Succulent Amigurumi

Hey guys. I'm so glad you guys are here. Welcome to another live crochet event if we've never met before. My name is Brenda Kb Anderson and I'm a crochet instructor and I'm very excited to show you guys what we're gonna be working on today. This cute succulent Amaga roomie. Isn't it adorable? It's so cute. Um I am not very good at keeping plants in my house alive. Um I'm better at gardening outside because then it rains and I, I am not the only one responsible for watering it. Um So this just kinda seems like a natural project for me to work on. So I have a cute little plant that uh will just survive looking perky and awesome all the time on my, on my shelf. Um And I'm gonna be walking you guys through how to make it today. And I'm very excited to be doing an Amaga roomie project. I love, love creating toys, um Amaga Roomy and teaching people how to work them up. It, it's just kind of a magical thing to be able to take a yarn and turn it into something that people have an emotional reaction to that something that you wanna hug or that might make you smile or cheer you up. It's just a really amazing thing to be able to do that. So I'm very excited to share that with you guys today. All right, and welcome back to anybody who has been, you know, who has seen these videos before. I am so glad you guys are here. I'm glad you guys come back. It's so nice to see like um returning folks' names that I, I'm starting to recognize. That's just a good feeling and I'm glad you guys come back. All right. So let's, let's start by talking about the materials. So for this little guy, you can see that there is this sort of rust color or sort of almost a salmony orangey color for the pot. But of course, you can make the pot, you know, any color you want and then there's a green for the succulent leaves. And then inside here, I have a little bit of a dark brown for the dirt and this is the color that I have listed in the download, which by the way, there is a free download free for everybody. Um You can find the link in the description or in the comments section and go ahead and download that so you can follow along. But if you, you know, if you don't want to download it right now, it'll still be available later. So don't worry about that. You can always come back and get it later. Um But for the purposes of showing you guys my stitch work, I decided the dark brown was just too dark. You wouldn't be able to see what I was doing. So I'm going to be, instead of using dark brown in this uh demonstration, I'm gonna be using this tan color. So we're gonna have a little bit more of a sandy, sandy dirt for our succulent today. All right. So you need three kinds of yarn and I am using a super bulky Chanel yarn. So it's very thick, it works up quickly. Um It's fun to work with and it makes such a cute, very, very soft project. It's very fun. However, if you are brand new to crochet, um I would recommend not using this yarn but finding something else because this yarn can be a little bit problematic, it can snap a little bit more easily than other yarns also. Um It, it is a little harder to see your stitches. So, um and if you are having trouble during this video, I'll try to make it clear where my stitches are and I'm using lighter colored yarn. But if you need some extra um sort of Amega roomy help. I did do uh an Amega Roomie that's aimed at beginners on Craft Sea. So you can find that it's called um Hot Chocolate and Marshmallows. So it's a very cute little Hot chocolate marshmallow set. Um And you can see my stitches very clearly in that live event because I am using this kind of yarn. I know this is dark so that you're not gonna be able to see, but it's a solid yarn. It's like a tube of a knit fabric filled with a little strand of polyester on the inside, but it makes the stitches very clear. Um So if you need a little extra help seeing what I'm doing, I would recommend I'll also checking out that live too. All right. So, um, if you substitute with another yarn, it really doesn't matter what thickness of yarn you, you choose, um, you can do worse of weight, yarn. I know a lot of people have that in their stash. You can use a super bulky, a chunky weight. It really doesn't matter. Just pick a hook that gives you a nice sturdy fabric where you don't see holes between your stitches because that's the most important thing when you're working on amaga roomy, usually the gauge isn't really that important and sometimes it's not even really important at all. Um, but that it will affect the size of your finished item. So if you have a thinner yarn, you work it up with a smaller hook, you're gonna get a smaller, little succulent. But you know what? It is just as cute. So it doesn't matter. All right. So you need those three kinds of yarn plus a little bit of I'm using a little bit of that smooth yarn that I used. It's leftovers from that Hot chocolate, uh a agai project that I worked on before. Um But you don't need to use the specific yarn. You can use just a worst weight, dark brown or black yarn or you can even use embroidery floss. Um It doesn't really matter. This is just gonna be used for creating the features, just the little mouth and these little eyebrows on the side. So that's all that is used for. Ok. And then you're gonna need some fiber fill. So you'll just need a couple of handfuls of fiber fill. This is more than you would need. Um It does pack down pretty small though. So when you put it in that pot, you know, it's gonna be a lot smaller. You need a lot more volume than you might think if you've never used this before. Um So you need a little bit of that for stuffing and then you're gonna need two safety eyes. I used 10 millimeter eyes in my project, but um I have since depleted my stash of 10 millimeter eyes. So today I'm gonna be using 12 millimeter safety eyes. So it's a little plastic eye that's shaped kind of like a bolt and then it has a little plastic backing that's naps onto the back side of it after it's gone through your fabric and that's what keeps it in place. And just now, even though they're called safety eyes. If you're planning on making this for ac a child younger than three, it is a choking hazard to use safety eyes. So do not use safety eyes. Just use some, you know, make some large French knots or something for embroidery because you don't want the kids to be able to kind of chew those eyes out of its head and choke on them. That would be terrible. So, um, OK, the last group of things you'll need is a toothbrush um and a a bright pink permanent marker. It could be a sharpie or it could also be a fabric marker and then a little plastic area to draw on. So it could just like be a lid to a yogurt container. I'm just gonna be using this little bottle cap. Um It, it could be plastic or metal, just whatever it is, it shouldn't soak up any of the pigment for the marker. And you might be wondering why do you have that toothbrush? What is going on? So this, this stuff is used for coloring the tips of the leaves. Here's your little preview, see how they have just like a little bit of that pinkish purply edging on