a skinny yarn and crochet it up and then just have this emotional reaction to what you made when you're done. It's just, it feels like magic to me. Once you put the eyes in, it's like all of a sudden it's. It's just a living thing in my mind kind of and um it's just a I don't know it's there's something very special about being able to make something like that that you you can um give to someone else to kind of brighten up their day or just entertain yourself with um yeah so I'm very excited to teach this today. I'm glad that you guys are here uh this is of course it's a live event so hello and if you guys wanna say hello back or if you wanna tell me what you're working on or if you wanna, you know, just.

Have any suggestions for future live events of course if you guys have questions about what I'm doing or you want me to go over something a little bit more um if anything doesn't make sense or anything, definitely put that in the chat you guys so that I can clarify things and help you out because that's why we do these live events so that we can kind of talk to each other and um learn from each other. All right. Um, oh, we have a question. Do we have monthly Q&As? We do have monthly Q&A's.

They have sort of turned into like a, um. Usually there's like a theme, uh, a couple weeks ago for my Q&A I did, uh, basically like a live event all about safety eyes so it's called Safety Eyes Knowhow so it's kind of centered around that. But if you have questions, you know, if you just have random crochet questions you can always ask and I'll try to answer them during those live events, um, during those Q&As, even if it isn't. You know, specifically what that Q&A is about or if you're just kind of wondering something, um, you could just put that in the chat if I have time to answer it or if it, um. Kind of can uh blend into what we're talking about that day then I can answer it but also, you know, if you have those questions, I'm sure other people have those questions too, so I always like to know what you guys are wondering about what you guys are having trouble with, or what you guys, uh, would like to see more of for live demonstrations and, um, Q&A types of events.

So it helps me to know what you guys are thinking about and maybe I'll do a Q&A based on something that you ask. So all right. Um, OK, so we are gonna be working from this pattern. It's called Little Chicken. It's a free download for everybody, so you can go ahead and download that and follow along.

You can always download it later. Um, this live event, as well as all the other live events that I do, they're always, you're always able to watch them later, um, so you know, if you can't stay for the whole thing or if you want to, you know, refer back to it as you're working on your project, you can certainly do that. So that'll always be available. All righty, so for this little chicken, um, it doesn't take much yarn, doesn't take a lot of supplies. It's very quick to make, really fun, and I was focusing on something that was low so so there is a little bit of sewing.

We are going to be sewing the little comb on the top here on and then um also doing a little, you know, a couple of stitches for embroidery for the beak later on, so there is just a tiny bit of sewing. Um, but the rest of it is just crochet. So, um, don't let the sewing part scare you away. I'll be showing you how to do all that stuff. So, um, yeah, we're just gonna be walking through it step by step here.

Um, so let's talk about materials first. So you're gonna need, obviously you're gonna be needing yarn, and I used the Chanil yarn for this project, uh, which is a number 6. It's a, it's a bulky yarn, um, a super bulky yarn, and, um. Uh, you know, you, I made this chicken in two different colors. Of course you can choose whatever colors you like or whatever color theme you're going for, um, but not everybody has Shanil yarn at home, and you might want to just make this out of scraps because it's so small.

I bet you have some kind of scraps at home, um, that would be suitable for making chickens out of. So if you happen to have worse of weight and you want to try it out, you don't want to buy the Shanil yarn, that's totally fine. You can absolutely do that. I did some little tests because I figured people would have questions about that. Um, so I want to show you my little variations that I made here, kind of explain a little bit.

So this here is, uh, Myra. This is based on a chicken that my friends had. Um, so this chicken, uh, was made with 3 strands of yarn. So I had, it was actually two strands of a black w weight yarn and 1 strand of a white sport weight. Uh, if you don't happen to have sport weight, you can do 2 wweight yarns just held together.

That should be enough. Maybe go down a hook size or two. Um, and then you would end up with something like this, um, oh, I should mention too, I wanted to get these little horizontal lines in here, so I was working the part, this part of the body for this particular chicken only, not these other chickens, but this particular chicken through the back loop. Um, we do have some tutorials on the Creative Crochet Corner website about that. If we have time we can get into that if anybody has a question about that, but this was just sort of a little variation I wanted to show you guys that that's not really how the pattern is written, but I just wanted to throw that out there in case you saw those little lines and we're wondering how I did that.

So this chicken. Um, was made with two strands of worst of weight yarn held together. They're both just acrylic yarns that I had, and we've got a sort of a darker brown and a blue held together and then the same blue and a lighter gray held together for the body because I wanted to have that sort of two tone look and then in order to kind of blend these colors together, I did some spike stitches down below and if you've never heard of spikes. Stitches, that's OK. We have videos on the Creative Crochet Corner website about spike stitches as well, but basically you're just stitching, taking a stitch much further down below.

That's what these little lines are. Again, if we have time, I will get into that, but that again, that's not really what I'm going to be showing you. We're just doing the very basic chicken um in this live tutorial here. And then lastly, this little guy here, this one. It's not quite finished.

You can see it doesn't have a beak or the little comb on top, but this was made with just one strand of worsted white yarn, and I went down to probably, I think it was like a maybe an E hook or an F hook. I'm not really sure, something that is small enough to make your crochet fabric nice and tight so you don't see those holes between stitches and you're going to end up with a much smaller chicken. You can see the difference between chickens here. So just in case you're wondering about using Worley white yarn, um, and in this demo I'm going to be using the Chanil yarn that I used here in this in this project, um, the way that the pattern is written up, and I, uh, I, so I've got 3 colors, the main color, which is the body head, and then contrast color 1, which is the comb, and contrast color 2, which is the beak and just a tiny amount of each of these really just like a couple of yards of that and 1 yard of this and Um, and the body is about, I think about 44 yards of the snel. I was able to get 3 chickens out of one of these skeins of yarn.

