If you’ve heard of Shinzi Katoh, you probably share the same obsession that I have for the wonderful Japanese artist and his super-whimsical illustrated stuff!
I first came across the zakka products while on vacation in Taipei, Taiwan over the New Year’s in 2013. The nostalgic Yongkang Street was peppered with zakka shops and what did I find but a shop named Zakka Club, which was filled to the brim with Shinzi Katoh goods?
I spent a fortune buying bags, decorative tapes, a mug, a 4-in-1 bento box set, notebooks — basically the whole works, to start my own collection at home.
Here’s a glimpse of what the shop looks like.
The one thing I regretted? Not bringing home any one of the Shinzi Katoh bunny/piggy/frog softies with me! See how cute they were!
Here’s a closer look at what I did bring home with me.
A そらべあ (Solar Bear) pencil pouch. The weeping bears were created to help spread awareness on the effects of global warming.
I love these Cheri bento boxes!
This is a close-up of one of the two bags I bought. I take this bag with me to my Japanese lessons, which I have been taking for over two years now. French + Japanese stuff always makes me smile.
Today, we’re taking a break from it all and I would love to share a series of posts on my “obsessions”.
(This was something that I had planned to share a while ago, but never got the chance to what with so many things happening at once 🙂
So do bear with me as I present you Obsession #1: The Moomins!
I’ve had an eye out for The Moomins ever since I caught a few episodes of the cartoon on TV many years ago. But it was not until I visited Sweden in 2012 that I went full-blown Moomin-crazy! (alas, the obsession only hit me when I returned home so I did not make one single Moomin purchase in all the Moomin-packed souvenir shops in Stockholm!)
So slowly but surely, I’m hoping that my collection of Moomin stuff will grow. I’ve since bought a couple of Moomin T-shirts off the racks of generous Uniqlo 🙂
Several months ago, I was asked to design a sweet butterfly girl for the magazine and boy, was I excited to start!
The pattern took several weeks to perfect — I had originally made the wings in black and blue (pretty like the Blue Morpho butterfly) but had to change them to lighter colours so that they would stand out a little more.
Cho-Cho (蝶 or Chō is butterfly in Japanese) can be seen on the cover and also on the mag’s web. I was delighted to find it hovering here at this page!
Here’s a closer look at Cho-Cho, the tiniest queen of the garden:
Here’s what Cho-Cho looked like from before. What do you think?
Last year, I took two and a half months off work to focus on a special project. I’ve kept mum all this while but now it’s finally time to spill the beans: I’ve been working on my first book and it’ll finally be out in September!
Yes, it’s an amigurumi book alright…but it’s also an official Hello Kitty amigurumi book!
It’s called Hello Kitty Crochet and here’s a sneak peek of the cover:
It’s been an honour being chosen to work on this supercute project and just in time for our favourite feline, Hello Kitty’s 40th anniversary too!
When Quirk Books first e-mailed me about the project early last year, I practically woke everyone up in the neighbourhood because I was jumping up and down and making whooping noises at 12 midnight (there’s a 12-hour time difference between Malaysia and Philadelphia, where Quirk Books is based). I’ve always had a soft spot for Hello Kitty growing up so I said yes almost right away and the journey has been a dream come true!
Some of you may have already noticed the title at Amazon — thank you so much for sending me e-mails and messages to check if the Mei Li Lee listed as the author of the book is really me (yes, it is!).
Now I’m sure you’d want to hear more about the book; you can read more at this page here (written by the wonderful team over at Quirk Books), but what I can tell you is this: there are 25 Sanrio characters for you to fawn over and most of them even come with their very own crochet accessories! If your childhood was peppered by Hello Kitty and Sanrio merchandise (like mine was), you’d be delighted to have a copy of this book, whether you’re an amigurumi beginner or just plain in love with crafts.
Save the date: September 16 2014 is when Hello Kitty Crochet will be officially made available to the public.
Working with Quirk Books and Sanrio has been amazing and super-fun, I really can’t wait for the book to be out — Hello Kitty is a wonderful character to crochet, but it also comes with its fair share of challenges (getting the facial features just right, or the unique shape of the head) and my book, Hello Kitty Crochet, hopes to address all these tiny grievances for the first time ever, and in the English language.
I still can’t get over how I got the chance to collaborate with Sanrio on designing Hello Kitty and her friends’ amigurumi patterns. It was difficult playing favourites but I must say that I’ve fallen in love (all over again) with each and every one of the kawaii characters that I’ve had the pleasure of spending the past year with in my craft room. Can you guess which character patterns made it into the book? (hint: picture below)
I’ll be sharing more fun stuff in the next few months so don’t forget to check back in to hear more about Hello Kitty Crochet!