the tips. Um To make it look more like a real succulent, you don't have to do that. That's totally optional, but I feel like it just sort of brings, I don't know, just another layer of cuteness to this project. Just a little unexpected, extra bit of color there. All right. So if you guys have any questions or if you wanna say hello or for example, Chris says good morning from Windsor Ontario. Good morning, Chris. I'm glad you're here. Thanks for saying hi. Um Go ahead and drop that in the comment section. I love to hear from you guys. I like to hear where you're crocheting from or what you're working on or I also love it when people make suggestions for future projects. Um So you can drop those in the comment section as well or if you have any questions, questions about Amaga Roomy in general or questions about the project I'm working on. I, you know, definitely just drop that in the comments and I'll get to that during our live today. OK. So, and of course, you will, if you're gonna be working on this project, you're gonna need to download the Succulent Amaga Roomy uh pattern and that's got all of the instructions, everything you need to know is in this download. So, and there's even pictures um that will help you out when you're assembling the leaves just to kind of remind you how that goes. Um So it's, it's a sort of a helpful tool to have when you're constructing this project. All right. So we're gonna start out by working on the pot. The pot is begun by working from the bottom of the pot upwards and we're gonna be working in um uno joined rounds, which just basically means you're working in a spiral. You don't have to join at the end of your round. The joining that just means you make a slip stitch into the first stitch of the round. Then you chain one to start the second round. We're not doing any of that in this project. We're just going around and around and around. OK. So we're gonna start because I'm using this Chanel yarn. I don't make a magic ring. I make a magic ring with almost every, almost every kind of Amer room unless it's made with Shanil Yarn because the Chanel yarn tends to break a little bit. So this is what I do instead. So I'm going to create a slipknot and put that on my hook and then I'm gonna chain 21 and two. And then I'm gonna start by putting six single crochets into the first chain that we made. OK? So that's the second chain from the hook. So we're gonna do six single crochets right there. So insert, you're an over, pull up a loop, you're an over pull through two. That is the first stitch and I'm gonna put a stitch marker in there. Yeah. Oh I should mention too. I forgot to tell you what size hook I'm using. I'm using an eye which is a 5.5 millimeter hook. But you can use any hook. You need to in order to get a nice firm gauge it, you know, it's totally up to you. All right. So I made one stitch and now I'm gonna make five more single crochets. So one insert an over, pull up a loop and over, pull through two. That's a single crochet. So I've got three so far and I'm kind of running out of room, but I'm going to just rotate this and start working into the bottom of that chain And I'm just gonna pull that. This is my yarn tail, just kind of pulling that out of the way there. So one to and three. So now we have a total of six. Um And at this point, uh you can go ahead and weave in this tail and, or you can wait till the next round, but I like to do it pretty close to the beginning because that's going to help us cinch in this little tiny hole. It's not too obvious, but maybe you can see if I kind of move it away. There's a hole right there. You can see my finger through, we can cinch that in to make it a little bit tighter. It looks a little better. And if you don't do that, it kind of makes the bottom of your pot right here. Just a little bit pointy. And we want it to be nice and flat. Ok. So the next round, we're gonna do two single crochets into each stitch around and then I'll show you what I mean by weaving in that yarn tail. So one, two, two stitches into each stitch, 34, five and six, seven and eight, nine and 10, 11 and 12. OK. So that was two single crochets into each stitch around. OK. And now we are going to weave in this yarn tail and we're gonna do it in a way that kind of cinches in that hole. This is basically taking the place of doing that initial um magic loop or adjustable loop or whatever you wanna call it. All right. So this is the wrong side of our work. I had just flipped it over. So I'm looking at the backside and I am going to pick up uh I'm gonna try to pick up a horizon or a vertical loop from the post of each of those single crochets. You can, you can go underneath two loops of each stitch is fine. Um But it might be hard to do that. So you wherever your needle kind of wants to fit, but try to pick up at least one loop from each of those six stitches as you go around and then you can go ahead and just pull on that and that'll tighten it right up. See now it's nice and flat and then just to make sure that it doesn't slip open, you're gonna wanna weave that in a couple of directions just through the back of your work here. I know this sometimes seems like a waste of time because it's not, your yarn tail is not gonna be seen, but we just wanna make sure that that is not gonna open up later because it's harder to fix later. All right. So we're just gonna trim that off. I always leave a little bit of a tail if it's not gonna be seen just to keep it, you know, just so I don't cut it right down next to my stitches because then it might start working its way out or I might accidentally cut another stitch. It just really doesn't matter if this is kind of just hanging out there. So I let it. All right. So round number three. Oh, we have Christy's from Springfield, Missouri. Hello and welcome. And Marlena is saying, hello. Hi, Marlena. Thanks for popping in and saying hi. All right. So now we're working on round three and we're gonna do, let me see. Let me just check. OK, two single crochets into the next stitch and one into the following stitch. All right. So two single crochets, one and two into the next stitch. Oops gonna mark that beginning of the round here and then one single crochet into the following stitch which is right here. Two in the next one and two and one in the following two in the next one and two and one in the following two in the next one and two and one in the following. Ok. Two in the next and one in the following two in the next one and two and one in the following stitch. All right. So now we have a total of 18 on the next round. We're gonna do single crochet into the next two stitches and make an increase in the neck in the, in the following stitch. So, what that means is we're gonna do a single crochet here, just one. I'm gonna mark it and then we're gonna do a single crochet in the next stitch and the following stitch, we're going to do two single crochets that's also known as an increase. So one and two. OK. So we're gonna repeat that all the way around. So one, one and two, 11 and two, 11 and two. 11 and two. We're gonna do it one more time. 11 and