Welcome addition or distracting menace?

I’ve been on a cross stitch and perler bead kick… and now that I’ll be doing a workshop for each at Tsukino-Con 2011, in addition to my crochet panel, it’s unavoidable that these crafts eat up more of my crafting time and attention.

The thing is… this is “Neridugurumi”, not “Nerdiguperlerbeads” or “Nerdigucrossstitch”… so what I’d like to know from my fabulous readers is, information regarding those crafts, patterns, tips on where to find supplies, tutorials, should I include it (read include, NOT replace… amigurumi is still where my heart lies) here or not? I know I am definitely not up to creating another site just for this purpose, because I barely have enough time to maintain this one, so it’s sort of a go or no go sort of thing… so riddle me this, would you, my awesome readers, be pleased if I expanded this website to include this new realm of nerdy crafting, or should I be a purist and feature amigurumi and amigurumi only? Please leave a comment with your yay or nay or filibuster, as appropriate 🙂

Nerdigurumi Peanut Tutorial Bear

This pattern was the basis for the 2010 Amigurumi Workshops I did at Anime Evolution and Tsukino Con and is also the mascot for my website. It’s a fairly small and simple no-sew (for the body, the ears are sew on) pattern great for beginners that has step by step videos to help you on your way.

The videos were made to be shown at an in-person panel so they make references to “your kit” and things of that nature, but the techniques displayed remain relevant. There are different optional ears so you can make your peanut a cat, bear, dog or bunny or improvise things like hairdos or antennae to make any sort of weirdo or creature you like!

Click to get the Amigurumi Tutorial Peanut Pattern

I live in Victoria BC, a moderately sized Canadian city that is uber-westcoasty and is blessed with a University that is blessed with an Anime club that has blessed our community with an annual anime, manga and Japanese cultural convention, previously called Kei-kon, now reborn as Tsukino-Con. This has been great for the kid, and to be truthful we had a hoot last year too. All are looking forward to the convention in February, despite my nervousness at the continually decreasing amount of time I have to sew costumes.

Tsukino Con 2010

We are n00bs on the scene, however as always, being the eternal meddler, I wanted to *do* something, so I have signed up to do a workshop panel type creature where I teach Amigurumi crochet. I did a dry-run of my really ambitious plan which is now being reworked and scaled back to a more sane and doable version, however the videos I prepared may be helpful to the interwebs as a whole so I have released them on the youtubes in all of their “made for Tsukino-Con” glory. There are some references to kits and local stores which are irrelevant, but the video quality is decent and I remembered to stay in frame for most of it, so they videos may be of help to folks just starting out and wondering what exactly they should be doing with the tangled mess of yarn that stands before them.

I learned from horrible grainy youtube videos, and now I pass that torch to the next generation… behold, the Nerdigurumi Youtube channel!

Nerdigurumi Peanut Tutorial Bear

Of particular note, is this playlist that has instructional videos of pretty much each row of the pattern I designed for the workshop. It’s basically a peanut (see left) that can become a bear, a bunny, a cat, a dog with floppy ears like Cinnamoroll, or can remain a peanut. It’s a short project and the videos go over most of the steps so if you need some hand holding, I’m your girl! Plus when you are done you get to have this little weirdo on your left, and what’s not awesome about that?