P/S I’m now an official Hello Kitty addict so if you don’t hear from me very often, you know I’m off on one of my tirades making more of them cute faces…
Three of amiguruMEI’s patterns can now be found in Hand Made Toys! (The cover below should give you a hint as to which ones!)
Hand Made Toys is a special publication brought to you by the brilliant team behind Future publishing, the publishers of craft wonders Mollie Makes and Simply Crochet magazine. It’s packed with 40 super-cute toy designs that you can crochet, knit or sew together on your own.
The bookazine will be going on sale Thursday, May 8 (tomorrow!), and will be available worldwide by mail order from My Favourite Magazines. It will also be sold in WH Smith stores and leading newsagents in the UK, and in Barnes & Noble stores in the USA.
I’ve also been told that the Apple Newsstand will feature a digital version for the iPad — simply go HERE to download the free Simply Crochet container app, and the digital version of Hand Made Toys will be available there.
And now, for the big reveal: Hand Made Toys features not only our ever-popular Chiyo-chan and Tako-Yaki bear brothers patterns, but also the Little Red & Baby Wolf amigurumi pattern that everyone has been asking about! (The fairytale-ish pattern was earlier featured in a special booklet attached to Simply Crochet Issue 10, which has since been sold out.)
Here’s a glimpse of the amiguruMEI pattern pages in Hand Made Toys:
I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of Hand Made Toys for sure!
If you do want to know amiguruMEI a little more, go grab a copy because we have a special page dedicated to answering some personal questions about the whole business with amigurumi and how I first fell in love with the craft.
Check out the picture below for a sneak peek!
We’re super excited about this and I hope you are too! Please grab yourself a copy (or two) of Hand Made Toys before it’s all sold out!
It’s finally here! AmiguruMEI is proud to present the Little My free amigurumi pattern!
If you don’t know already, I’ve always had an obsession with The Moomins and especially Little My, a cheeky character from the storybook characters created by the late Tove Jansson, a Swedish-speaking Finnish comic strip author.
The Moomins are a family of white, roundish hippopotamus-looking cuties who live in a quirky blue house with a red roof right in the heart of Moominvalley. The central character of the series (as told in books and animes) is a little boy named Moomintroll, who is ever the sweetheart. I’ve made two different Moomin amigurumis in the past, but none has quite captured the Moomintroll spirit yet (when I’ve mastered the Moomin pattern, I’ll definitely share it, of course!).
And so this brings me to Little My, who is known as a “small, determined and fiercely independent ‘Mymble’.” Being brash, aggressive and mischievous seems to be a natural trait for Mymbles, somehow. The strange obaachan-mitai girl starts out as a friend, but is later adopted by the Moomin family.
Can’t wait to make your own Little My? Look below for the instructions!
Materials
• 2.3mm hook
• Similar-sized yarn in beige, light orange, red, black and pink
• Crochet thread in black
• 2 x 6mm green brads
• White felt
• Craft glue
• Darning needle
• Polyester fiberfill
Head
With beige yarn:
Round 1: Sc 6 in magic ring {6}.
Round 2: [Inc] around {12}.
Round 3: [Inc, sc 1] around {18}.
Round 4: [Inc, sc 2] around {24}.
Round 5: [Inc, sc 3] around {30}.
Round 6: [Inc, sc 4] around {36}.
Round 7: [Inc, sc 5] around {42}.
Round 8: [Inc, sc 6] around {48}.
Round 9-16 (8 rounds altogether): Sc around {48}.
Round 17: [Inv dec, sc 6] around {42}.
Round 18: [Inv dec, sc 5] around {36}.
Round 19: [Inv dec, sc 4] around {30}.
Round 20: [Inv dec, sc 3] around {24}.
Round 21: [Inv dec, sc 2] around {18}.
Stuff.
Round 22: [Inv dec, sc 1] around {12}.
Round 23: [Inv dec] around {6}.
Fasten off and weave in ends.
Body
With black yarn (I used a sparklyキラキラ yarn from Daiso):
Round 1: Sc 6 in magic ring {6}.
Round 2: [Inc] around {12}.
Round 3-12 (10 rounds altogether): Sc around {12}.
Fasten off and weave in ends.
Dress
Turn the body that you just made upside down.
With red yarn:
1) Make a slipknot on your hook. Leave a long yarn end at this end for sewing the body + dress onto the head later.
2) Now, you’re going to surface crochet on the body – do this by inserting the hook into one stitch and bringing it out in the next, from right to left. Yarn over and bring the hook back to the first stitch. Yarn over again and bring the yarn through the loops to complete the stitch. Don’t worry!
