Rachel a.k.a. Rae "Heavenly Stuffed"Location: Redding, California, USA
I am a stay at home mom who might have found her niche in life, crocheting! I am happily married to my awesome husband Eric and I am mom to our 17 month old daughter Kira. I feel truly blessed to be apart of their lives.
I became interested in amigurumi on a trip to Barnes & Noble's with my husband on a date last year in the early spring. We were in the hobby section and one of the books caught my eye. It was Ana Paula Rimoli's book, "Amigurumi World: Seriously Cute Crochet."
 |
My cute daughter Kira helping me out. |
As I flipped through the pages of colorful animals in cute little scenes I was amazed and immediately asking myself, "How are those made? I wonder if I could do it!?" Of course the only time I heard of crochet was from my mom and receiving afghans as presents, I had no idea it could be used for something like amigurumi.
 |
The left is my first project and the right is to show my progress. |
Kira was about 7 months old and I didn't have enough free time to work on artwork, so I was heavily pondering a new hobby that was creative, beneficial to the family and kept my interest. So, I decided to give amigurumi a try. My husband bought Ana's books for me on amazon.com and I started plugging away at the first pattern in her book. I remember calling my mom and asking over the phone how to increase stitches after trying for hours on my own. My first project took me well over 20 hours, but I learned a lot and was determined I would not give up on it.
 |
Elli from Pocoyo and other early projects. |
When you become a parent, you learn to choose what you want to do with your free time wisely. How much you enjoy to do it is also very important, because your options go from anything to around 5 activities. At least it did for me! So, since art was out of the question since I hated having to walk away from unfinished work I was determined to learn how to crochet. After about 5 different amigurumi projects I noticed I was getting faster and I was understanding patterns much easier and efficiently.
 |
Totoro hat for Kira. |
It's been almost 10 months now and I still love to crochet. I have made numerous gifts for friends, my family and lots of toys for Kira. The best part about crocheting amigurumi is that you can crochet your child's favorite characters without having to spend outrageous amounts of money on them elsewhere. Plus, it was made by you and they will surely appreciate when they are older. Being able to crochet has also kept me very happy not only because I think it's fun, but because I can create pretty much anything I want with yarn. Like a new table runner, hats, motifs to put on clothes, purses, necklaces, earrings, you name it! When you are in charge of the budget and staying at home, not having to spend money on these things really makes a difference. I have actually been more fond of the things I have created than those I have bought in the store on almost every occasion.
Since my daughter has gotten to the age where I have some free time again, I decided I wanted to start this blog and work on selling patterns and making video tutorials. It has been wonderful learning how to make the videos and write the patterns and it has given me the confidence I have been missing since I left the work place. In the end, I am definitely happy I finished my first project and continue to crochet today.
