Last weekend was the big Vancouver anime convention, Anime Evolution. It was awesome, great cosplays, lots of neat events and the dealer’s hall was cool. I think as with Tsukino, I most enjoyed the artists and crafter’s alley. The panel went really badly but really wonderfully at the same time. No projector, speakers or screen meant the helpful videos demonstrating techniques could not be seen, and more people than we had bargained for meant we had to either turn people away or run out of supplies (we chose the latter and improvised as we could), but it all came together beautiful. People were really happy, appreciative and enthusiastic and there were some amazing guardian angel types helping everyone else out with the techniques, since the demos weren’t visible by most people in the room.

I had a great time though and hope to do this again next year, armed of course with more supplies and more vigilance about chasing down projectors and things way ahead of time!

I made this video to illustrate the differences in the final look of Amigurumi, depending on whether a person crochets in one loop or both, and whether the right side or the wrong side is facing out. I see a lot of Amigurumi that are done wrong side out, and it’s a shame because it can make the piece look more chunky, less flowing and “nice”, as it would had they been working right side out.

When I first started out making Amigurumi, I came across the unfortunate and in my opinion, incorrect advice that it is always best to crochet in one loop only, because you use less yarn and your stitches are taller so it takes less time to work a piece up. What they failed to mention is that this technique makes most of your shapes look like chunky messes and that they always stretch and get weird, are too long and you can’t do the invisible decrease. It took a lot of grief, pulled apart pieces, disappointed pieces and confusion on my part as to why I was so unable to make my final piece look anything like the pattern, and why my crocheting looks so Frankensteiny compared to what I was seeing online.

When I figured it all out, it was a lightbulb moment, but I made this video to pass on the wisdom. The balls, each having the same amount of stitches, increases and decreases arranged in the same way, same hook, same tension, yet looking so different. Have a look and figure out which one you’d like your piece to look like.

I’ve put together a couple of quick and dirty videos on how to do the slip stitch details addons for Mr. Bubbles’ dive suit cuffs, drill etc because I found it really difficult to explain and after a few emails I received, it became apparent it was really difficult to comprehend as well.