Thinking Over Lollo #2

I have two major projects I need to get started one. One is a Mother's Day gift that will surely take quite a bit of time and the other is Lollo #2. Lollo #2 is in memory of my Elizabeth, my little angel. This bear is to sit on her memory box as a glittery winged guardian, so I don't want him to be quite the size of Katie's Lollo. However, I want to use the same thickness of yarn, which means I can't use much smaller of hooks. Here's what I'll be changing:

I'll only be using TWO hooks this time, instead of 4-5. Two is really only necessary, one for the bottom part of the body and the head, and one for the parts that taper off.

I'm not going to do double thick yarn on hands and feet. It makes them a bit too big and since this bear won't be played with roughly, there's no real need to double up both sides. Not to mention, the bear will have flowers in it's hands, so you won't see much of them.

I'm doing the hexagon/pentagon pattern differently by doing round 5 as either a single crochet or a half crochet. Right now I'm thinking of doing a single and then sewing them together.

If I don't sew these motifs together, this time I'm going to crochet the patterns inside out to get a smoother joining.

I may take out a round in the body and arms. I'm not sure about this yet as it may turn out a bit strange, but I may use the smaller hook on the head to shrink it a bit, then skip round three in the body and take one round off the arms to make them not look too long. I think I'll leave the legs go though, as they look a little short on Lollo #1.

I'm not sure what size hooks I'll be using yet, but probably the two smallest ones I've used last time if that's possible. This should be a true experiment, to see if Lollo#2 comes out looking alright!

I also need to find a pattern on how to make large angel wings with fingerling yarn. But, that's something to worry about much later!

EDIT: after much deliberation, and reading through other people's reviews (the ones who didn't use 6 tiny itty bitty hooks) I decided to use size 3.25 and 3.50. The most common variant is 3.25 and 3.75, but I want to make this as small as it'll go with these larger hooks, so I want the larger pieces just barely larger. We'll see how this goes! Starting now!

Oh, and these are the colors I chose (the small yarn is white and glittery, I'm going to use it for the wings and possible the eye motifs.)

and a rough draft of how I'm going to decorate Elizabeth's Lollo. The necklace will be a handbeaded string of rubies with a cross at the bottom, the rose at the ear will be crocheted and with the soft pink yarn that's leftover from Katie's bear to add a give a little sisterly addition, the wings will be crocheted out of the glitter yarn above, the earrings will be little wings on each side, and she'll hold a bouquet of beautiful flowers in her hand. I can't decide between which one I want yet though, there's three at Walmart that just jump out at me, so I'm going to wait until Lollo is more finished to decide...hopefully they'll all still be there!)

   

Lollo bear - COMPLETED!!

Lollo is finished!

I'm so proud that I stuck with it and got it done. There were tempting moments were it was taking so long and parts were frustrating that I just wanted to put it aside. There's only so many hexagons and pentagons you can make before you start going a little crazy! (I was up at 3 AM last night working on hexagons. I started timing myself - thought I was doing well until I saw that it took almost exactly 9 minutes for each one at top speed. Seeing how many I had to make plus all the putting together time...MANY hours went into this bear!)

I was so excited last night to get the bear done that I nearly stayed awake to keep going. Instead, I stopped around 3 AM after the very last hexagons had to be made. I stuffed them inside the feet pockets that I had already put together and then headed for bed.

The legs really were quite easy. The double yarn feet killed my fingers and were slow going, but beside that the legs were the easiest to put together, I think. The feet looked huge to me when putting them together but they look perfect now that they're on the bear.

I decided to do something different with the legs than what I did with the arms. With the arms, I sewed together half of the two hexagons (one on the shoulder and one on the under arm). With the legs, I did what I would have done with the button method, but without the buttons. It really doesn't seem like the buttons do too much more than what the string alone does. Now Lollo bear can both stand up and sit (though his leg joints aren't strong enough to stand him up by himself, he needs to lean. However, he can sit up by himself.)

I think my favorite thing is that Lollo bear is the same size as Katie. I think she may be about two inches taller, if that. How exciting later on, that I'll get to tell her how I made her that bear when she was the size of it.

Speaking of Katie, she LOVES it. As soon as she saw me carrying it around to take pictures, she started wailing her arms and asking for him. I stopped taking pictures, moved them down to the nursery and let her at him. She walked over, studied him for a moment, then gave him a big hug and giggled. How adorable! She likes walking back and forth to him and then cuddling up for a few moments. He definitely makes her happy, so it was well worth the time I put into him!

She wanted to be in all of the Lollo pictures once she got ahold of him, so some part of her managed to get into most of the nursery pictures!

Now that he's finished, all we have to do is decide on a gender for the bear (keep calling him he even though its so pink and for a girl and was meant to be girly) and decide on a cute name.

And one last one - me and my labor of love!

Lollo Progress and a tiny Easter Basket

Lollo now has eyes! I decided to go with felt eyes, as I thought they'd fair better than embroidered and safer than plastic. I also have started on Lollo's feet. I decided after the difficulty with the hands, that I'd do both feet at the same time. Which means this is going really slow! Double yarned hexagons take me forever with tiny needles. Once the feet are together, the legs will go much quicker.

Here's pictures of the last day or two's progress:
(the hexagons/pentagons are the toes, heels and one top foot)

And I did another project - great timing as well, as every part of it was on sale! Glitter tulles for 1.99 each and the basket for .99. I made a tutu with embroidery floss stringing them together and then glued them all to the rim of the basket. I added little white roses and a heart/wings pendant that were leftover from the Calvin's Hats. Whole thing took me about fifteen minutes, but I do love how it looks! This little one is for our Elizabeth.