Um, so that helps, you can make yourself a little flock. All right. And then, um, You'll be using whatever size hook you need to in order to crochet a fairly dense gauge that's not going to stretch out or have the stuffing showing between your stitches. So I'm using a J hook, which is a 6.0 millimeter hook, but you'll use whatever you need to in order to get a fabric that is nice and firm and yeah, not going to show those holes between stitches when you stuff it. And you will be needing a stitch marker, um.

Actually I'm not even sure that I used one, but it might be, might be helpful to have stitch markers if um for pinning or kind of clipping the comb to the head as you're sewing it on if you're new to sewing, um, or you could use quilter's pins for that if you like uh you'll also be needing some fiber fill. I just have this polyester fiber fill stuffing fluff, and you just need, you know, a couple handfuls of that. It really does compact quite a bit when you stuff your chicken. Um, so that might seem like a lot for this chicken, but it's gonna, it's all gonna fit in there, I think. Um, and then you're going to need a pair of safety eyes.

So if you are newer to making Amiga roomy and you are interested in learning a little bit more about safety eyes, like I mentioned before, I did do a live tutorial all about safety eyes and different places to get them. There's tons of links, um, and I do explain how to, uh, fasten them together for different styles of safety eyes. It's just sort of, uh, kind of like a little show and tell episode of learning all about safety eyes and how to use them. So you're gonna need one pair of safety eyes. I believe these are 16 millimeters.

Let me double check though. Let's see. Yep, 16 millimeters, um. And I did link where I got these from. These were from a shop on Etsy, um, I'm trying to remember the name of it right now.

Cucho's Crochet something creative. I, yeah, I, I might be messing that name up, but there is a link to it in, um, in the pattern download if you're interested. These, these safety eyes have an offset pupil. I don't know if you guys can tell, but what that means is, um, if you look at the circle, the pupil is kind of. Down and over to the side here it's like right where my finger is and the rest of this sort of makes like a crescent moon shape of the iris kind of behind the pupil up here and they're painted with this really beautiful iridescent paint.

They're extra fancy and these, these particular safety eyes, these are called sinker eyes. I do go over this in my um. In my live tutorial on safety eyes if you want to learn more about the difference between safety eyes or between um sinker eyes and dome shaped eyes, but we'll be going into that a little bit when we start fastening them into our project and then you're gonna need a yarn needle um just to weave in your ends, so. Uh, that's it for supplies. Not a ton of supplies there.

And good morning to BJ. Thanks for saying hi there in the comments. All right, so let's get started. I am going to be making this sort of golden brown colored chicken. And we're gonna start out normally when we make amaga roomy, normally we start out with an adjustable loop, but when you're working with Shanil yarn that can be very problematic.

It can break your yarn. Shanil yarn is kind of, it's kind of funny because when you crochet it up, it feels pretty strong, pretty sturdy, but each individual strand, it's not really that there's not really that much structure in it. Most of it is just fluff kind of sticking through a center core. Let me see if I can pull a little bit of this out so you can see. You guys can see that those little bitty threads there, that is the structure inside the yarn so it's not super stable, um, but once you crochet it up, it's, it's plenty stable, you know, for a toy.

It's just that when you're working with this, if you yank on it too hard, you might break it. So making those adjustable loops can oftentimes break your yarn, so I have a different method that I like to use. All right, so we're gonna leave a little bit of a a tail here, maybe like 6 to 10 inches or so, and then we're going to place a slipknot on our hook. So, we'll just start out with that, and we're gonna chain 3123, and then we're going to make a slip stitch into the first chain that we made. So, that's the 3rd chain from the hook.

We'll just make a slip stitch there, so, insert. Yarn over, pull through and pull through, and I'm kind of holding this loop so that my finger is in the middle of it so to kind of help guide me and then we're going to just chain one to kind of anchor everything. Now we're going to be working into that center of our chain loop there, and we're going to place 9 single crochets into the center. So we insert yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, and pull through two. That's the first one, and I'm gonna mark that.

It gets a little bit hard to see stitches in Chanil yarn, um. But we're just going to be using very basic stitches in this project, nothing fancy, just single crochets and half double crochets for the most part, um, so those are pretty basic stitches, and many of you probably already know how to do those, but I will be talking you through how to do it as well as demonstrating just so that you guys can see, um, and, uh, see what I'm doing even though it's kind of fluffy. All right, so we've got the first stitch and we're gonna do 8 more, so we'll have a total of 9. So 2. 3 For Here, I'll put something white behind here.

6 7 8, and if you feel like you're running out of room, you can kind of slide your stitches over a little bit. It's a little trickier with Shanil yarn, so just kind of be monitoring that as you're placing your stitches and try to put them pretty close together. So we've got 9, so we'll just count them up All right, so, um, we'll do round number 2 and then we're gonna finish up this round number 1. You could, you probably are noticing this hole right in the middle and we don't like that, but just don't worry about it yet. Just ignore it for now.

We're gonna fix it. Um, so we're gonna pull out our stitch marker, and we're gonna place two single crochets into each stitch around. So, we didn't join or anything, we're just immediately working into that marked stitch, that very first stitch of the round. So there's 2 single crochets into each stitch. All right, so we've got 12.

3 For 5 6 7 8 11 12 15 And 16. And then 2 in the last one here, 17 and 18. OK, so we have 2 stitches in each stitch around on that round. So that's completing round number 2. And before we move in, before we move on, I like to tighten up this little hole here.

So I'm going to turn it over so you can see the back of the stitches. Then I'm going to place this on my yarn needle here. Oops. There we go. And I'm going to use that yarn tail to weave it through.

