Wednesday is for Crochet blogging

For my first foray into blogging about my all-consuming crochet habit, I present:

So the point here is to post up every Wednesday with my current works-in-progress. Happily, I have three to share today.

First up, a small amigurumi Tiger, from this free pattern on the Lily Sugar'n Cream website. I started this on the 18th December, the start of my drive to use up my bright orange Sirdar Bonus DK yarn (more on that later). I finished all of the crocheting, stuffing, sewing together in one evening. But I didn't have beads for eyes, and it was too late by the time I was done to be embroidering on the face. So it has been put to one side, and ignored in favour of other projects.

I've got as far as adding black beads for eyes, but not the nose/mouth/whiskers bit. Hopefully he'll turn up in a FO Friday post before too long!

Secondly, my clown fish amigurumi, from this free pattern on Ravelry. I'm sure you'll notice again that this is a project using predominantly bright orange yarn! I'm probably about halfway through, having completed the body and eyes, I just have many fins to make and attach.

As you can see, at the moment it looks more like a demented Vermicious Knid. I started this on the 20th December, but got annoyed with the pattern for the fins, so put it to one side and haven't picked it up again yet.

Lastly, my current favourite project, although I intended it for a fall-back project to do when I didn't have any amigurumi to work on. But I've been working on it almost non stop since I started it! It's a rectangular granny square, using this pattern from fellow blogger Erin Lindsey.

No bright orange in this one! But only the green and purple are new yarns for this project, all of the other colours were needed for my Christmas gift to the future MiL, a holiday penguin (free pattern from FreshStitches.com).

So why am I desperately using up bright orange yarn, I hear you cry. Quite simply, because I have too much of it! I bought it for my tiger striped starghan project, which was a gift for a friend's new baby:

Now before buying the yarn for this project, I searched high and low through all the FOs listed for the pattern on Ravelry, trying to get an idea of how much yarn I might need. Not helped by the fact I was substituting the Sirdar Bonus DK for the recommended Red Heart Sport Baby Pompadour yarn (my first real foray into substituting yarn properly). I got really frustrated because the pattern simply states "keep going until it's big enough for you", and all the FOs on Ravelry don't have the details of how much yarn was used, or how big the finished item is. So I had to wing it.

I really had no idea how much I would need, but reasoning that my white stripes were thinner than the orange and black I got less white than black. In total I bought three skeins of black, three of orange and two white. As you can see from the finished project on Ravelry, I used up just over one of the white and orange, and about a skein and a half of black. White and black leftovers didn't bother me, but what the heck was I going to do with pretty much two whole skeins of bright orange acrylic!

Luckily it didn't take too long searching the pattern database to find a few amigurumi projects to use up the yarn with. I've still got loads left, so I may have to make a few more orange things and give them away (otherwise I'll be drowning in small cute animals, which wouldn't be good).

The trouble with projects to use up yarn, though, is you end up having to buy more yarn because you need a different colour to finish something off, and then you're left with a whole new skein of yarn to use up somehow! It's how I've ended up doing my granny rectangle. I had to buy red and yellow and pale blue to make Howie the Penguin (I didn't think the orange would work on the beak and feet), so while I was in the shop getting those I picked up the red and purple, knowing I already had the granny rectangle in my pattern queue that I could use them on. Hopefully, I will be able to finish off that blanket at a point where I have very little of the yarns left, so I don't end up in this position again!

So there you go. Happy WIP Wednesday!