Allison Hoffman - AmiguruMe Eats: Make Cute Scented Crochet Foods

Youre five years old and sitting at the dinner table. Your favorite foods are on your plate, the scents wafting up your five-year-old nose. Your five-year-old hands fidget in your lap, but you dont know how long you can stand it. Finally, you reach out and grab for something, anything, and youre (gasp!) playing with your food!

Yep, weve all done it. Kids cant keep their hands out of their meals. Even adults can get messy when eating ice cream or saucy stuff. (Im not eating a delicious slice of cheesy New Yorkstyle pizza with a fork, thank you very much!) What if there was a way you could play with your food without having to wash your hands? Good news! The fun, crocheted AmiguruME Eats in this book are scented and soft, fun to play with, and easy to make.

For my first two books, AmiguruME and AmiguruME Pets, I loved making things that were both fun to look at and fun to make. I wanted to complement these patterns with more projects that would flex my creative muscles, so I thought about other items that people love to crochet. I knew crocheted food was popular, but I wanted to make my versions a little different and keep them in line with the super-cute AmiguruME style. When I was a kid, I lived for scratch-and-sniff stickers. Just the promise of a scented sticker on the top of my perfect spelling test was enough for me to memorize those spelling words backwards and forwards. What if you could squeeze your crocheted food and release the scent of real food? I soon discovered that its easy to give food amigurumi that same scratch-and-sniff thrill with a handful of spices or a few drops of scented oil. Scents make the food all the more realistic, and you dont have to even study! And because Im a sucker for anything with a cute little face, lots of these foods smile at me just like the people and pets in my previous books did.

Well start with the basics. If youve never crocheted before, you can learn in the How to Crochet section. In the Tools and Materials sections, I explain exactly what youll need to make fun food and scented treats.

Starting with Breakfast, youll learn how to make savory eggs and bacon and sweet waffles and pancakes to tide you over until Lunch. Crochet a sandwich and a bag of chips, but save room for Dinner. After youve finished your crocheted steak and salad, end with a dessert from the Sweet Treats section, perhaps cake or ice cream. As you make your way through each featured meal and snack, youll find tips on how to customize your AmiguruME Eats. Many projects recommend garnishes, toppings, sauces, and more, so your food will look uniquely delicious. To make your AmiguruME Eats even more realistic, crochet cool stuff from the Extras section, like plates, utensils, or even a lunch box that opens and closes.

There are so many fun things to do with AmiguruME Eats. Make a set of decorative crocheted food to display in your home. Crochet a special meal to celebrate a birthday. Make scented treats for unique gifts. I hope youre inspired and hungry by the time you finish reading this book. Now dig in!

Basic tools and some fun yarn are all youll need to create any food you can think of! No hard-to-find ingredients or obscure spices are needed to cook up these yarn-based treats.

For amigurumi like the foods youll make in this book, I like to use a smaller-than-average hook. Using a small hook makes a tight fabric and prevents stuffing from coming through any loose holes. In the patterns, the hooks are given in U.S. sizes with their metric equivalents.

My favorite hooks are the ones with ergonomic handles. Because of the small detail work involved in many of the patterns, youll probably also enjoy using a crochet hook that is comfortable to use on small stitches. If you prefer using a larger hook, feel free to do so. Your foods might be a little larger than the ones shown, but they will come out just fine as long as the crocheted fabric is dense and does not have large spaces between the stitches.

Youll need a yarn needle and, for some of the AmiguruME Eats patterns, an embroidery needle. A yarn needle has a blunter tip than a sewing needle, which enables it to move easily in and out of crocheted fabric without splitting yarn. Some have a bent tip, which makes them easy to use when you stitch into the surface of your crocheted foods, finish up and weave in ends, or assemble the pieces of your projects. An embroidery needle is used with embroidery floss to add details, like decorations, mouths, or words on labels.

A good pair of sharp scissors is absolutely necessary. Youll be snipping yarn and embroidery floss, as well as felt details.

High-quality craft glue will work wonders for attaching tiny bits of felt if you dont want to stitch them on. A strong cyanoacrylate glue in a gel formula also makes quick work of tiny details.

A long dowel or even a knitting needle will do the trick for stuffing your crocheted foods. Stitch markers are indispensable for keeping track of the spiral rounds used in amigurumi. You need locking stitch markers, so you can mark the start of a round of stitches, for example, and then move the marker up when you start the next round. A safety pin or a small piece of pipe cleaner can serve as a homemade stitch marker, or they can be bought in a variety of styles.

One convenient thing about amigurumi is that it is so easy to find the yarn you need to use at an affordable price. You might look for the fanciest yarns made of only the best fibers for crocheted clothing items, but you can use any type for these projects. Acrylic, cotton, or woolanything goes, as long as the yarn can be crocheted to form a dense fabric.