The Land of Pica Pau

One word. Amigurumi. If you like to crochet animal toys then you already know about Pica Pau and the books by Yan Schenkel. I fell in love with these animals, O.K. not all of them (I have my favorites) a few years back with the publishing of her first book. I made two of the animals from that book. I made a rhino and a gator. My favorite is always my latest, this one is from Pica Pau 3.

Then when I discovered her second book, I made a few animals from that one too. Pica Pau 2 did not disappoint. I also made two animals from that book. I can always find a couple of animals to fall in love with. I did the zebra and the lobster. My lobster turned out really big. I might make another one using smaller weight yarn and a smaller hook later. Mine's so big he looks like a pillow!

One thing I've learned from these patterns is if you use the yarn over method like I do, you may need to cut off a few rows on a head or body pattern to the the right look and keep it looking proportioned. The author used the yarn under method and adjustments need to be made. I also use a 2mm hook instead of a 2.75mm so my animal won't be so big with my medium weight worsted yarn. Hmmm... the alligator and the lobster should have been adjusted but that's how we learn. If you yarn over crochet then your animals will be longer. You should cut off a few rows as needed if you want them to look right. Just a heads up.

I wanted to keep my animals under 10 inches so I separated one strand off of my worsted weight yarns where I could because I had a lot of it in every color. Now Pica Pau 3 is about to hit the market and I've already pre-ordered my copy. I got it from Amigurumi.com and got the free .pdf  of the book to download immediately! Yippee! I didn't know you could get that until I ordered. What a great thing! So now I've already made two animals from that book and it hasn't even come out yet. 

I'm almost done with the snail from Book 3. Just have to do a few more finishing touches to him. I had to make some adjustments on the pattern here and there but He is coming along.