It’s quite simple really; you’re basically single crocheting in the same way but on another piece of amigurumi
Round 1: Sc in each st to end of the body, in the body’s first round {12}.
Round 2: Ss to the first st (counts as first stitch). Continue sc around {12}.
Round 3: Sc around {12}.
Round 4: [Inc, sc 1] around {18}.
Round 5: [Inc, sc 2] around {24}.
Round 6-12 (7 rounds altogether): Sc around {24}.
Clean fasten off and weave in ends (or if you’ve forgotten to leave a long yarn end at the beginning, you can always do that here and weave the ends through to the top and use it for attaching the dress onto the head).
Fold dress down to cover the body (if you haven’t already).
Stuff body.
Ears
Make 2 with beige yarn:
Round 1: Sc 5 in magic ring {5}.
Fasten off and leave a long tail for sewing.
Give the piece a slight nudge to turn it knob-like.
Cheeks
Make 2 with pink yarn:
Round 1: Sc 6 in magic ring {6}.
Fasten off and leave a long tail for sewing.
Arms
Make 2. Start with black yarn:
Round 1: Sc 6 in magic ring {6}.
Round 2-3 (2 rounds altogether): Sc around {6}.
Change to red yarn.
Round 4-8 (5 rounds altogether): Sc around {6}.
Fasten off and leave a long tail for sewing.
Legs
Make 2 with black yarn:
Round 1: Sc 7 in magic ring {7}.
Round 2-5 (4 rounds altogether): Sc around {7}.
Fasten off and leave a long tail for sewing.
Stuff lightly.
Hair
This will be for the tail that juts out. With light orange yarn:
Round 1: Sc 5 in magic ring {5}.
Round 2: [Inc] around {10}.
Round 3-8 (6 rounds altogether): Sc around {10}.
Stuff.
Round 9: [Inv dec] around {5}.
Fasten off and leave a long tail for sewing.
Bow
With pink yarn:
Row 1: Ch 18 {17}.
Row 2: Sc in second chain from hook to the end {17}.
Row 3: Ch 1, turn work. Sc to the end {17}.
Fasten off and leave a long tail for sewing.
Fold the edges to meet in the centre. Make a few small backstitches to secure the shape (using the starting end of the tail).
Weave the long tail through to the centre of the piece. Loop it through this middle for about five times. Thread it through to the back and leave the long tail for sewing later on.
Designing the face
1) Cut out two eye whites from white felt, following the shape of Little My’s infamous “judging” eyes. They should be slightly crescent-looking. Match this to the size of the green brads.
2) Glue the eyes whites along with the brads below Round 12 of Little My’s head.
3) With black crochet thread, sew on Little My’s nose, frown and lips. You only need backstitches for these. The base of Little My’s nose should fall below Round 14 of the head.
Creating the hair
1) Little My’s crowning glory is made up of a series of vertical backstitches, which stem from the top centre of the head and down to the front, side and the back of the head accordingly.
2) Start by cutting a manageable length of light orange yarn. Thread it through your darning needle. Bring the yarn in through to the head anywhere near the top. Have it exit at a spot below Round 9 of the head. Then bring the yarn back up to the top near the centre. Continue in this manner till you’ve covered the front part of the head.
3) For the side part of the head, you may want to sew on Little My’s ears to gauge how you can create a lifelike hairstyle – which simply means making the hair slightly longer here. I gradually increased the length of the hair in a diagonal manner, and had the length stopped when I reached the stitches below Round 13 of the head. Repeat the same for the other side of the head.
4) The hair at the back part of the head would look just fine if it ends right below Round 13. You can also make the hair longer, if desired. Do note that if you’re crocheting in a spiral, the stitches won’t always match when you go around in a circle. To ensure that the back of your hair does not suddenly look like it’s descending/ascending in any manner, just make sure that you match the other length of the sideburns to the length of the hair at the back. But it’s really no biggie 🙂
A peek at Little My while she’s napping…
Assembly
1. Sew the body/dress onto the head.
2. Sew on the ears if you haven’t already.
3. Sew on the bow.
4. Sew on the arms and legs.
5. Sew on the additional hair piece at the top of the head, making sure that it covers any bald spots that may still be lurking about there.
6. Sew on the cheeks. I liked mine a little pinker and a different colour from the bow, so I dabbed on some pink blush with a Q-tip 🙂
As this is an original amiguruMEI pattern, kindly do not claim it as your own. You may place a link to this pattern from your site, but please do not repost it onto your page. Remember to share a picture of your own kawaii versions of Little My with us once you’re done 🙂
amiguruMEI 