two. All right. So now we have a total of 24 stitches around our circle and the following round, we're going to just work a single crochet into each stitch, but we're gonna work underneath the back loop only. So what that means is normally we put our hook underneath both strands. So here's the first strand and then there's the second strand, there's two right next to each other. That's in that one stitch. Normally we put a hook under both, but in this case, we're just going to be using the back loop. So that's just this back one here OK. So we're gonna skip that front loop and work a single crochet into each stitch around. So there's the first one and we'll continue working underneath just that back loop. And you'll be able to see there's kind of a distinct line from all of those unused front loops that you can see right there. That's how, you know you're doing it right. And what it does is it allows us to have a little bit of a corner here at the bottom of our pot because we're gonna start making the sides of our pot. At this point. I like to use this a lot when I need sort of a 90 degree angle or some sort of a place to give your piece a, a place to bend instead of just having it curve, which I mean, you could work it under both loops and it would curve upward but it, it just doesn't have quite as sharp of an angle as when you work underneath that, just that back loop. OK. So the next round, we are going to begin our increases. So an increase that just means you place two single crochets in a stitch in this pattern. That's what it means. So we're gonna do uh we can do an increase right away. Um Normally I do that so that I don't forget where I did it. But what, what we're gonna be doing over the next three rounds. So rounds number six, round number seven and round. Number eight is we're working this one stitch in each stitch around, except for one stitch, we'll get two stitches. So if we put our increase here on this round, on the next round, we want our increase to be far away from here. So we could do it maybe over here and then on the third round, we can do one over here. So they don't have to be in a specific stitch. You just wanna make sure you're not stacking them all up on top of each other. You just wanna kind of spread them out. So here we'll do an increase right here in our first stitch and then we're gonna work one single crochet into each stitch around. Now we're working under both loops once again. OK? So it was just for that one round that we did that back loop only situation. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We are almost all the way around and I had forgotten to put my stitch marker back in, but that's OK because I know where I started. All right. So there's that first increase that we made right there. So the next increase we're gonna place it over here. And 111 thing you can do if you're not used to this sort of like just deciding where to put your increase is at the beginning of the round, you can decide where you're gonna put your increase because you can tell where your last one was and then you can put a stitch marker in a different color in the spot where you're planning to make your increase if you want. That sometimes helps. Um So you don't forget to make it because sometimes you can get, especially if you're doing this, you know, increasing thing. If you were making a very large circle or something like that, you might forget while you're part way around. Like, did I do my increase in this round? I don't remember, but we're gonna do, we're gonna go about two thirds of the way around and put an increase in this round here. This is round number seven, I'll do a couple more stitches. All right, here's where we're gonna put our increase. So two single crochets into that one stitch that counts as the increase and then we just finish one stitch in each round. I mean, one stitch in each stitch to the end of the round there. OK. So we've worked now round number five was the first one above this line. Number six, number seven. And then number eight, we would work, you know, one more increase. So I would work over to here about this area right here and then do two stitches in my stitch and work all the way around. OK? So then that, that completes the increase section and then there's three rounds of just single crocheting around after that. So rounds 9, 10 and 11, you're just placing one stitch in each stitch around and then your piece will look like this. It'll be a cylinder shape. So then once you get to round 12, we are going to single crochet around and round 12. But we're only going to be working underneath that front loop. Remember how last time we worked underneath that, just that back loop. This time we're working under only the front loop, which is right here, that loop in front. So we're gonna make one stitch into each stitch around. And the reason we're working underneath the front loop is because this is the point in the pot where I like the, we're kind of creating that ridge in the pot that, you know, in a Terracotta pot. Um So it looks, it's basically just fabric folded over, but we're just kind of creating this ridge. So we are right here and I needed a place. I'm making a place for our fabric to fold easily so that it's nice and tidy when you flip it down, it looks really good all the way around and you don't have to mess around with it to make sure it's kind of folded evenly. It'll just do that on its own because we're giving it a point to bendet. OK. So now you can see this, it just wants to fold right along that line there where that little unused loop is. You can just see the top of it, see how that just wants to, just wants to fold there. So you'll just continue working in that front loop all the way around um to just before your stitch marker to that last stitch. OK? And then the next two rounds are just single crochet in each stitch around just one stitch per stitch. And you're working underneath both loops as normal and then your piece will look like this. OK? So let me fold it back up. It'll be nice and tall, but it's gonna want to fold right along that line there where that unused loop is that can be right at the top edge of your pot. OK. So, uh we've worked with the last stitch and then we can do what I like to call an invisible joint. You don't have to do that if you want, you don't want to, you can just slip stitch in the next stitch and pull, you know, cut your yarn and pull it through. But I like to do an invisible joint in a lot of my amaga roomy projects, especially when it's made with um a thicker yarn because it's a little bit more. It just helps blend in um the edge of your work because you can see there's a little bit of a stair step here. So we're going to fix that by just um pulling our loop up through here. So you'll cut your yarn, pull it up through and then we're gonna thread that onto a needle just a yarn needle tapestry needle. And then we are going to basically make what looks like the top of a stitch and we're gonna make it right on top of this stitch right here. So we're gonna take our needle and go in from the front underneath both loops of the