Lollo - days 8-10

Being sick, I've been forced to go slow with Lollo (yes, that's right - I'm STILL sick! Over a week of sneezing, coughing yuckiness.) but, I've finally gotten both of his arms on and attached to the rest of his body.

The arms went ary , I'll admit. I'm not sure why. Both arms had a weird top hexagon attachment (the last one just wouldn't go on correctly both times, even though counting the stitches and doing it slowly says it should have went fine.) Then the paw of the second arm turned out noticeably bigger than the first arm - something I didn't notice until the arm was completely sewn up and stuffed. I managed to rig it pretty successfully, by just working with the method of how you do the eye indents. I also didn't notice until the arm was done and stuffed that second arm was wavy. I have NO idea why this could be, but the inner arm at the wrist actually seemed smaller than the outer, which should be impossible because each hexagon (double checked before sewing together) matched perfectly and were all the same size. Luckily, once it was attached to the bear, you couldn't really tell. I figure once it's played with, it'll probably look normal. It just was a bit odd while the whole body is stiff from not getting played with yet.

So, I did run into a few problems, but nothing major. I had to retry a few things and sometimes I just had to rig it, but Lollo looks great still and you can't tell where things went wrong (at least I can't.)

I bought the buttons to make Lollos arms jointed, but decided at the last minute not to. I decided against plastic eyes because of choking hazards, then realized I might as well stick to the "choking hazard free" bear and skip the buttons. Turns out, they aren't really needed, at least with how I did the arms. I took the inner top arm's hexagon and matched it the the shoulder's hexagon, then sewed with double yarn half way around the hexagon. I also sewed the under arm half way across the hexagon. This gives the arm security but mobility. I can still lift the arms and move them around without any buttons attached. Sewing around the full hexagon, as I had done with the head, I think would have made the arms too stiff and unmoving.

And last but not least, here's Lollo pictures! I put the bear on a glider to get a better idea about the size:

Lollo Day 7

Okay, finally sickness is going away! Yesterday I managed to pull myself together, crochet six hexagons and then put them all together, stuffed them and made the left arm. I was a little worried honestly, as I could actually fit my hand and arm into this bear's arm! (It went up a little past my elbow.) It's definitely not a small bear.

Today I have to make six more hexagons and two double yarn hexagons (which for some reason just take me forever). The last hexagon of the arm yesterday was so hard to attach for some reason. I even pinned it down and crocheted along perfectly, counting each stitch and it still didn't come out right at all. I undid it three times before just "making" it work (which really isn't very hard to do in dire circumstances, I found myself doing it often to the bottom of the body. You really can't tell in the finished product unless you really want to scour each shape and count each side to see how many stitches are there. It might make you go blind first!)

I may just stitch on the last hexagon instead of doing the make do way this time, as I have no idea what goes wrong and how to fix it. But in the end, it looks just fine and probably holds the stuffing in better.

I am a bit concerned if this bear gets a lot of use. The stuffing does stay in, as long as no little fingers try to wiggle in the big holes. I wonder if he's hugged enough if the stuffing will start coming out too. The holes in the motifs aren't terribly big, but they're not tiny either.

Here's some pictures from yesterday:

Day 7 & 8...cancelled!

Well, maybe not cancelled, but definitely moved. Just when I'm thinking that I can bust out the rest of this bear before the end of the weekend, needing to only do limbs yet, I get hit with a nasty sickness. I managed to crochet two double yarned hexagons and put them together before I was taken over by fevers and instability. My poor half-paw is sitting beside me, asking "aren't you going to finish me yet?" It's true, I'm no longer feverish and I probably could handle crocheting, but I'm just too drained to handle this new way of putting together hexagons. So, my new plan is to work on at least the one arm tomorrow, and get this bear finished by Wednesday. For now, Lollo only has one thing added to her since last time - a big pink glittery heart ribbon around her neck.

Lollo: day 6

I ended up getting much less done with Lollo than I originally thought I would, as DH surprised me with coming home early and taking me out to celebrate our anniversary so Lollo had to wait! But when we came back home and watched a movie, I picked Lollo back up and finished piecing together her head.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the head is MUCH easier to do than the body. I thought it would be harder, as you have to shape it and there's more dimensions to it but it really comes together quite naturally. I found that half way through I barely needed the instructions anymore because you could just see where the shapes needed to be filled in.

I love Lollo's ears. They're just adorable! They were pretty while making them and they so naturally form into ear shapes. Sewing them on seamlessly to an opened motif was interesting but not too difficult.

The pattern gives no say about how to attach the head to the body, so I did it my way. For some reason, in the pattern her attachments lay flat but mine poke out. As I very carefully followed every instruction, I'm not sure where I went wrong and I'm wondering if maybe it's the thicker yarn with the tiny hooks that are causing it to pucker. However, I don't mind the look and it came in handy at this part. I took the bottom pentagon at the base of the skull and the top pentagon on the body and matched them together. Since the seams pucker out, I just connected them through the seams. That way it's connected really well and it looks quite seamless. It makes the puckered look like it was on purpose as the two mesh well together. I'm sure it would have been much more difficult to securely attach the head without straining the motifs without the puckered lining.

This bear is a bit bigger than the normal pattern, but I adore the size. It's bigger than a standard teddy and gives lots of room to cuddle. I believe I'll stick with this size instead of trying to be more true to the pattern and using smaller ones.

Today, Day 7, I'll be working on the arms. I haven't gotten to start on them, or even read through the pattern yet, but I'm hoping I'll be able to finish at least one today if not both.

Here's Lollo last night:

(the lack of eyes still is because I decided to wait until the end to add the detailed bits. I'm still trying to figure out what I want to use for them.)