My challenge - remake an earlier attempt

After my attempt at making a teddy bear up as I went along I wanted to see how much better my skills had gotten so issued myself a challenge.... To make one of the first ever creations I attempted.
My brother's girlfriend bought a knitted bird from New York that she loved so I decided to remake the penguin. As I talked about here second creation - penguin.
I recreated the penguin using the same yarn and hook size etc and was actually surprised at the difference.

The penguin on the left is my original attempt and the penguin on the right was my new attempt.
I can safely say I have improved my skills over time. I also made it much faster than when I first attempted it.
While I still have a lot of improvements and skills still to learn and don't always have the time to potter away with my little experiments and projects, crochet has fulfilled what I was hoping it would. It has kept my mind active and interested in something that is just me. It also provides me with an ability to make some presents for people that have a lot of though, time and effort invested in them.
I also love the online crochet community that shares their creations, tutorials, patterns, tips, etc. thank you if you are someone who shares these things.
Especially Sharon Ojala of Amigurumi to go(@sharonojala) and June Gilbank of Planet June (@PlanetJune)
I spend ages looking at their websites, Twitter feeds and perusing Pinterest for all things crochet.

First ever rug

Finished my first ever granny square rug yesterday.... Or so I thought. I gave it as a present today and had forgotten to sew in one of the threads. So technically I gave someone an unfinished present. Not very thorough. :( sadly only realised as they opened it in front of me!

But I was happy with how it turned out and knew the person I was giving it to would appreciate it more than a store bought toy for their gorgeous baby.

I however underestimated the amount of yarn I would need and ran out of the purple colour. So my rug was a row or two smaller than I had wanted but figured it was still suitable for pram outings and the like.

I like the colours I chose and how it lay flat after I stitched the squares together. Just still kicking myself that I forgot to sew in the thread!

I got the granny square pattern here granny square pattern

It had pictures and explained everything nicely for a crochet newbie like me. A good granny square to start with.

joining granny squares is the page I looked at to decide how to join them.

First made up amigurumi - no pattern!

I decided to have a go at making an amigurumi without a pattern. I just made this up as I went along.
I wanted to give it as a present but I think the legs are too fat and out of proportion so don't want to give it as it doesn't look perfect.
It sits up nicely though which was my aim. I only stuffed the ends of the legs so that the upper leg would go flat when the toy sat up. I had made the legs a bit fatter to try and compensate for this but maybe I didn't need to.
Overall I was happy with it but still need to make improvements.

First ever creation - monkey

My first ever creation. I got the pattern from one of the books I bought from book depository (pic below).
I now know that I slightly over stuffed this little monkey so you can see the stuffing in places but I was so pleased that I was able to follow the pattern and it look similar to the picture on the back of the book.

First blog post

Late last year I had my gorgeous child and took maternity leave to care for said gorgeous child.
One thing I had not counted on was the brain fade I had for not challenging my brain in the same way as when I was working. (not to suggest looking after a baby is easy, the challenges are just very different)
So I decided I would teach myself a new skill. My mother made us many things when we were little so I decided I wanted to make my child a toy so decided to learn crochet.
I used you tube to learn through tutorials like Crochet tutorial and googled crochet toys.
My googling taught me that crochet critters have a name, amigurumi, and that there are some SUPER talented people out there.
I was inspired so went to The Book Depository and purchased some books.
East crochet critters
Crobots

Then had a crack at it. I really enjoy it and enjoy reading others' blogs so decided to create one to show my attempts at crochet and to link to patterns I have used.

While I'm still enjoying the challenge, I'll keep creating.

Crochet is the current solution to challenge myself.