following stitch that are like two stitches away. So, here's the next stitch that we didn't work yet. That was the first stitch of the round. Here's the second stitch of the round. So we're gonna put our needle underneath both loops right there and pull on it until this strand is about the same width as the width or as the stitch below. And then you're gonna put your needle back from whence. It came right here. This was the very last stitch that we had made. We had pulled our thread through. So here, I'll put my needle between the two legs of that stitch. So there's one leg there and one leg there. So you're gonna put your needle right in the middle. That's where your strand came out from. And then you're gonna go straight down through the thickness of your piece. You're not popping, your needle is not popping up the front, but you're just kind of slicing through the middle of those stitches. And we're gonna pull on this until we complete that stitch there. So it looks just like any of the other stitches on the top. And you cannot see where that, you know, can't see where that join was made. I mean, there is a little bit of an angle here, but it's a lot less obvious, you know, than that stair step we had before. And like I said, this is totally optional. You don't need to do this. This might seem a little fussy. Um, but it's really, you know, it's actually pretty quick and you got to weave in that end, any end in any way. Um And by the way too, this, remember, this is going to be folded to the outside. This is actually outside of your work. So when you weave in this yarn tail, you just wanna make sure that it's not showing on the side that's going to be um on the outside. So it might be better just to weave it in with this side showing here in case you get any funny little loops showing. All right. And then I'm gonna trim that off just like that and that's our pot. Ok? And we'll do the, the uh face and everything later towards the end. Ok? So the next thing we're gonna work on is the dirt. Um We've got Mary saying hi from Manza Italy. Hello and welcome. And Felicia is saying good morning to everyone. Good morning, Felicia. It's morning here too. Ok. So let's start out working on our, our dirt. So, like I said before, um I recommend using in the pattern I listed this as my dirt color, but really dirt comes in lots of different colors, of course. Um, and I'm gonna be showing the dirt in this color today so you guys can see it a little better. So, um, the beginning of the dirt is exactly the same as the bottom of the pot. You can see it's exactly the same. So all the way through round number five where we did our single crochet through that back loop. Only remember that from when we worked on the pot. It's exactly the same for the dirt. Ok? Except this time we're starting, our dirt is gonna go from the top of the dirt down to the bottom of the dirt. Whereas when we started our pot, we started at the bottom and go to the top, but the stitching is exactly exactly the same. Um OK. So after you've worked that one round of working through that back loop, that would be round number five, we're gonna move on to round number six and we just place a single crochet into each stitch around. And I'm just gonna use this to mark the beginning of my rounds. So you should have 24 stitches around here and you're just working one stitch into each stitch. All right. Um So if there are people watching this, who would like to read through the pattern and follow along in the pattern, but you, you are unsure about how to read a crochet pattern or a little shaky on, you know, how to decode all that stuff. I did do a live event that's all about reading patterns um on the creative crochet corner website and I did put a link in this pattern download. Um That'll take you right to that uh that live event because, um you know, I kind of explain all the different things about reading patterns um to help make things a little bit easier for you guys. All right. So after you've completed that one round of just single crochet in each stitch around, we're gonna work rounds seven through nine, which is just single crocheting around. Except you're making an invisible decrease, just one in each round. OK? So round seven, you're gonna single crochet in each stitch around except for one point where you're making an invisible decrease and I will show you how to work that. OK? So we'll just do a couple of stitches. There's a single crochet, a single crochet, mark the beginning of a round and then we're gonna do an invisible decrease here. So an invisible decrease is when you combine two stitches together to become one, we're gonna make our project smaller. And normally people will pick up the front loop of the next stitch and the front loop of the following stitch, they'll yarn over, pull through both those loops, yarn over and pull through two. And so now we have one stitch where we had two stitches before and I'm gonna make a single crochet into each stitch that remains in the round and then in the next round, I'm gonna show you how I do my invisible decreases. Which um that's how I explain how to do it in the pattern as well in the note section. Um where I talk about how to work different stitches, you don't need to work it the same way that I work it, you can do it the standard way, which is what I just showed you. Um But I just want to show you my way just in case it makes sense to you too. I prefer to do it this way. Instead the way I'm about to show you. All right. So again, like before when we were adding stitches, um when we were working on the pot, we're taking away stitches, one stitch per round and we're placing them in different places in each, in each round. OK? So before here's our invisible decrease. So the next invisible decrease, I'm gonna do somewhere over here and then on the third round of decreasing, I'm gonna put it over here. So I'm gonna work to about two thirds the way around just placing one stitch in each stitch. And then I'll show you my, my version of the invisible decrease. And so the invisible decrease, whether you do it, the way that I'm gonna show you ne next or the way I already showed you that stitch is a little bit less, you know, it's called invisible. It's a little less obvious of a decrease than if you do a regular single crochet two together. That's why um Amaga roomy designers so often use that because we, we don't wanna have those extra lines, sort of distracting our eyes. All right. So we've got, we're about two thirds of the way around. Actually, I'm gonna back up just one stitch and then we're gonna do an invisible decrease right here. So we go underneath the first loop and the way that I do mine, I instead of going underneath just the first loop of the next stitch, I go underneath both loops of the following stitch. To me, it doesn't take any more effort to go underneath that second loop. And when I make my stitch, I still make it the same way. I just yarn over and pull through both of those stitches and yarn over and pull through two. It seems to anchor that stitch just a little more solidly and doesn't want to pull up um and