As many loops as I can, you know, it doesn't, you don't have to catch both loops of every stitch. You don't even have to catch every single stitch, and it's OK if you can't really exactly see the difference between one stitch and the next, but you're just kind of going through catching these loops on the back from that very first round of single crochets that we made. All right, we've made it all the way around and then we can go ahead and just pull to tighten that. So that basically takes the place of an adjustable loop. Um, it just, you know, the adjustable loop, there's too many twists in there and sometimes it works to adjust and you can cinch it in but sometimes it breaks your thread and it's just super annoying.

And so, before we move on, I like to weave in my ends a little bit here, just to make sure that that is not gonna open up again later. You could even go around twice if you don't really trust it. Sometimes I do that if I, if I'm just worried that it's, um, You know, gonna break at some point, but I'm not too worried. This is just a little chicken. It's not gonna get a lot of stress on it.

All right, so now we are ready to continue. So you may be wondering if you've worked, um, single crochet in flat circles before, you might be thinking, why did you put 9 instead of 6? And the reason is because we're using a Shanil yarn, and when you crochet up with Shanil yarn, your stitches are taller than a regular single crochet stitch and a regular yarn. So what what happens is you get this sort of bump or protrusion if you do your circle the regular way with 6 and then 12 and then 18. So you have to start out um with faster increases at the very beginning.

So by the second round we're already up to 18, whereas if we were doing it the other way, um, by the second round we'd only be at 12. If that doesn't make sense, don't worry about it, it's fine. I'm just telling those of you who are like, what is she doing? Um, OK. So, the next round, let's see, we're on round number 3.

Of our direction. So we're gonna single crochet into each of the next 2 stitches, 2 single crochets into the next stitch, and we're gonna repeat that 6 times for a total of 24. So we're gonna do one and the next. And 1 in the next. Let me put my stitch marker back in here.

And then we're going to do 2 in the following. 1 and 2. And then we're going to repeat that 5 more times. One in the next, one in the next. 2 in the following 1 and 2.

1 in the next, 1 in the next, and 2 in the following. 1 and 2. We'll keep repeating that. One in the next, one in the next. And 2 in the following.

11 and 2. And 2. All right, so now we should have a total of 24 stitches. And then we're gonna move on to round number 4. So, oh, I just noticed in my pattern, after the 3rd round is when I tell you to close this up.

You can do it anytime after the 2nd round. You can do it after the 2nd, you can do it after the 3rd. You just don't want to go too far because then you're gonna forget and also you're gonna be shaping the chicken and it'll get a little bit awkward to do it, so it's better to do it in the first, you know, 334 rounds or so. All right, so round number 4. Um, we're going to do a single crochet in each of the next 5 stitches and then 2 into the next stitch, and we're gonna do that 4 times.

So one. So 1 into the into each of the next 5 stitches, 2 3 4 5 and then 2 into the following 1 and 2. And then one To 3 For 5, and then 2 into the following. 1 and 2. We're halfway around at this point, and we're gonna do all that again.

So 12345. And then 2 in the following stitch, 1 and 2. And 12. 5 and then 2 in the last ditch. 1 and 2.

All right, so that was round number 4. You can see it's already starting to cut a cup a little bit. It doesn't really quite want to lay flat yet. That's OK though. We don't want it to because this is going to be the bottom of the chicken.

So we're going to do one round. This is round number 51 round where we just work even. So that just means we're placing one single crochet into each stitch around. So let's go ahead and do that and just allow it to kind of turn into that cup shape. That's what it wants to do because we stopped doing increases.

So one thing with Chanil yarn is if you make a mistake and you want to pull it out. Just take your time with that Shanil yarn and kind of like say you wanted to pull your stitches out you can instead of just pulling on this because sometimes it'll get tight and it'll break or it'll kind of shred some of that fuzzy stuff off, you can lift your loop off of this loop as you kind of pull this and if you pull in a downward motion with that, it tends to undo your stitches a little easier than if you just kind of pull sideways. So there's just a little, just one of those little tips for working with Shanil Yarn cause it can be a little tricky to pull out and have it look nice. And not break. I don't want to scare you away from using this Chanel yarn though.

Shanille yarn is is super fun, cuddly looking, Amaga roomy toys when you're done, and it's just really, um, I don't know. It's, I really like using it. It just has some little quirks that you have to get used to. OK, so we've worked around 5. That was just one single crochet into each stitch around, and now we're going to do a few more rounds where we're not increasing or decreasing.

We're just working one stitch in each round, but we're going to start building up a little bit of height along this side by using taller stitches, um, just kind of on either side of the stitch marker. So think of the stitch marker as being the tip of the tail right here on your little chicken, OK? So, we're going to start out round number 6. We're going to do a half double crochet in the first stitch. So that's right here.

I'm gonna place my stitch marker back in that stitch, and then we're gonna single crochet all the way around until there's one stitch left. Oh, Joyce says thank you for the tip. I'm from Hong Kong. Well, thanks for being here, Joyce. I'm glad that uh it was helpful.

All right, so once we get to. You know, just having one stitch left before that marker, then we're gonna place another half double crochet. So that means, you know, there's two double er sorry, did I, I, I meant to say a half double crochet, not a double crochet. Um, so that means there's a half double crochet at the very beginning and half half double crochet at the very end. All right, so here's my last single crochet stitch.

There's my last stitch for uh raking, making my half double crochet in. So, oh, just in case you don't know how to do a half double, so you'll yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, and pull through 3. OK, so that's a half double crochet. Sorry about that. I think I forgot to show you that on the last one.

But I'll show that to you again cause we're gonna do another one right here. So here we are at the beginning of the round, the next round, which is round number 7. We're going to make two half double crochets, one into each of the next 2 stitches. So we yarn over, insert yarn over, pull up a loop. Now there's 3 loops on our hook, yarn over and pull through all 3, and then we're going to place that stitch marker back in that stitch that we just made.

