Beginning Crochet Amigurumi

Today I picked up a new hobby. Every time I pick up a new hobby, I add another section of the craft store to my domain. This week I will conquer.... the yarn! I'm learning to crochet. Actually I'm learning amigurumi. I feel like I'm cheating, I only needed to really learn one stitch, and I can create such adorable little animals. Compared to my scrapbooking stuff, this craft has very minimal investment to get started. A crochet needle, a roll of yarn, and Internet access for instructional videos. These video's got me started: slip knot, chain stitch, single crochet stitch, increase and decrease,

This ideal sphere is the pattern I used to get started. Somewhere along the way I decided to turn the ball into an alien so I used increase stitches to make the body wider and decrease stitches to make the body thinner up to the neck. Then more increase stitches to form a head, and decrease stitches to end the head. I figured an alien would be great because limbs are optional and if I messed up and it looked weird, I just add eyes and I mouth and it can still be an alien. I haven't decided if my next feat will be changing colors or adding limbs.

My first creation was done with a 5mm needle, but I switched to a  3.74mm needle for the second alien. My stitches are still inconsistent and the smaller gauge needle will keep my stitches tighter so you can't see the stuffing though the yarn. Here they are:

This craft is a great chance to use bells. Stuff one in each creation along with stuffing. A pack of clearence Christmas bells are great for homemade dog toys too!