make a window underneath it. So it, it looks the same as the other way of invisible decreasing. But it, to me, it just feels a little bit more solid, I guess because you're going underneath both of those loops. OK. So we have one more round of decreasing to do. We are working on round number nine and I'm gonna do this one about a third of the way in. So I'll show you that invisible decrease one more time. OK. So you go under the first strand and under both strands of the following stitch, then you yarn over, pull through both of those stitches and then yarn over and pull through two and then we're just going to complete our round with just a single crochet in each stitch around and there we are, there's the end and we're gonna go ahead and just fasten off. And this time I'm going to leave a longer tail. Actually, I'll leave that on the, on the dirt bottom. So I'm just gonna fasten off here. I'm gonna do the invisible decrease. You don't have to, you can just do a slip stitch and then fasten off. That's fine. But I just wanted a chance to show you this invisible, just say invisible decrease. I mean, invisible join at the end of my round. I'm sorry if I confused anybody, I showed you this before. When I finished off the end of the pot, I just wanted to show you one more time. So we skip over the next stitch, go underneath both strands of the following stitch. Now we're gonna go back down through the place where our strand came out and we pull on that strand until it's about the length of one of the other stitches. And we're gonna kind of run our needle through just like that. So you can see now at the top, you really can't see, you know, a jog anymore. It made it nice and smooth and then I'm gonna go ahead and just weave that in couple of directions then cut it off. All right. So the next thing we're gonna do, so this is the dirt top, the top of the dirt. So that's gonna go in our pot like this. But then we need a dirt bottom so that we can hold the stuffing in. And I've already started that here. This is the dirt bottom. The dirt bottom is exactly the same as, um, let's see. Where's my, there's my dirt bottom. It's exactly the same as all these, you know how, how we've started out these previous two pieces. We've worked through round three in exactly the same way. So we're at 18 stitches here and then round four, we're only doing a partial round so that we end up with the right amount of stitches and the right size. So we're gonna be doing a single crochet into each of the next two stitches and then two sti two single crochets into the following stitch. And we're only gonna do that three times. So we're gonna end over here on our circle. All right. So single crochet into each of the next two stitches. So one here, I'll place my marker in here. So you can see where the beginning of a round is one and two and then two single crochets into the following stitch one and two and we're gonna repeat that two more times. One and the next one in the next two in the next one and 21 in the next two in the next. Oh, sorry, that would be one in the next one in the next one in the next and then two in the next. I'm sorry, I hope that wasn't confusing. 112112. That's what we're doing there. OK. So we've ended just opposite of here and then we're gonna go ahead and just, we'll slip stitch and fasten off, so we'll slip stitch here and then we're gonna pull that strand through. Let's see. I think I need, I'm gonna cut this so that it's extra long so we can use this for sewing. So I'm just pulling it through right there and then we're gonna be able to sew this to the bottom of our pot. And you might be thinking, well, that's really weird. Why do we do half of a round? It's just because I needed it to be exactly 21 stitches and we need to keep increasing at the same rate, but we didn't want to do a whole round because that would make it too big. Um So now we're gonna just put a little bit of our fiber fill into the dirt like this. I have a very slippery fiber fill here today. Fiber fill is, um, can be very different from brand to brand, sometimes it's very sticky and you can really shape it really, really easily and sometimes it's very, very slippery like this. Um, and it's a little harder to shape but it doesn't create those kind of lumps and, and balls inside. It kind of keeps from, it doesn't get quite so tangy, but it's a little bit harder to create a really crisp shape with such a slippery, um, kind of fiber fill. All right. Oh We've got a question Judy is saying, if you're folding the top down, why don't you have the stitch come out the front because it won't be seen once it's folded down, the stitch come out of the front. I'm assuming you're talking about this. Oh Why don't I have this like work through the back loop only so that you have that horizontal line here? Is that what you mean? Or when I'm weaving in my ends, have it come out the front? I'm not really sure Judy if you want to clarify because I'm, I'm not quite sure what you mean. Let me know. OK. So now we're going to just go ahead and stitch this piece to our, the rest of our dirt and we're gonna just gonna do a whip stitch here. So we're going underneath um each stitch, there's the same number of stitches. So you don't even need to pin it unless it helps you. You can certainly pin it. So I'm going underneath a stitch here and I'm going underneath a stitch here. And the reason I made this piece separate, which I could have just kind of gone around the corner. It just seems to make the bottom where I'm sewing it like a harder ridge right there that just seemed to help shape it a little bit. But, you know, in, in Amaga roomy, there are like a million different ways to shape things or to assemble things. And, you know, I'm always thinking about the pros and cons like, how good is this going to look? How easy is this going to do to be? Do you have to weave in a bunch of ends? You know, there's all those kinds of decisions to make when you're designing a toy, especially when you are designing it with the purpose of other people making it in the future, hopefully. Um So these are, these are the kinds of things I think about when I'm creating my toys because I always want them to be simple and straightforward enough. So they're not causing people. I don't want any of my toys to make people angry when they're making them. So I'm always thinking about those kinds of things. All right, a few more stitches. There we go. And then on my dirt, what I did to keep this from being too bubbly. It's not too bad on this one, but it does tend to puff up a little bit and I didn't like that I just kind of worked my way over to the center of the bottom of the dirt here and then I take a stitch over just kind of one ridge, just a small stitch and I'm gonna come out in the center of the top of the dirt and you don't want to pull on this so hard that you make a really big dimple like right now that's kind of dimpling a little bit. That's OK because it's on the bottom. But when we go back down from the top to the bottom, just, you just don't want to make a big crater here. You don't wanna make a big, like a