And now we're going to make another half double crochet in the next stitch. So yarn over, insert yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, and pull through 3. And then we're gonna continue by making a single crochet into each stitch around until there are 2 stitches left before that marker. So I am curious to know how many of you guys, um. Really prefer working from patterns that are low so or no so.

This is something that I've been trying to figure out like just how I've been just been seeing a lot of um. Stuff on social media about no so or low so patterns and I've just been wondering like what percentage of people who make Emma Grui really prefer not to sew their pieces together. So just in case you don't know what I'm talking about there, there are quite a few people who really don't like the finishing part where you have to sew all the pieces on with Ama Groomy. That's pretty common for Amaguroi to have lots of pieces and have to kind of put them together. So, um, I think it's become a little bit more popular or quite a bit more popular in the last few years for people to be making patterns, um, and working from patterns that are either low so or no so meaning when you're done you just kind of weave in some ends maybe you put a little bit of something on, um, kind of like this pattern, this would be a low so pattern, um, you know, just to kind of finish it up and you don't have to do, you know, sewing a bunch of pieces together.

OK, so I've got 2 stitches left before that marker. So I'm gonna do a half double crochet into each one. One there, and one there. All right. And now we're ready for round number 8.

So we're going to make a half double crochet into each of the 1st 3 stitches. So 1, 2 And 3, I'm gonna place that into that first one that I made there. And then we're gonna single crochet. Around the chicken until we have 3 stitches left. So I come from a sewing background.

Um, I've, I, I learned how to sew and how to crochet when I was very young. My mom taught me how to do those things. And so to me, um. You know, creating something I was able to draw on my sewing skills and also my crochet skills and kind of combine them together, so it was not something that I really thought too much about as far as the sewing the pieces together part of the problem, but I do know that it is frustrating for a lot of people, especially if you're newer to making Ama or roomy, um, to have to sew all those little pieces on, it does take quite a bit of time. And, you know, especially if you're making something for selling in a market or you want to make something quickly, it does take that extra time.

To sew those pieces on not just because, you know, the physical act of sewing it on, but you have to. Sometimes you have to kind of move things around a little bit, pin them on in different spots, really pay attention to where things are going, and I think that part can be kind of frustrating because if you don't get in exactly the right spot and you sew it on, it can change like the feeling of the piece or the emotions of the piece or just the look or the expression. um, it's just kind of surprising how much that matters. All right, now we've got 3 stitches left before that stitch marker, so we're gonna do those last 3 stitches are all half double crochets, so 1. 2 3 And then we have one more round of doing these half double crochets at the beginning and end.

So we're going to do 4 half double crochets, so To 3 And 4, place that stitch marker into the first one I made. And then we're gonna do single crochets around until there are 4 stitches left before that marker. Looks like we've got a couple of questions. Olia's Shanil yarn recommendations, please. OK, so for this project I'm using Premier Parfait Chunky, and I really like this particular brand.

I also like Hobi's yarn. I'm trying to think of what the name of it is, something about a bunny, snuggle bunny. I think it's something like that. Snuggle bunny, something, oh, I'm trying to remember, but I did, I used both of, I tested a lot of Shanil yarns actually because I taught a class um called Funny Gurumi, which is like fun Amagurui. And also it's kind of funny um where you make like a cat that is well a cheeseburger that's shaped like a cat and then a boba bunny like a a a boba with little bobas at the bottom and then but it has like bunny ears on it and then a corn dog that's has like it's a little dog that has little doggy ears but um I I teach that class on craftsy and also on the Creative crochet corner website.

Um, you can access it there too, but when I was working on that class, I really wanted to test out a bunch of different different Shanil yarns because, um, I know that they can be kind of splitty, they can be kind of, they kind of fall apart, um, to some degree, and the two that I'm like the Premier Parfait chunky, this one I really, really love, and also the other one which I'm failing to remember but I feel like it's called Snuggle Bunny or something like that and it's a Hobi yarn, Hobi Shanil yarn. Those are my two favorites. OK, so Lola's saying I prefer not to sew parts. It's just too much for me sewing the little parts together. Yeah, it's kinda hard to hang on to.

It's a little awkward and some people would just really rather crochet and then just have it up here, be, be mostly done, right? I hear you. Um, Joyce is saying I do have a project with all parts done but haven't had the patience to sit down and sew them together probably because I can't do it so well and I'm scared I messed up the last part. Oh yeah, see it, I, I hear you. It's, it takes, it's a different skill to be doing the sewing part really, and it takes a lot of patience and a lot of practice in order to kind of like learn how to hold things while you're sewing them and making sure they're not moving around while you're sewing them because that is a problem that.

can definitely happen. All right. So here's our last 4 stitches. We're doing those 4 half double crochets in the last 4 stitches. Oh, and we've got a link in there to my class.

Thank you. Let's see. oh no so or easy. I don't mind sewing, to be honest. OK, yeah.

Yeah, I've never minded sewing, but I mean, to me, that was kind of natural because I already was a sewer beforehand, you know, and I'm very used to sewing things. That was actually my main occupation for about 20 years, um. So I was actually uh I worked in a costume shop where we make full body character costumes so this whole making animals and cute things and three dimensional sculptures is definitely in my wheelhouse that's kind of where I come from. Alright, so we've worked all the way around and now we are going to start um closing up the back. So let's see what row is this?

Oh, round number 9. Um, oh wait, sorry, round number 10. So we're going to start by we just chain one stitch. OK, that chain is not going to be counted as a stitch. We're never going to work into it.

We're just kind of using that to get our hook away from our project a little bit because we're going to be working into this stitch and also into that last stitch we just made. So if you're at all. unsure about what the last stitch you made was. You can look at your little half double crochet. It's got a diagonal line here and one coming straight down here.

