Crochet Amigurumi for Every Occasion: 21 Easy Projects to Celebrate Life’s Happy Moments

I was super excited to get my hands on “Crochet Amigurumi for Every Occasion” and start whipping up some cute and cuddly creations! I was not disappointed. This book has it all – from the adorable amigurumi patterns created by The Woobles, to the easy-to-follow instructions and helpful photos and videos.

One of my favourite things about this book was how it was organized by gift theme. It made it so easy to pick and choose the perfect project for the occasion at hand. Whether it was a baby shower, birthday, housewarming, or engagement party, I felt like I had a wealth of options to choose from. And let me tell you, the finished products are not just cute, they’re down right adorable!

As someone who has struggled with crochet patterns in the past, I really appreciated the frustration-free experience this book provides. The stitch tutorials, patterns, photos, and video instructions were all so helpful and made the whole process a breeze. And if I ever got stuck, I could simply flip to the beginning of the book and follow the step-by-step photo tutorial.

The clear instructions and simple, cute designs made each pattern a joy to make. And if I ever came across a tricky stitch or technique, I could watch a video tutorial on The Woobles’ website to help me out. And let’s not forget about the inspiring images! Each pattern was accompanied by photos of the finished project, as well as custom step-by-step photos for anything unique to the pattern.

“Crochet Amigurumi for Every Occasion” was a delightful book to work with. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to make some adorable and cuddly creations for their loved ones.

When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations.

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind.

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca.

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl.

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions.

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic).

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only.

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns.

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

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