divot, you just wanna be making a stitch that holds these, you know, keeps this from being too puffy and that'll make it a little flat on the top and it's ok if this, you know, if it sticks in a little bit, that's OK. This is gonna be inside the bottom of our pot. It's not too big of a deal. Um But just, you know, it's just something to think about. You don't even need to do this stitch if you do, if you are fine with having a little bit of a mound there and we are going to be stitching all those leaves on top of it anyway. So, you know, it's just kinda up to you. I just wanted to give you this extra little tip in case it, you know, you were really trying to keep that flat. All right. So now we can fasten off here and then we're going to talk about the leaves for the succulent. All right. So for the leaves, we are going to start out, I'll be making one of the larger leaves and then there's two other sizes. So let me pull these in here. We have a large, a medium and a small, we have these three sizes. So there's five of these five of these and only three of these. So, um I'm gonna teach you how to make the large ones and the smaller ones are just kind of versions of the larger one with fewer stitches um, or fewer rounds, I should say. All right. So we're going to begin our leaf by chaining two. This is very similar to how we're beginning all of our pieces. So I'm going to chain 21 and two and then we're gonna work six single crochets into the second chain from the hook, which is the first chain we made one to three. I'm gonna place the stitch marker before I forget beginning of my round. And then we're gonna keep continuing making stitches into that same spot. Three more one and two and three. OK. And so you can see there's that little hole there. So we're gonna close that up just how we did before. I only worked that one round because this is not gonna be a very big piece. So I'm just gonna go ahead and close that up when it's only just that one round because, um, as we work on it, it's gonna kind of start cupping and it might be a little bit hard to tell where your first round is. It might also be a little bit awkward to get this through later. So I'm just like I did with this before, but I'm running my needle through the vertical strands of the post of that first round. Ok. So I'm trying to get my needle under all six stitches, you know, through, through a little space in each of those six stitches. If you miss one, it's OK. So I made it all the way around. I'm gonna pull on it to tighten it and then I'm gonna weave it back and forth a couple of times here. I know this must be hard to tell what's going on here because it's so small. But when you have it in your hands, hopefully it will make sense just listening to what I'm saying. Um Oh my yarn is starting to kind of shred here, but that's OK because I made it back and forth enough time. So I'm gonna go ahead and cut this off. Oh, there we go. There we go. Ok. So now we are going to continue with the next round where we just place one single crochet into each stitch. So one, two, three, four, five and six and then the following round, we're going to do some increasing. So we're gonna do two in the next stitch 12, one in the next ditch and then two in the following stitch 12. So we've made it halfway around and now we're gonna repeat that two in the next one and two, one in the next and then two in the following one and two. And now we have a total of 10 stitches around. So we're gonna do something similar to that again. So we're gonna do two in the first stitch one and 21, single crochet into each of the next three stitches. One and one and one and then two in the following stitch one and two. Now we're halfway around and we're gonna repeat what we just did. So two in the next stitch one in each of the next 31, one, one and then two in the following stitch one and two. All right. So for the other sizes you're only gonna do, I think one set of those increases, I think just the first one. Yeah. So for the medium and for the small, you only do that one round that first round of the increasing and then you on a small, you would finish up your leaf and I'll show you how to do that with this one right after that. Um doing that one row of increasing on the medium, you do one row of increasing and then just one row of round of working even. And then you finish it off and I'll, again, I'll show you it's the same technique for all the leaves to finish them off. On this larger leaf. We did two rounds of increasing and then the next round we're actually decreasing. And you might think, why the heck did you do that? Why would you increase just to decrease? And the reason I did that is because it gives these larger leaves the ability to curve just a little bit ma make a little bit of a cup kind of shape. Um It's pretty subtle. So if you don't like all that monkeying around with increasing and decreasing and you wanna make these quicker, like if you're gonna start selling them or something like that, you could just do, you know the one round of increasing and then you can just continue, you know, making a couple more rounds. But this, I feel like just shapes the leaf a little bit better. And I that was important to me on the outer round of leaves. OK? So the next round we're actually doing a decrease. So to do the decrease round, we're gonna single crochet into the next stitch, just 11 stitch into the next stitch here, I'll mark that and then we're gonna do an invisible decrease over the next two stitches. So I grab that front loop, grab, I grab both loops of the next stitch, pull your loop through those two stitches and then we complete our single crochet, then we're gonna do a single crochet into the following. So just one stitch and now another invisible decrease and then a single crochet into the next. All right, we're halfway around. So we are gonna repeat that. So one single crochet and visible decrease, one single crochet, invisible decrease and one single crochet. All right. So now we are going to fold our leaf flat and so your hook will be right along the right side. If you're a right hand crochet, it'll be over here on the left if you're a left-handed crocheter. So just wa if you're a left-handed crochet, always just flip your screen to watch. Um when you watch me because then it will look like I'm left handed and doing it the way you would be doing it. All right. So we're gonna chain one right there. And now we are going to work single crochets across the edge, but working through both layers at the same time. So I'm gonna insert my hook underneath the first stitch of the round and then under the last stitch that I worked. You're an over pull up loop, you're an over pull through two to make that single crochet. So here's the next single crochet, working through both layers through this, through the um layer in front, through the layer in back, grab that yarn and complete our single crochet. So we'll do a couple more of those working through both layers. And the last one, you just kinda have to make sure you're getting it underneath both loops or both, both stitches, one right