Amigurumi Birds

Facie followers will have seen all my little progress photos of my little attempts at Amigurumi birds.

I had never really attempted Amigurumi before when I decided I was going to design a bird.

I heart birdies so much I have a Pinterest board just about birds.

One of my best friends is a bird.

Actually it's possibly a stretch to call Axel a 'friend'.  He doesn't really like us. He never wants to leave his cage unless I kind of trick him into it, which he then rewards me by leaving me adorable little gifts around the house. Birdie 'gifts'.

Ok, poo 'gifts'.

Yes, alright poo. He craps all over the place.

He flaps around the house diving bombing bird crap everywhere screeching, "Take me out of my nice sweet cage, will ya?" (he is an Aussie bogan budgie)

"This'll teach ya to yank me outta my safe haven ya great orange haired behemoth!"

He then flies over to the top of the coffee machine, licks the chocolate powder off the sides of the shaker, then petulantly flies back into his cage where he stays for the rest of the day despite his door staying open.

Axel feeds his cocoa addiction

Sooo really he's not so much of a friend as a grumpy little bastard who craps in my house and bites me.
I love him anyway.

Back to the Amigurumi...

I had spent hours on The Pinterest and The Google but couldn't find any birds that really caught my interest. They were usually too cutesy.

And Cutesy is definitely cute, but I wanted to make a Cute bird that had a kind of realistic body shape. 
Most of the birds I found were kind of round shaped like all the variations of Angry Birds etc.

Sonofagun No.2 convinced me to make him this little penguin he found on the Pinterest.

Here's the original which I found via Pinterest here:

http://michaels.lionbrand.com/patterns/70583AD.html

And here's my attempt.  Not that great, but the Sonofagun LOVES him, named him 'Fluff the Fluff' and he joined the ranks of all Sonofaguns other penguins (most of whom are called Baby Penguin and one called Dit).

I wanted to try something original so came up with this:



How NOT to make a crocheted flamingo...

I didn't intend on it looking like a duck.

In a classic example of setting the cart before the horse, I decided I wanted to design them before I'd even tried making one.

So it was back to the drawing board. I did a tutorial or two on amigurumi basics and started again.  Here's my second attempt:

Now I was happy with the basic shape, I started playing around with stitches and rows as well as searching the Pinterest for my favourite real life birdies to try and get a more realistic bird shape until I created birdie number 3 & 4:

Then birdie number 4, 5, 6 & 7 enjoying some spring sunshine:

And now my latest favourite is my little Hummingbird!

I just adore him. 

I'm not sure if these are classified as real amigurumi or just crocheted birds.  I'm happy to be knowledgified by a real life Knower of All Amigurumi Things.

I'm currently writing and testing the patterns for 2 types of birds, the Hummingbird and for my other little bird style which I hope to publish for purchase as a PDF in my Etsy store and on Ravelry within a month.

I've also stitched the little darlings onto alligator clips so they can happily perch on branches and hair and Juicy Moosey (who's really a deer). Can you imagine these on a Christmas tree? Or one with some flowers on one of those sweet little cloche hats?

What do you think?