Sneak Peek!!!

We're not just working on our 'All Things Weird and Wonderful' animal collection, oh no, we have also started designing some mini kits.

So, where do we start when we are thinking of designing a new collection? Well this time we were inspired by yarn! Hannah had previously used Scheepjes Catona cotton yarn for some small amigurumi projects. She found it easy to work with, making crisp stitches, ideal for amigurumi. After a little online research we found that the yarn is available in a large selection of beautiful colours. Then to make it even better all these amazing shades are available in teeny tiny, cute 25g balls. This was the perfect opportunity to have a play.
These are the colours we chose (to add to Hannah's stash!)

Now we had the colours, what to do with them? Time for some ideas....
Whenever we make a kit it's usually something that we love, makes us laugh or is just a little bit different! That's how these little fellas came alive. Mushrooms, that's what we decided upon, but not any old mushrooms, fungi, Fun-Guys!

Well, we knew we wanted to use lots of colour so it couldn't just be a little old button mushroom that we used for inspiration. Time for more research, good ol' Pinterest here we come.



Ok, now we had a few ideas of what nature had created out there, it was time to put our own spin on them. The bright pink one took my (Hannah's) eye straight away. I grabbed a ball of the pink Catona and made a start. I had a good idea of the shape I wanted to created, so I just went for it.
When I'm writing patterns I like to just do it. A pad of paper, a pen and a crochet hook and off I go. Each time I do a round of stitches it gets written down and if a row of stitches gets pulled out then it's scribbled out on the paper.

A few more colours, a few more stitches and a few more scribblings and I had my first little Fun-guy! (Although I think she's more of a Fun-Gal)

She still needed a little mouth sewing on to bring her to life but I was happy with the pattern and what I had created. Naturally the next step was to make another!

Same designing process but different colours and a different style this time.

I went for blue and I wanted to create a taller, skinnier mushroom. I started with the stalk and worked my way up. Here's what I came up with.

Ok, just one more...

Green, short and squat was the aim. Yarn chosen, hook at the ready,

And here he is...

So there we go, one evening of playing about with some lovely bright coloured yarn and we have ended up with these three.

Our plan is to get these patterns tested then work on turning them into kits. Like our larger kits they will include full instructions, all the yarn you need, stuffing, safety eyes and a hand designed stitch marker. 

We would love to know what you guys think about these little dudes and if you have any ideas for any other designs. 

Hook happy,

Hannah and Cara

Viola the Narwhal

When we came up with the idea of All Things Weird and Wonderful we made a list of all the different animals we wanted to try and turn into crochet patterns. Very near the top of that list was a narwhal. We love unicorns and of course narwhals are the unicorns of the ocean. These animals are beautiful and almost mystical with their amazing horns, they definitely meet the criteria of weird and wonderful.

Designing our animals starts off with a little bit of research. We have a bit of a collection of animal books, which are great for reference, but a quick Google search and we had plenty of images to work from.

Now we have a good idea of what we want to create we start to look at yarns. What a minefield that can be! Being new to the world of running a craft business we don't really have the funds to buy loads of yarn. Luckily we both have our own sizable yarn stashes. We both often work with StyleCraft Special DK and because of their huge array of colours and affordability we decided to start there.

We wanted to add our own spin on the narwhal so didn't go for the usual grey, instead we decided upon Duck Egg and for the horn we chose Cream.

Hannah decided she would be the one to write this pattern...

I knew what I was aiming for so I grabbed my trusty 4mm hook and began. When writing patterns I tend to just 'go with it'. As I crochet I write down the stitches, if they are wrong they get crossed out and written again.

I broke the narwhal down into basic shapes. A body, fins, tail and horn. All our patterns use the basic crochet stitches (UK terms) Double crochet, increase by doing 2 double crochets in a stitch and decreasing by double crocheting 2 stitches together.

After all the body parts are created it's time to sew them all together. I always leave plenty of tail, it makes this job a bit easier. 

To make the horn a little bit more special we used a sparkly crochet yarn to embroider on a spiral design.

So the pattern was written and one prototype had been made. The next part of the process is to test the pattern. If it's one of my patterns Cara will test it and visa versa, if it's Cara's pattern then I test it.

If the pattern needs changing (fingers crossed it doesn't) then it can be. Also when testing the pattern it's time to weigh how much yarn and stuffing is used. 

Once we are completely happy the pattern can be typed out and the kits can be made up. We always provide more stuffing and yarn than we use to allow for peoples tension and we would hate it if you didn't have enough to finish your project. 

What else goes into the kits? As well as the yarn and stuffing there are the safety eyes, full pattern with words and pictures, any embroidery threads needed and a hand drawn stitch marker. 

So Viola is all ready to be packaged up and that's what Cara and I will be up to this week, printing packaging and making up the kits ready to be sold.

As ever we would love your feed back on this design and we will let you know when they are available to buy.

Hook happy,

Hannah and Cara

Luna the Hare

How did Chameleon Crafters come about? What was their first design? Well, let me tell you all about it.......................
The first ever pattern that I (Cara) designed was a hare, named Luna. I chose a hare because it seemed a fairly easy form that should work well in the amigurumi style. I had made quite a few amigurumi animals already, so I had an idea of what I wanted her to look like and what design to use. A few rough drawings and some scribblings later and I had a very basic drawing of a dismembered hare...it was time to bring her together.

Right 'o, what did I need? I checked back at my drawings and worked out I would need at least 100g of yarn, toy stuffing and some safety eyes. Nice and easy. What yarn did I want her to be constructed from? Who would be buying or receiving her? How did I want her to sit, soft and floppy or rigid and upright? I decided that she
a) needed to made from a soft but durable yarn and
b) should be soft to the touch and have a slouchy appearance.
Time to decide on the yarn (the fun bit!) Hannah had just finished working on a project from Little Box of Crochet using the yarn supplied and recommended it as it was so very soft and had a subtle two tone effect. I did a bit of research online and after feeling the yarn for myself I went ahead and ordered some balls of Scheepjes Stone Washed yarn, in 'Moon Stone'. I also ordered some black safety eyes and a bag of toy stuffing.

Wow, the yarn worked up fast and was so soft, it just seemed to slip easily through your fingers and had a pretty good yardage, which was a bonus. Every evening, after I had put my 2 year old (Sebby) to bed I worked on my design. Crocheting a bit, writing that bit down, crocheting a couple of rounds...frogging them back again and so on. Soon I had a bag of hare body parts ready to be stuffed (not too much though as I still wanted that slouchy look) and sewn together. Stuffed, sewn and now waiting for her face, her character, what a responsibility eh?! With the safety eyes in place I felt all she needed was a simple embroidered nose and voila! Luna was born.

I saw Hannah shortly after and asked her what she thought about the idea of us starting a small online, crochet business, specialising in amigurumi pattern designs. She loved it and agreed to come on board. We came up with our name Chameleon Crafters as I have Bipolar and can be very  'colourful' and susceptible to frequent change hence the Chameleon. Obviously we are both crafters so that's where the Crafters came from!

From there it's just been a very natural progression. We are both very creative and obsessed with yarn so it wasn't long before we wanted to make a start on new pattern designs. All Things Weird and Wonderful is the name of our first range which is made up of colourful, quirky, amigurumi animals. 
Hannah tested my Luna the Hare pattern and once it had passed we packaged her into a CIY (crochet it yourself) kit ready for you lovely lot make your own. 

ps. She is really very well behaved and completely house trained :)

Big love,

Cara and Hannah