Bees and butterflies

To help me recover from the aran cardigan of doom, I've been making log cabin squares which will become a lap blanket when I have made enough (I will probably need 12).  But I have also been making insects and bugs for a local yarn-bombing initiative.  And that has been such fun!

I started with crochet butterflies.  I have made these before, but I used a different pattern this time from the Charmed yarn blog. I used memory thread for the antennae, which worked really well.  The yarn I used was some with a lurex thread that I bought well over a year ago in Aldi.

Then I made an amigurumi bee using a pattern from the Yellow Pink and Sparkly blog.  I'm not a fan of amigurumi, but this was a really simple one, and I just loved the wings that sit on top of the bee.  I had some yarn a bit like a fine tinsel in my stash (a charity shop find, so I have no idea what it really is) which I added to some white yarn to make said wings.

Finally, I wanted to make some caterpillars.  I had some green chunky yarn which was perfect, and I made the pattern up as I went along (not exactly difficult when you are essentially knitting a tube!)  I doubled a pipe cleaner and put it into the tube so that the bug's body would bend a little, and the ends of the pipe cleaner make very satisfying antennae.  Now I'm not sure whether caterpillars have antennae, but these looked as though they should.

So here are the bugs attacking my african violet:

Last night I tried a prototype snail, made in a mix of knitting (the body) and crochet (the shell).  Here's Sammy:

I'm not quite so happy with Sammy to be honest, and I think I would modify him were I to make him again.  I wanted his head to be raised up so I tried a rudimentary heel turn to give him a bit of a neck. But it didn't work in the way I hoped.  Never mind, I'll stick to the bugs I can do!