That this right here is the top of that stitch, and you can put a stitch marker in there before you try to work into it because what we're going to do, here's our little chain. What we're going to do is we're going to just fold our piece like this and we're going to work underneath. The next stitch, which would be normally where we work right there under both loops, and then we are going to work through that marked stitch, the very last stitch of the round. OK? So at this point, when you get your hook through, you can pull out the stitch markers.

So it's a little less awkward. And we're just gonna yarn over, bring that yarn through both layers, and through that loop that was on our hook right there. And now we're going to do that again. It's a little easier now. The the trickiest one was the very first one, just kind of knowing where to put your hook.

So now we're going to go under both loops and the layer in front, both loops in the layer behind. You aren't over. Pull through both layers and pull through that loop on the hook. So now we've done two slip stitches. These are just slip stitches that we're using to seam our project.

So we've got 2. Let's do that a few more times. We're gonna go underneath the next stitch in the, in the row in front and the one that's right behind it. So there's 3. Let's do it again.

4 We're doing 8 by the way. 5 6 7 And 8. All right, so now we're going to make a single crochet into each of the remaining 12 stitches. So 123456789, 1011, 12. It's good just to count that up before you start working on it, just to make sure.

And you can really start stuffing this at any point here. Um, I usually wait until I am almost done with the chicken and then I stuff it, stuff it, but if you find it easier or if you're making a really little one and you're worried you're not going to be able to um push the stuffing down in, you can start stuffing at any point at, at, uh, after this here or at this point or any point beyond, I guess I should say. So we're going to do a single crochet into each of the last 12 stitches of that round. So there's the first one, and let's mark that stitch. Oh, this is a giant stitch marker.

I forgot I had that in there. And we're just gonna continue making single crochets into each of the next, uh, or total 12 stitches around here. So we'll have, we'll be working on 12 stitches after this here. All right, so we've got 123456789, 1011, and 12. There's our first marked one.

All right, so now we're gonna make 3 rounds of just working even, and we're gonna start with that marked stitch. So, if you're not careful, you might end up with kind of a gap here, but I like to just sort of pull that last stitch pretty tight and make the next stitch, which would be the first stitch of around 11, nice and tight, and that's gonna bring that together so we can kind of get rid of that gap. So there's the first stitch. I'll go ahead and mark that so I can keep track. And we're gonna work all the way around.

This is round 11 here. We're just making one single crochet into each stitch around. So Elena is saying I'm watching because it's looking so fluffy and chill to watch. Thanks. Yes, this is such a cozy project, right?

Because we're making a cute little chicken and it's all squishy. I'm glad you're here. Um, OK, we have a question. Would this be a good project for a crochet beginner? I think so.

Um, if you have never picked up a hook before, like you've never crocheted anything at all before, I would give yourself a chance to use a different type of yarn. The Chenil is not the easiest for a brand new beginner because it's not very elastic and it's really hard to see your stitches. It might be really tricky for you to know where to put your hook, um. And I also realized watching this might not be clear enough for a complete beginner to know where to put your hook. Um, I'll try and describe it a little bit here.

So if you look at the top of each stitch, it actually kind of forms a V, and there's two loops here. So there's one loop that's right here and then there's one loop back there. And when we crochet around, we're going to go underneath both of those loops. I mean, usually unless it's specified otherwise. Um, so that is kind of the main thing you need to be able to see.

So with Shanil yarn, it just is kind of fuzzy and it's a little bit hard to see the difference between those two loops. It's just harder to make your stitches if you don't already know the anatomy of just a single crochet stitch. So I would try something else out just so that you know that you're able to make your single crochet stitches correctly, um, but. I mean, I also really hate telling people no, no, you don't don't do this for your first project because you know what, no matter what your first project is, you're gonna learn a whole bunch, OK? I just, I just, you know, know yourself and know if that's something that if you get frustrated if you're just never gonna try ever again.

Then maybe go for something that's like a simpler yarn and just working a square and single crochet that could be your first project just like a washcloth. But if you have crocheted a little bit like maybe you've already made a washcloth or maybe you've made a scarf or something like that and you're just, you know, wondering, you still consider yourself a beginner, um, then I think that this is a pretty good beginner project for Amagaummi. It's a pretty simple. There aren't a lot of pieces that you have to worry about. Um, it's also not very big, so you can really take your time, but also finish it in a, in a normal amount of time.

Um, so it, it's, uh, instant gratification, so that also very much helps. OK, so we've done round 11 and we're gonna do round number 12, exactly the same. We're just working one single crochet into each stitch around. Um, Leah's wondering how do I figure out the yardage of a project. So if the, if the pattern doesn't say, um, it can be kind of hard to guess if it's something you're making yourself like when I'm designing something and I'm making this chicken, what I do is before I stuff the chicken, you know, when I'm almost all the way done.

Then I will weigh my project. And know how much the yarn weighs and then I will use that and on the yarn label the yarn label tells you like how many yards, how many meters per how much it weighs. So like if it tells you the whole weight of the whole skein and it tells you the full yardage of the whole skein so you can figure out what what um ratio or what percentage um or what's you know. Uh, basically what fraction of your yarn ball you have used in your piece, and that's how I actually figure out how much yarn to put in my patterns, um. I weigh things and I also, you know, sometimes I just keep track of the skeins if I know it's gonna, if I'm making a sweater and I know it's gonna be more than a skein, I'll just keep track of the skeins and then I'll weigh the last skein, um, to try and figure that out so I can give people a pretty good idea.

