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Frankie the Silent Film Star

Posted on by Anna

My second attempt at amigurumi resulted in an almost convincing toy!

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This is Frankie the Silent Film Star. You might remember him from such slapstick classics as Crackerjack Capers and Gold Diggers of Aught Six. Unfortunately the talented tap-dancing Frankie was phased out of Hollywood once the talkies took over—there were only so many situations writers could come up with to explain away his lack of a mouth.

I guess Frankie doesn’t look drastically different from my pathetic Little Give Up of last fall, but armed with acrylic yarn and a metal crochet hook (thanks, Rebecca!), it wasn’t half the struggle this time. I primarily used this kind of blurry YouTube video to refresh my technique and then experimented with simple increases and decreases. And a star was born!

Mochimochi Display in New London, NH

Posted on by Anna

I kind of feel like I’m doing a lot of “me” talk on the blog lately, but I’ve just had a lot of things going on recently that I’m excited about. Please bear with me for one more!

Bonney was kind enough to arrange for me to put my toys on display at the public library in New London, New Hampshire this past weekend. They have a nice, big display case, so I stuffed it with ALL of my toys!

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I’ve been amassing these guys on various shelves and counters in my apartment over the past year, so it was a lot of fun to have them all together in one place and looking so organized. The library staff were very nice and just let us do our thing and take as much time as we needed to arrange everything (about two hours). By the time we left, the toys had attracted a small group of wide-eyed 5-year-olds, so I called the effort a success.

These ended up being my two favorite shelves:

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The library itself is really beautiful—I was a little surprised I’d never been there before. If you happen to live in the area, I hope you’ll swing by and check out the display while it’s up! (I think my toys will be there for at least a month or so.)

A Super Sweet Butterfull

Posted on by Anna

Alice at Kathryn Ivy just made the cuutest Butterfull!

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She modified the pattern by picking up stitches for the legs and using an embroidered chain stitch on the wings. Oh, and she added a sweet little mouth!

Alice mentioned in her post that there’s one part of the pattern that mistakenly mentions felting, though no felting is actually required. Oops! That’s since been corrected—I’m hoping it’s a minor enough point that it doesn’t trip anyone up.

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This is one butterfly that I would love to catch in a net and take home!

Male Stripper Fabric

Posted on by Anna

My mother-in-law Bonney was eager to share her latest fabric find with me when I arrived in New Hampshire for the weekend:

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Oh my. Was all I had to say. I asked her if she had plans for her half-naked cowboys, firemen, policemen, construction workers, and delivery boys—fortunately, no plans in particular.

I’m supposing that the primary purpose of these prints is to sit in a closet and occasionally be brought out for laughs, but maybe I’m just not thinking creatively enough. For the curious, Bonney got them from eQuilter.com