Fairly fast and straight forward amigurumi pattern.
This stroller toy was intended for my new nephew, but I’m not happy with how it turned out so it might become a cat toy. I hadn’t intended to make this project. There was something else I had planned to make. It was just a random, spontaneous sort of thing.
Obviously, there are many edits to the original pattern. The fish themselves are quick and easy, but I did not like the tails. I had to work each fish’s tail more than once to get them how I wanted. I first decided that I wanted to make a goldfish (a goldfish in the ocean?), but he also looks kind of like a Beta fish. I then decided to be daring and try a Clown Fish. For the last fish, I wanted to use a teal yarn and searched around on Google. I found a blue striped fish, but never could determine what it was. What these three fish are doing in a kelp forest is beyond me. It’s all about aesthetics.
For the blue stroller ring, I used both a dark and light blue together and crocheted only two rows instead of three. I slapped on the square velcro pieces that were a bit too large for the band and soon discovered just how difficult it is to hand sew those suckers to something. I used widely spaced blanket stitches to attach it to the ring.
I had wanted to use the light and blue yarns together for each “stem”, but the result was way too bulky to pull off. Instead, I used the darker blue colour.
The kelp was easy to crochet, but it took me a bit to figure out how to attach it to the stroller toy.
My biggest pet peeve is with the fish’s faces. I chose to use French knots in place of the safety eyes since this is for an infant. I don’t think the French knots look good. Plus, they were a pain to make. I thought I had French knots down, but apparently not when using yarn. Also, should have skipped the mouths. Didn’t like those either.
Update 3/27/2011
I showed this to my younger son yesterday while gift wrapping it and he was so jealous. He asked if I could make him a fish. For a moment, I thought he would ask me to make him a stroller toy and I would have to explain to him that he’s seven and doesn’t need any stroller toys… ~__~