But yeah, if you're working on a different project and you don't really know how much it's gonna take, I feel like guessing how much yardage things are, that's one of those things that comes with experience after you've made a hat, you know, you know, a few hats and like worst weight, you know, oh this is gonna take a little more than one skein of yarn or something to make this in this particular stitch pattern, so. It's just one of those things. I feel like the more you pay attention to how much things have used, the better you are gonna be at estimating what a project would, you know, use before you start working on it. All right, so I'm working on round number 13 here. I'm just continuing to do a single crochet into each stitch around.

And we're just about done here with that. And then we're gonna stuff our project. OK, thank you. I've crocheted a little bit. I adore the little chicken.

OK, this is the same person who was asking if this was a good project for a beginner. Yes. OK. Well, I think you should go for it. Make yourself a chicken.

OK. So we have completed round number 13 and then at this point we can put the eyes in so I'm gonna pull over my little safety eyes here um and I, I, um, I usually mention this whenever I'm using safety eyes even though they're called safety eyes, they're not actually safe for kids that are younger than 3. I mean if you are very confident in your stitches um you can use, you can let the kid play with it, but you have to be supervising them seeing that they're not chewing around the eyeball. The problem that the thing that can happen is not that the eye disengages from the backing. That's pretty rare for it to crack or come off um it can happen though um but I think what would happen more often is that if the kid chews on it they might pop the eye through the fabric by kind of um breaking the fabric with their teeth or stretching it out too much or something like that if it isn't properly um if the gauge isn't tight enough so.

I always recommend just to embroider the eyes. It's just safer. It's better, but it's, you know, I, I like to mention that because they're called safety eyes, so that's confusing and I can see why people would think that that would be safe, right? Because that's what they're called. All right, so we're gonna be placing the eye on the side of each side of the head.

And we're placing it between round number 11 and round number 12. So, if you take a look here, if you follow your slip stitch seam across, And then you go up just a little bit to the next level. That was round number 1112, and 13. You can also count down from the top to figure out which rounds those are, so that you know that this is around 1312, and 11. So you're gonna be placing it between these two rounds.

And when Ruth says hello, hello, Ruth, thanks for saying hi. Oh, Leah says, have you used plain black eyes on a chicken? Actually this little guy has plain black eyes. It's a little, a smaller example, but you could definitely, I mean you can kind of imagine what it would look like and it would be totally cute, you know, just make sure with the Chanil yarn, you're just gonna wanna make sure that your eyes are big enough that they're not gonna pop through between the stitches because like I showed you before with the Shanil, it has that little core, uh, that little thread that runs through, and that is the structure in the yarn. The rest of it's just fluff.

So. You know, the pieces that are kind of going through, you, you wanna make sure that it's really going to be held in place and not too small that it's going to either pop into your chicken or the backing's gonna come through or it's gonna just fall out. OK. So, um, here's round 13, here's round 12. So we're gonna place it between 12 and 11, so you can kind of see those bumps, those kind of Um, this ridge here and this ridge here.

And I'm going to place it right between and because I'm using these offset pupil eyes, I'm going to twist it so that it looks like the pupil, the dark part here, I'll kind of move it around so hopefully you guys can kind of see that. Um, the pupil is facing downward and a little bit forward here as well. Um, so I, I used to work in a costume shop where we made character costumes, so I'm very used to looking at pupil placements on things because that makes a humongous difference in what your character looks like. If one pupil is slightly in the wrong spot, like slightly downward, and then this one's going forward, it's gonna look weird. But luckily on this chicken, you can't see both eyes at the same time, so you would never know.

But if you're working on a different project, pay attention, especially if you're using these offset pupils pay attention to put those pupils in a in a place where they're kind of mirror imaging each other or they could both be to the right, they could both be to the left, they could both be slightly, you know, to the right and down they can also both be slightly turned in that's that makes it look sort of like it's looking down at you, which is a cute expression. Um, but you don't want one that's kind of looking down and one to the side because then you're, you know, when you look at it, you're like, oh, it's, I feel like it's not focusing on me. I feel like I can't see that because that's, that's what it looks like to the human eye. All right, so now we're gonna, now that we place that between those two ridges, there's the post on the inside. We're gonna put the backing on and the backing, this is sort of like a sort of squared off bowl shape.

So we want the bowl to kind of cup the back of the eye. The eye is going to recess down into this bowl because this is a sinker eye. So we're gonna place that on the back and we can push it on as far as we can, um, by hand, and you might be able to just do this um with your hands, but if you're. Looking for a little bit of help, you can use a pen cap, like a big marker cap, something where the post can go into the cap, but you can use the back of the cap to really push it on. I'm going to be using this little safety eye tool I talked about this in my last live event where I was talking about supplies for safety eyes and that sort of thing, and this I bought on Etsy and I'm going to go ahead and just put that on the back and then push it in.

And you should usually hear click. I heard a click. I don't know if you guys heard a click, um, but that pushes it, you know, the eye down into that backing and it kind of gets recessed down into the fabric and it looks pretty flat. So this is, this is a sinker eye. You don't need to use sinker eyes.

You can use the dome shaped eyes that's kind of sit on on the surface of the fabric that's perfectly fine as well. OK, so I'm gonna go down two rows here between 11 and 12, pretty much right in the middle of the head from front to back, and I'm going to place the pupil going forward and slightly down, kind of basically at this diagonal here. And try not to let it spin while you're getting the backing put on. Backing I forgot the backing. All right.

So you can usually push it on just a little bit with your hands. Um, with regular dome-shaped eyes, this isn't so difficult to fasten. It's these sinker eyes that are extra tricky or they, they just need a little more oomph. And I did talk about different insertion tools in my last, um, my live event all about safety eyes if you guys are interested in different types of insertion tools, learning about those. There we go.

That looks pretty good. I think I could probably push it in a little more. Well, they look even on the back though. I think that's OK. All right, so now I'm gonna go ahead and stuff my chicken.

Actually, I would recommend um stuffing the chicken before you put the eyes in um because then you're not going to be dealing with these little eye backings here. You can certainly put it in after like I'm doing here. It's not hard, it's just a little bit, a little bit more awkward because you have to push it past those little posts in the eyes. And when you're stuffing something, you know, there's lots of different kinds of stuffing, and some likes to clump up and make little blobs and some it can make your piece look a little bit more smooth. So when you're stuffing something, I like to mix it into the stuffing that's already in there.

So once I get it pushed in. I'll try and like wiggle my what I'm doing right now is this inside there. I'm trying to mix the two together so that they aren't separate blobs sitting next to each other, because that's what makes a lumpy amagaroy when they're not kind of cohesive in there. All right. Looking pretty good.

I'll get a little bit more in there, and you can stuff more as you go. The next round, we're just gonna be doing some decreasing. So we're gonna make single crochet two togethers all the way around. If you find this too awkward, you can wait, you can pull out, like, I could pull this out and probably do halfway around or so of my single crochet two togethers. Before I put the stuffing back in.

That's getting a little bit stretched out back there, but that's OK. I'll maybe move my stuffing a little bit. There we go. Um, let me see. OK, so we're gonna do an invisible decreases.

So that's when you go underneath just the front loop of the next stitch, and then most people go under just the front loop of the following stitch like this, and then yarn over, pull through both loops. Yarn, and then you have 2 loops on your hook, and then you yarn over and pull through 2. OK, so that's an invisible decrease. I like to do mine just slightly different. I go underneath the front loop of the next stitch, and then I go under both loops of the following stitch, grab that yarn, pull through both layers.

Now you have 2 loops on your hook, yarn over and pull through 2. The reason that I do it this way, and you definitely do not have to do it this way if you're used to doing it the other way, totally fine. Um, the reason I do it this way is because it feels a little more solid because you get that back loop in there and so the front loop doesn't get a chance to stretch out and it just keeps your fabric looking a little bit more and feeling a little bit more solid, um. But you know, if you're curious, try it out, see if you like it. Could certainly do it the other way, the more traditional way.

All right. I'm gonna adjust his eye a little. There we go. His eye was a little crooked because I, when I put the stuffing in it tilted the it pushed on the backing and made my eye kind of like look up to the ceiling a little bit there. So just kind of make note of that before you close up his head.

You can still kind of mush it around and fix it later, but it's a lot easier to do it when the top is open. All right, so I'm just going to continue making an invisible decrease all the way around. We had 12 stitches. We're gonna do this 6 times, so we're going to end up with 6 stitches. Let's see, 123456.

All right, we're finished. So, we're just going to go ahead and fasten off. I'm gonna do a little slip stitch here, and the next stitch and pull through. And then we can close up the top of the head. We'll just thread our yarn needle here.

Just like that. And then we're gonna go underneath. I like to just go underneath the front loop of each of the remaining stitches. So I go from uh making a kind of an upward motion with my needle going underneath each loop. And I don't pull tight until I get pretty much all the way around, and then I go ahead and pull it all tight.

Like this. And then close that right up. And then you can go ahead and weave that in. And if you did end up with a little bit of a gap down here, let me show you just a second here. If you ended up with a little bit of a gap, see, I have a little bit of a gap there.

I stuffed it pretty firmly. Um, if that gap bothers you, you can just kind of weave this back and forth as you're weaving in your end. Do you mean you have to weave in your end anyway, but if you weave in your end back and forth through some stitches here. Then you can kind of close that up a little bit and it's not so noticeable or sort of fill it in a little bit as you're weaving in your, your ends. And you might think, well, why would you have to weave in your ends?

Can't you just tuck it in there and cut it off? And you can, I like to weave in my ends. I pretty much always weave in my ends, um, just to keep things from loosening up later. I just don't trust that it's not gonna loosen up later unless I weave it back and forth in a couple of directions. All right, so here's our little little bald chicken.

Um, so we're gonna make the little comb for the top. And you just need a very small amount of yarn for that. So, I like to leave a little yarn tail here, enough to weave weave it in um into the head later to kind of get rid of it. And we're gonna go ahead and just make Uh, slipknot, place that on our hook, and we're going to chain 3, so 12, and 3, and then we're going to make a slip stitch into the 2nd and 3rd chain from the hook and the bottom of the chain. So if you look at the top of your chain, it looks like a bunch of V's.

So here's a V, here's a V, here's a V. We're going to skip the very first one, that stitch right next to the hook. So the loop on the hook, that never counts as a stitch. So this would be the first stitch, but we're going to skip that one, and we're going to work into the 2nd and 3rd stitch, but we're going to work onto the bottom of the stitch. So that's opposite of these V's.

So if you roll the V's over. There are little horizontal dashes back here. They're a little hard to see in the Chanil yarn, um, and if you just can't see them, it's OK. You can just slip stitch in there, you know, as long as you're getting your stitch caught, it's gonna be OK. It's gonna make some little nubbles and it'll be fluffy and it'll look fine.

These, you know, little parts of chickens anyway are not, they're not like perfectly polished. They're kind of nubbly and organic looking, so don't worry too much about it. So we're gonna make two slip stitches. Now we're back to where we started, and we're going to chain 3 again. 12, and 3.

We're going to do the exact same thing. So we're going to work into the bottom of our chain. So we're gonna turn that over, skip the first one, work a slip stitch under the second one. So there's our slip stitch. And then a slip stitch under the 3rd 1.

So, the slip stitch, that just means you go in, grab that yarn, pull through the stitch, pull through the loop on the hook. Now, we've got two little nibbles, and now we're gonna do a 3rd 1. So, 123. We're doing the exact same thing. We just basically do the same motion 3 times.

To make the three little pieces that stick up. Sometimes it is kind of tricky to see that loop on the bottom there. There we go. Just like that. And then we're gonna go ahead and cut with long enough yarn tail, we can use that to sew it on to the top of our chicken and just pull through.

Like that. And so we're gonna place this so that it's sitting right on top and a little bit to the front of our chicken like this, and this would be a good place to, you know, especially if you're newer at this type of thing, you haven't sewn pieces together, you can use a stitch marker to. Basically pin into your chicken like this, so about where you're gonna put that comb, and then pin into the comb. So that's gonna hold it in place while you're sewing it on. For if you are a more experienced sewer, you've already done this before.

I doubt that you'll need to do that. It's such a tiny little piece. You can probably just hold it down with your finger. Um, so we're gonna be using that yarn tail. We're gonna go into the head of the chicken.

And come out, and make sure that you're going under some strands, so it's gonna catch your, catch your strand. And then we're gonna go through a little section of the comb, OK? Just the bottom. Just imagine we're sewing just that bottom, a couple of stitches. So there's one stitch.

We'll go through here. 2 stitches. And I'm gonna get rid of that. That a stitch marker, it's just in the way now. And I'm gonna push this down into Chicken.

And Like I said before, I really like to weave in my ends, and, but you don't want to see the red, so I'm just kind of weaving it in. I'm catching the underside of these stitches. I know you can't see it, but I'm trying to catch, you can kind of feel your needle going through the stitches. It has a little bit more drag when you pull. It's a little bit harder to pull.

Then pull this out pretty tightly and snip it close, make sure you're not cutting your um. You know, your other fabric and then you got to kind of get rid of those little fuzzy bits like that. OK? So then we're gonna do the same thing with this end. We're going to just go in through the head, just take a little stitch like this, and then we're gonna go through the comb, to the bottom of the comb right there.

And we'll go down into the chicken. I'm gonna come out back here. And I'm gonna catch. Um, I can feel it's going through some of the stitches on the back. So that's just gonna make it a little bit more secure.

It's not gonna wanna fall off of there. Just like that. So now it has a little comb on top, and then we're gonna finish up with the little beak. So this yarn that I'm using here is the same brand, um, but it was a sparkly yarn and that is only because when I ordered this yarn, I ordered it for a different project and they didn't have the regular yellow in stock. All they had was the sparkly version, but I, I think it's cute.

I don't really care. It doesn't bother me at all. All right, so We're for the beak, we're just gonna make some little horizontal stitches, and they're probably going to span about 22 stitches wide, and I usually place them like right at the point. That's at the center of the eye. So, if you just look at the center of the eye, lead your way over here.

Imagine you're gonna make your stitches like right there where you can see where that needle is, OK? So we're gonna come in from the back. And pop up over here. And as soon as this tail goes in, I'm gonna stop pulling on it. As soon as it disappears, I'm gonna stop pulling on that.

And then I'm gonna try to make some little stitches inside. Like running it through the backs of my stitches to kind of get it to stay. OK, the reason I'm doing this is just because I'm anchoring my yarn. You know, instead of tying a knot, we're just kind of weaving it back and forth. And now that feels quite secure.

So now I'm just gonna take some little horizontal stitches, right in that space between rounds there. So, about right here, and don't pull it too tight because you don't wanna make the holes between your stitches big. You just wanna pull it, you know, until it's pretty snug against. The chicken not tight though, like, you know, should be close, but not tight. And then you're just gonna add as many as you want to until the beak sort of starts to stick out just a little bit.

I'll put one more on top, and then I'm gonna come out through the back of the head here. Oh, we have a question. What's the difference between a regular decrease and an invisible decrease? So a regular decrease, you make almost the whole stitch. Um, except for that last yarn over pull through, you make that almost the whole stitch twice and then you do a yarn over and pull through.

Um, let me see, I can show you that real quick. Um, so let's just say we were gonna be doing our decrease. Hopefully you guys can see this good enough in this white. Um, OK, so if you're gonna do a regular decrease, That would be, you put it under both loops, grab that yarn and pull it up. Now, you've got 2 loops on your hook, and then you go in the next stitch under both loops.

Again, grab that yarn, pull it up. Now, you've got 3 loops, and then you yarn over and pull through 3. So the reason in a lot of room we don't do this is because this creates kind of a bump and it's, it doesn't blend in with the rest of your stitches quite as well. You certainly can. It, it, it will decrease your stitches.

It's the same height that's it's perfectly acceptable to use that. But oftentimes we do an invisible decrease because you really can't hardly see it. So the invisible decrease is where you just go under the front loop and then. Directly into the next stitch, whether you're going under the front loop or both loops, like I do, before you do that yarn over, OK? So we're only yarning over once.

And pulling it up and then we do our last yarn over and pull through too. And so basically what you're doing with an invisible decrease is you're decreasing it right away before you even really make the stitch you're just kind of pulling these two stitches together and then you're just making a regular single crochet right there is what you're really doing. So, um, that just, that's why that stitch blends in a little better because the anatomy of that stitch is basically the same as any of the other single crochet stitches. I hope that makes sense. All right, I think I've answered all the questions.

I'm so glad you guys could join me. I really hope that you guys make some cute little chickens. They're so much fun. They're really quick to make. Once you, you know, get the hang of it, you can whip them out pretty quickly.

Um, I think I can make one in about a half an hour or something like that, uh, if I'm not doing all this talking. Uh, but anyway, um, yeah, I hope you guys make some chickens. Thank you guys so much for joining me and like I said before, if you guys are interested in learning more about the safety eyes, you can go back and watch that previous live event, um, and learn a little bit more about that. You might find some cool sources because I really have been looking around for lots of interesting safety eyes. All right, thanks you guys.

See you soon, bye.