A Crochet Animal a Day.... Seahorses

I absolutely love seahorses IRL! Their lifecycle is fascinating and they are just weirdly beautiful to look at. In the wild, male seahorses look after the young, holding them in a pouch on their bellies and protecting the babies until they are old enough to go off on their own. Seahorses come in a whole range of colours and patterns, and are often have intricate fins that are designed to help them camouflage with their environment.

Ive used Vanessa Mooncie's Crochet Sea Creatures book for two of the sea horses (although I only have a picture of one), and a Simply crochet amigurumi booklet for the third one, called Sam the Seahorse, shared below.

The yellow and orange seahorse is not a great picture - the brightness fades down the orange detailing quite a bit - but is the Mooncie pattern. Again, she uses the ingenius shaping technique to form the seahorses curves, then surface crochet and picot stitches to add detail. When I first started using this book, I created the seahorse in blue with yellow detailing, but i dont have an image for this one, unfortunately.

For both of these pieces I was using a wonderful yarn, that I think is now discontinued (probably for the best - I'd have majorly splurged on this yarn) - Boliviana. It has a cottony feel to it, but it is very thick and soft, coming in the most gorgeous colours. I nearly always use a 4.5mm hook, which gives a neat, tight fabric, so the stuffing doesnt poke through too much.

Once you have mastered the shaping stitches, this pattern is pretty easy. I would advise using a wire in the tail in order to help hold the curled shape - it is held with a few sewn in stitches, but its good to be able to manipulate the length of the tail. When doing the surface stitches try to keep tension quite tight to prevent the detailing sitting too far off the body. Stuff the piece well to keep the neck and head from drooping. This is another item where you can really play around with colour and create some fabulous stuffies :)

The other pattern I used in a Simply Crochet Amigurumi special (a link to the sampler is here: https://issuu.com/immediatemediaco/docs/amigurumivol2_issuusampler and the whole pattern may be on pinterest). The seahorse is called Sam :) This version is a bit more cartoony, and uses standard amigurumi techniques to make a cuddly item. I used some sparkly yarn on sections of the seahorse to jazz him up a bit!

This pattern is easier than the Sea Creatures one, as it uses simple increase and decrease techniques to form a rounder shape, and was put together really quickly.

The only real tips for this pattern are:

• keep count of your rounds and number of stitches - amigurumi has made me really good at times tables!
• instead of using a stitch marker, draw your starting thread through the stitch to mark the round end - it blends in so can be left at the end and saves you sewing it in at the end - bonus!
• my boyfriend always laughs at my finished work, cos he says it always has a skew to one side - whether the stitches naturally create a skew, or I genuinely have a squint, I do not know, but you might find it helpful to pin the bits to the body in preparation for sewing on. I normally wing it, which is where my skew probably comes from!

I hope you enjoy the Seahorses and feel inspired to try to create some of your own - there is a wealth of patterns out there, so give them a shot :D