behind the other and finish that off. And then we're gonna just cut our yarn fast enough and we will weave in that end. Here we go. All right. So we've already woven in the end at the begin uh uh the, the beginning, your tail right at the beginning. So that helps to not have quite so many uns to weave in. Um But it really is nice to just sort of weave in these ends as you go. So you don't have a bunch at the end to deal with. All righty. So here is where the toothbrush comes in. So, um and like I said before, there's five of these, there's five of the mid size which you can make next and three of the smallest size which you can make after that. And then if you want to do the little extra color on these, what, what I like to do is I just use my sharpie or whatever kind of permanent ink that I have permanent marker or fabric marker would work as well. And I color a spot on something non porous. And then I use a toothbrush to pick up that color and then I just use these little strokes to kind of give it a little bit of color and you have pretty good control over where it is. You're not gonna end up with, you know, big dark streaks on it because the toothbrush is really good at sort of distributing that. It's not gonna have, you know, it's not like you could use your sharpie directly on there, but you probably would get some kind of darker lines on it that you might not want. So I just do the very tips kind of, you know, from the, the top of the each leaf downward like that gives that extra bit of color. All right. So you can go ahead and do all of those first before we assemble the leaves. And next, I'm gonna show you the leaf assembly. So we're gonna lay these out according to their size. Ok. So we've got our five large leaves, our five medium leaves and our three little leaves and we are going to crochet these up into a long strip and that is going to make it so much more fun to put it on the top of our dirt as opposed to sewing each leaf on individually, which just seems like a daunting task to me. Ok. So to start, we are going to pick up our large leaf. Hm. I wonder if you could, I'm gonna move these over here. So you can maybe see a little better with white behind. Here we go. Ok. So we are going to go ahead and I think we're just doing a slip stitch. But let me check and see if I did a single crochet here. Uh, let's see. Flip stitch. Ok. All right. So we're gonna do a slip stitch. I started with a, um, slip knot on my hook and I gave it a little bit of a yarn tail. You could probably leave a longer yarn tail than that if you wanted. Um, it's good to leave a yarn tail on each end of this and then you can use that for sewing later. So we're gonna slip stitch into the first three stitches of our leaf. So one, two, three, there's our large leaf. Now we're gonna take a medium leaf and place it on top of our large leaf and we're gonna work through both layers at the same time for two stitches. So here is the first stitch on our medium leaf and here's the next un worked stitch on our large leaf. And then we're gonna grab that yarn and pull it through. We're gonna do the same thing for the next stitch in the medium leaf and the next stitch in the large leaf slip stitch. Now we're gonna do a slip stitch just in the medium leaf. We ran out of stitches here in the large leaf. So just one slip stitch there and then we're going to place a large leaf behind our medium leaf like that. So we're gonna slip stitch through both layers for two stitches. One, two and then slip stitch just through the middle of the large leaf because that's all we got. And now we're gonna add our next medium leaf right on top. So the medium leaves are gonna be going on top of the large leaves. So we slip stitch in the next two stitches, OK through both layers and slip stitch into that center stitch of the medium leaf, place a large leaf behind and then we'll do two slip stitches here, one and two slip stitch just into the large leaf, add the medium leaf on top. And as I'm doing this, I'm just making sure I have the front of the leaf facing me, it doesn't actually really matter. But if your leaf curves a little bit in one direction or the other. Um For me, the, the last row that I did to close up that leaf for each leaf, that was the front or the, the right side of the leaf as I saw it. So that's just facing upward. And I placed it like that on the table when I first arranged it. Um just to make sure that I was just every time I grabbed a leaf that it would be, you know, the right, the the direction I wanted it to be facing. OK. So I'm just continuing in the same pattern, just placing the medium leaves on top and placing the larger leaves behind. And this is gonna help us sort of distribute those leaves in the dirt and also it just makes it sewing it all together, makes it just a lot easier and quicker. This might seem like an unnecessary step because yes, you could just sew all the leaves onto the pot. And if you wanted to do that, you would fasten off with a longer tail at the end and just leave yourself yarn tails. Um, you would not need to bury your yarn tails. But um yeah, and you could bury them in the dirt as you go. But to me, this little step of making the strip really helped me to make it easy to place things. OK? So we have done all five of the large leaves, all five of the medium leaves. And at this point, we're gonna start stacking the small leaves. So this is gonna go on top of our medium leaf. OK? We're used to putting things under the medium leaves, but we're putting a small one right on top and we're doing the same method of going through both layers, making two slip stitches like that. We're gonna do a slip stitch just in that little leaf. Then we're gonna place the next small leaf and that's gonna go in front again. OK. So these last three leaves just get stacked on top, on top, on top. All right, here's our last leaf. I don't know if these are actually even called leaves in the real wor world. I probably should have Googled that before this live. Do you guys know what succulent, the points of the succulent are called? Are they leaves? All right. So here I've made it to the very end. Just slip, stitch all the way across and I'm gonna give myself a pretty long yarn tail to sew with. Yeah. All right. And so now we can coil this up on the top of our dirt. So here is the top of our dirt and you can use some pins to kind of get it in the right spot or you can just let's see because, oh, I just, I wanna show you where these leaves are headed. Ok. So if you take a look at your leaves, you'll note you have 1234 and five large leaves. So these two leaves here, the first one and the fifth one, those should kind of match up pretty closely here. Ok. When you go around the dirt, it's OK if they overlap a little bit. Yeah, let's see. And actually, yeah, I think I want mine to overlap just a little bit here so that I have a, a little bit less of a gape, gape gaping space in the middle. You can make them go a little further, but then I don't know, you can just kind of position it on your pot, how you want it. But the way that I did my samples, I had the barely