Not so very long ago, I ran my own store with a postal substation in it. During slow times this last fall, there wasn't very much of anything to do, but since I ran a postal substation, I couldn't just close - I had to abide by postal hours. So I feel back on an older hobby - crocheting. Easy to do - you can slip the hook in your back pocket, a few skeins of yarn in a grocery bag, and off you go.

But I didn't want to do just any old crochet, I wanted to do something that was interesting, and ultimately, that would sell. The Christmas season before, I had attended all the local and not so local craft shows, hoping to find people with unique items for consigning in my shop - and I did. But one thing I didn't find was people who made toys! Now, whne my kids were little, you could go to any craft fair or show and find toys all over the place, and usually find something unique to take home that you couldn't do or just didn't have the time to do yourself. Not anymore. In fact, a lot of these craft shows had artisans in them, not crafters.

So what, you say. Ahhh, but there is a big difference. A crafter is someone who makes handmade things like Barbie doll clothes (used to know this woman who made exquisite Barbie ball gowns - I kept them when my daughter outgrew barbie), a turtle shaped stool, a glass block with Christmas lights in it, a diarama in a tea cup. And they sold their items for a reasonable price; nothing to break the budget. Artisans are woodworkrs, silversmiths, painters, weavers, ceramicists - and they price their work accordingly - and high. saw a lot of lovely stuff, but much of it was out of my budget range, as well as the range of the average customer through my shop.

Oh well, I thought - if no one is making toys, then I'll just have to make them. Now I have tons of sewing patterns for dolls and other toys, but I remembered the last time I'd made one - a set of dolls with clothes and carriers for a sweet little girl I nannied- it was hours of work, and hours of sewing machine work - something best reserved for loved ones and close friends, because no profit could ever be made. Plastic canvas? the same thing - lots of patterns, especially the Barbie ones, but the time involved would be too much.

So crochet it is. I crochet fast, and can do a lot of it without looking (great for intimidating the junior high class you're substituting for during a movie - it really freaks them out!) But I was patternless and out of ideas. So I went online and found several lovely sites with free patterns. