Some of these were made in 2016 and I just failed to post them. Whoops!
For this hat, instead of using the recommended yarn (which isn't available in U of M colors for purchase here in Oregon and I would have had to order it), I used two separate colors and simply switched yarn where I felt stripes should go. If anyone is truly interested I have written out the breakdown of how many rows per stripe. Just ask! My only regret is the length of the braids. I wish I'd made them longer!
These are so fun to make, and after just a few I had the pattern down and just kept cranking them out. I think they make great coasters! I also recently used them as buffet table decor at a garden party.
For the hexagon blanket, I chose to use an acrylic yarn instead of a cotton yarn (simply because we don't have a Hobby Lobby around here and I could not for the life of me find a cotton yarn at Joann's that had the same gauge as the yarn recommended in the pattern). So instead I used several colors from the Premier Yarns Deborah Norville Everyday line, which matches the gauge of the recommended yarn (and was a real pain in the butt to find, let me tell you. I spent a good 45 minutes in Joann's checking the gauge of almost every line of yarn).
Differences between my way and the original pattern:
1. The yarn recommended in the original pattern yields 7 hexagons. The yarn I used yields 10, with a bit left over for sewing. (Pro tip: I used an empty paper towel tube, cut 6 slits in each end like fringe, and then wound each yarn on the paper towel tube next to one another and stuck the ends in the notches I made, that way I didn't have to keep running back and forth between wads of messy yarn in order to stitch my pieces together at the end)
2. Original pattern uses 5 colors. When I was done with 5 colors (50 hexagons), I found that the blanket was too small, so I added a 6th color in order to keep from repurchasing 5 skeins of yarn just to get two more hexagons per skein.
3. I DID block my hexagons as recommended, but I found that acrylic yarn really doesn't need it and it was easy enough to identify the stitches I needed to put together when I laid it all out, plus my stitches are consistent enough now that the hexagons really were exactly the same size when I was done. All 60 of them. Definitely block with cotton yarn, though. Also if you decide to block with kebab skewers... Watch out for splinters. Once I learned my lesson, mine took about a week to come out.
I loved this pattern as well! This was the first pattern that I've ever paid for and even though it killed me to purchase a pattern, I have to say that it was worth it. Here are my tips for this pattern:
1. Make sure to firmly stuff the entire doll, ESPECIALLY THE HEAD. I initially tried to make the head a bit softer and squishier because this is for a baby, but I found that it didn't stretch the head to the correct size and as a result when I tried to stitch the ears on, they were enormous in comparison to the head. I had to run out and purchase more Poly-fil (I'd run out after finishing the body and actually had to stuff the middle with a lot of scrap yarn-- thank god I'm strange and keep all of the bits of yarn that I trim off when I finish anything) and then pull tufts of it through the spaces between stitches with a smaller gauge hook. That took a good few hours out of my time budget!
2. Make sure you're counting your stitches. He looks perfectly fine, but somewhere I lost a stitch... then added one to make up for it... and then somehow gained an extra stitch... and had to decrease again in order to get back to where I was meant to be. I'd forgotten how intensive amigurumi is on my arthritic hands (because auto immune diseases make me into a little old lady, lucky me!), so even though it still bothers me knowing that there are random stitches in the doll, I simply couldn't bear to take out the rows and re-do them. After 60 hexagons and a 10 inch doll, I was popping Aleve like candy.
3. I made the doll with the same exact yarn that I used for the hexagon blanket (the dark grey) and used an F sized hook (which is a different weight of yarn and a different sized hook than the pattern calls for). Not sure how that affected things overall, but I think he's a great size. As a side note, if you use the yarn and hook I used, I needed a little over one skein of yarn and had to run out to repurchase just past the hips on the body (also I crochet things out of order-- the body was the last thing I finished so I really only needed like 15 yards or so more).
4. I love the top hat, but I really wanted to incorporate the colors from the blanket into the elephant to have them match. As a result, I ditched the hat, made a single crochet chain the same number of stitches as the last row of the body, and then made an itty bitty bow with this pattern.
5. The pattern tells you to use wire for the nose, but as this was for a baby I used my common sense and ditched the wire. With amigurumi, your stitches are very, very tight most of the time and as a result you really can mold a piece with your hands (for example, one of the arms was a tiny bit shorter than the other... So I stretched it. They look perfectly equal to me!). So I was able to bend the nose myself. Also I forewent safety eyes (because despite the fact that they are called safety eyes, they are not safe to use around infants) and simply stitched little black eyes in with some spare black yarn I had. I did pop in the safety eyes just to figure out where I wanted to stitch them in and then I removed them, and I will say that safety eyes 10/10 always make everything look more professional. So if you're not giving this to a teeny tiny choking hazard, USE SAFETY EYES THEY'RE THE BEST
6. If you decide to make this blanket pattern, I would highly recommend telling me so that I could tell you how I sewed it together. It was a really stressful point for me until I read through the comments on the page that explains how to stitch the pieces together and then made up my own method, which worked really well. The only thing I had trouble with was hiding the ends, and I'm almost positive that they'll pop out of their hiding places and just be little fuzzy surprises on the back of the blanket, but there's nothing I can do about that now!
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