overlapping the first and the fifth of those large leaves and I'm gonna pin it to my dirt. It's kind of weaving my pin in and out. Like I'm sewing, um, my leaves to the dirt with the pin and then twist these around a little bit in the center and that's once I get them all stitched down, that's about what it'll look like. So, let's see, let's get this middle here going. So this is from where I fastened off for the smaller stitch. And I'm gonna go underneath that dirt and just start doing a whip stitch right here to kind of stitch it to the top of my dirt. All right. So that has been tacked in place and I am going to remove my needle for now, you could keep going on that if you want to. But I like to do the outside first to really, um kind of rein in the parameter of where my leaves can go. So I'm, I'm having these larger leaves just barely overlap just a little bit here. So I'm gonna stitch into my dirt and then I'm going to grab that slip stitch is where I'm sewing to that bottom slip stitch. When I'm making these stitches, I'm gonna go around like this and they should go, you know, near that top corner of the dirt pretty close to it. All right. So in the interest of time because this is gonna take me a little while to get this on here. Um, I'm going to switch over to talking a little bit about the face, but you can see, you can just go around and around in the spiral stitching your leaves on to the top of the dirt. And I did make a tiktok video showing this process kind of sped up how I assembled the leaves onto the top of the dirt. So you can go ahead and check that out. That's the real crafty. Um tiktok, if you want to see what that looks like, what that whole process looks like. But um I think you get the picture, just whip stitch it on in that spirally shape. And then I'm gonna talk just a little bit about the face. So we'll put the eyes in and the eyes. I do specify exactly where the eyes need to go. Let's see and in the finishing section, um let's see between rounds seven and eight with four stitches between the posts. OK? So there's three rounds of single crochet below the eyes, but above the unused loops. All right. So I'm gonna find the, this is the back of my pot because you can see that it is kind of uneven, that little jog. So I'm gonna go to the opposite side and so there's three rows, 12 and three above that kind of groove there that helps you place the, the eyes. So you're gonna put one eye in here and remember these are actually a little bit bigger than these are um 12 millimeter eyes instead of 10 millimeter eyes, which is what I used in the original sample. Um because that's what I have, but it'll still be really cute and then there's going to be, let's see, OK, four stitches between the posts, which means there are three little holes. So that's how I like to count between my posts. I find the little holes between the stitches. So 12 and three, that's where I would place the other eye. But because these are bigger eyes, I'm gonna just bump mine over just a little bit because I think that it looks a little bit cuter. But of course, when you're making this, you can make it however you like, you know, you can make, use smaller eyes, bigger eyes, put them in a different location, no eyes even is fine. All right. So now we're gonna do just a little bit of embroidery to get those eyebrows and that mouth in there. And so the thing about this is there's nothing hiding the posts on the inside unless you want to actually sew your pot to the dirt, which you could, um, you could also place the dirt into your pot and then do the embroidery if you're never gonna take the leaves or the dirt out of your pot. My kids really love the idea of the pot being a separate thing. So I was trying to keep it separate. So if you want to do that, you can go ahead and weave your ends in like ahead of time, just weave them through your stitches. You don't want to see that on the outside, but I'm going right through the center of my stitches and I'm just gonna weave this back and forth in a couple of directions here to kind of anchor that get that all ready for sewing and oops that showed just a little bit there. Let me see. I think that's gonna be ok though because that's where my mouth is gonna go. And then we're gonna take a loose stitch. I start. Right. Oh, I think I went, yeah, right between the eyes. That kind of groove, that lines up right, the center of the eyes. I'm gonna take one loose stitch like this and then I am going to take a stitch across the back right here and when I pull on this, see how my, my stitch where I came out is going to catch that loop and it's gonna bring it down into that kind of V shape to make a little smiley face. And then you gotta make sure that you catch that loop. So here's the loop that goes across, make sure you're going underneath it. So your stitch goes over that, that long loose loop and tacks it down in place. And then I'm going to just kind of weave my way up to be able just catching a little bit a couple of strands here in the back, you don't want it to show on the front. So just double check, but it's good not to have a very long loop there because it might get caught on things if you, if you know someone's gonna be taking it in and out of the pot and then I'm gonna make a little eyebrow here. So when you're making eyebrows, always take your time because if eyebrows go like this, it looks kind of like cute or a little sad. Sometimes depending on what the mouth is doing, the mouth might make it. You know, if it, the mouse is smiling, it won't look as sad. But if you make it this way, it'll be like an evil succulent or angry, which is also adorable. So, you know, you just take your time thinking, think about the expression you want your, your pot to or your little plant to have um when you're making these eyebrows, but they go just kind of to the outside corner of your, of the face. All right, it looks like I don't think there's any more questions. Um I'm gonna do that last little eyebrow and that'll be it for today, but I just want to thank you guys for joining me. I really appreciate you guys hanging out with me talking about crochet one of my favorite things. Um And yeah, I hope I, I hope to see you guys in my next live tomorrow. I am gonna be doing a live with my friend Emily Stefan and we're gonna be talking about organizing our craft spaces and trying to keep things organized. Um So check that out. That's gonna be on craft C it's gonna be a fun interactive experience um live. So that's at 10 o'clock central us time. Um If you wanna join us. All right. So then you just kind of weave in those yarn tails as best you can in a couple of directions. Yeah, and I'm gonna cut that off. All right. And then at the very end you'll just take your dirt and squish it into your pot to make your super adorable and a g roomy. So I guess I have a little bit of homework to do to get these leaves on, but I promise they're easy to do once they're all attached together. Um I hope you guys enjoy this live as much as I enjoy teaching it. Thank you guys so much for being here and I'll see you in my next live. Bye.