Amigurumi Roly Poly Cat Family

I’m on a quest for cute crocheted cat patterns.  Unfortunately, my definition of cute – when it comes to cats at least – doesn’t seem to match most everyone else’s.  Someday I’ll design my own, but I’m not that experienced with crochet yet. 

In the meantime I did come across Puchitomato’s pattern for a roly poly cat amigurumi and I ran with it.  When I was making the first one (blue, green and yellow), I thought of how neat it would be to have them be the main decoration on a Christmas tree.  Being between the size of a baseball and a softball, it wasn’t quite going to work for our small tree (it would be great near the bottom of a very large tree). 

The variegated yarn I used makes the first one look a little odd, so I made a second in white.  I noticed I completely missed some rows in the ears the first time (which I was going to make bigger anyway) and I think that change helped the look a lot.  I’m still working on making embroidered details on crocheted fabric look good, so I chose to use some fabric paint for the nose and mouth on both of these. 

The big brown one came about while I was playing with two strands of worsted yarn held together (hook size N I believe).  I was thinking of crocheting a cat bed, but what I was trying wasn’t quite working out so I switched gears.  This one came out about the size of a cantaloupe, so it was big enough for one of the plastic noses I had hiding away with the eye stash.  I stuffed it with some of my worn out socks, which makes it very heavy, but otherwise that would be a LOT of polyfil to stuff it properly.  I haven’t figured out what, if anything, to do about its mouth. 

Finally I acquired some fingering weight yarn (Bernat Baby, which is quite soft and nice to work with) in tree appropriate colors (fingering weight yarn is apparently not overly popular at my local stores).  The recommended hook size is D, but I only have a B and an E.  After playing a little with both, I went with the B.  I might try the E also to vary the finished size, but the B made a nice firm fabric. 

I was able to embroider the mouth and nose (black machine sewing thread) on this fabric nicely, and also added some snowflakes/stars/sparkles in white yarn.  My only complaint with this one is its face isn’t quite right.  I think it might be as simple as the eyes are too close together.  The finished size is about two inches across, perfect for an ornament. 

I ended up sticking them all in and around the tree.  The regular sized ones are small enough to sit on the branches closer to the middle of the tree, and I added a hanging loop to the small one.  I won’t have enough time this year to cover the tree in them, but maybe next year.