Valentine's Day Tutorial: How to Crochet an Amigurumi Heart

This tutorial is my first, so please bear with me! This heart fits right into the palm of your hand and is perfect to give to that special someone on February 14th. :) It's also fitting for Legend of Zelda fans all year round. More hearts, better questing! This project is suitable for beginners. You need to know how to single crochet, single increase, and single together (or decrease). If you're completely new to crochet, I suggest checking out YouTube for how to's on these stitches.

Materials: G size crochet hook
Any color you desire of worsted weight yarn (for the sake of this tutorial, I used Red Heart in Red)
Blunt needle (for sewing in ends)
Stuffing (like polyfill)

To create a heart, you start by making two different lobes. The first is sewn to the second, which becomes one contiguous heart.

Lobe #1
R1: Chain 3 and slip stitch into the first to create a ring.
R2: Sc inc into each stitch (6)
R3: Sc inc in each stitch (12)
R4: Sc in each stitch, work even (12)
R5: Sc in each sitch, work even. Fasten off. Leave a tail of a few inches.

Lobe #2 (and rest of heart)

Start in the same way as the first lobe, but don't fasten off. Slip stitch into last three stitches of Lobe #1. Make sure to tuck the tail from Lobe #1 in the following stitches.

R6: Continue to crochet around both lobes now, creating 20 stitches. If you've done this correctly, your stitch marker should be right in the middle between the lobes.
R7: Work even (20)
R8: sc in next 5 st, sc next 2 st tog, sc in next 8 st, sc next 2 st tog, sc in next 3 st (18)
R9: sc in next 4 st, sc next 2 st tog, sc in next 7 st, sc next 2 st tog, sc in next 3 st (16)
R10: sc in next 3 st, (sc next 2 st tog) 2 times, sc in next 4 st, (sc next 2 st tog) 2 times, sc in next st (12) Start to stuff the heart firmly.
R11: sc in next 2 st, (sc next 2 st tog) 2 times, sc in next 2 st, (sc next 2 st tog) 2 times (8)
R12: sc in next 2 st, sc next 2 st tog, around (6) Fasten off. Sew up the hole and weave in the end.

I may post photos later on to clarify the meeting of the lobes. Let me know if you have any questions or need any help!


Happy Valentines Day!

Tentative Goals for 2012

Happy 2012 fellow bloggers and visitors!

It's time for me to consider goals for this upcoming year. I'm amazed at the results of my first year of selling on Etsy. Fun facts: My best selling item was my little amigurumi Portal Turret. Most people found my shop by searching for items that either contained "Portal" or "Legend of Zelda." The little ewok is quickly becoming a best seller over the turret.

Goals:
-Complete my map and have a customer in every state in the US.
-Reach 100+ sales by the end of the year
-Be smarter about keeping tabs on expenses (like PayPal fees, shipping envelopes, ect).
-Create five more best sellers (5+ purchases of an individual item)

I think that's a good start for now. Hope 2012 has been great to you all so far!

Nearing 1st Year Anniversary

So, as the end of my first year selling items on Etsy nears, I thought it would be interesting to figure out how many different states I've sold items to. This is what I created. Not shown are my international orders to England and Canada :) I find it interesting that there are weird gaps on the East coast. Hopefully next year the map will be covered!

Black Friday.

Tomorrow is the beloved Thanksgiving. I will be spending it with my family in the gorgeous Vermont. Unfortunately, all I can think about is Black Friday. Outside of my crochet life, I support myself by being a retail wench. I work as a cashier at an American chain that always has sales going on and rhymes with "holes". I loathe my job's focus on promoting a credit card with a 21.9% interest rate and luring customers back with marketing strategies.

I am working Black Friday.

And I am scared...mostly because of this ridiculousness:

This level of consumerism is terrifying.

Finger Crochet

So, I had a brief chat with the lovely Neen of NeenCrochet on Skype recently. She mentioned she was finger crocheting a blanket. That totally blew my mind. In concept, it makes total sense. So, how did this not cross my mind before? Is it as difficult as I thought? Apparently not! I found oodles of YouTube videos which teach how to do it. What appeals to me is that since it works on a large scale, a blanket can be done in a few days. I'm thinking of loading up on some Red Heart yarn and making a pretty blanket in blues and greens....That is when things settle down in Etsy land! Orders have been fairly steady, off line and on line, which is great. Anyway, here are some videos I thought were super helpful and demystified it all for me

Keeping Inventory

Today I took a moment to organize my stash and was astonished when I found yarn I forgot I had. My friend Allison recently gave me her entire collection of yarn. There's some super soft alpaca/silk yarn I need to figure out what I'm going to do with. Moreover, I discovered projects I started and almost finished. I found a baby sea turtle without fins and a GLaDOS potato without connections. I also found my first attempt at mittens (which don't quite match in size). I think I might have to do a giveaway/contest at some point. When do you know your stash has grown too large?

WIP:
I'm working on my first baby owl hat in preparation for winter. I'm also working on finishing the projects I just found!

Recently finished:
Flying mint bunny and a custom order for The Knight from The Binding of Issac, a super creepy but cool video game.

Exciting news:
I sent off my second ever international sale to England!

Hello Internet!

Sorry for the lack of posting. I started a new job as a retail wench. School has been keeping me busy as well. I bought some more yarn today (that I probably don't need)...But hey! I can never get enough of that lovely sapphire blue (or as I call it: Tardis blue) that Lion's Brand Vanna's Choice produces. I also bought some lovely shades of green to play with. What yarn have you bought recently? How are you all?