Amigurumi Unicorn

 

Hello again all! Today's blog is about this adorable little critter; the Amigurumi Unicorn. No prizes for guessing who I made this for :-) My little man loves the Despicable Me movies, and we saw a toy of Agnes's fluffy unicorn in the toy shop but it was giant and pink, which I thought might be a bit weird for a two year old boy. So I had a search online and found a pattern on Ravelry - incidentally, if you're into yarn related crafts and haven't already checked out Ravelry.com, you really should because there are tonnes of free patterns and some of the pattern creators have YouTube channels and have put up tutorials so you can knit/crochet along.

Now the pattern I used suggests 'Light Weight' yarn, (double knit weight is used in the video tutorial) and a 3.5mm hook. I wanted the toy to be a little bit bigger so I used chunky yarn and a 4.5mm hook. It also suggests 12mm safety eyes, but I only 9mm and it was around midnight when I realised I needed a different size so I just had to make do with the 9mm eyes. (Unfortunately my local 24 hour Tesco doesn't stock knitting supplies, which is just as well because I'd probably never leave otherwise) I think the 9mm eyes look fine though. 

Aside from the yarn weight, hook size and eye size, I did deviate from the pattern slightly in some other ways, also. On the pattern it doesn't say to stuff the hooves, or feet, or whatever you want to call them. However, since mine were larger I felt they needed a bit of bulk so I put a very small amount of stuffing in just before I worked the tube of the leg. I didn't stuff them firmly or anything, like you would for the head and body, I just put enough in so that they wouldn't collapse in on themselves. If you are making this and decide that you want to stuff the feet, I'd recommend putting in your stuffing before you crochet the narrow leg tube because it can be a bit awkward trying to push the stuffing down through the legs.

                        

For the mane and tail the pattern suggests using the contrast colour (the yarn you used for the hooves and mouth) and making the mane using chain stitches. I thought I'd make the unicorn a bit more colourful though, and I cut segments of rainbow coloured yarn and chained it with the blue to make the mane. Then for the tail I mixed the strands of yarn and plaited it, as the pattern suggested.

                             

I did use double knit weight yarn for the horn (and a 3.5mm hook) because when I first made it with the chunky yarn it came out huge and I didn't like how it looked, so I went with the lighter weight yarn. I didn't follow the pattern exactly when it came to crocheting the horn, I left out a couple of rounds so it's a bit 'stubbier' than the pattern would have it and rather than working a small bit of stuffing inside it before I attached it to the head, I just left the long tail from the starting magic loop, and tucked the excess yarn inside instead.

This was a nice simple toy to make, the pattern is good and very easy to follow. There is also a YouTube video where the designer makes the toy from start to finish, so if you get stuck you can watch it to see what to do. It took me about 3 hours from start to finish. The fiddliest bit was the mane, but once I got the first few bits in I got the hang of it. Other than that everything was pretty straightforward, and I'm very happy with how it turned out (most importantly, so is my son!)

Pattern: Amigurumi Unicorn by Eden Dintsikos

Main Yarn: Hayfield Baby Chunky from Winnie's Wool Wagon

Coloured Yarn: from Aimee Rose Store

Stuffing & Safety Eyes: from Springwools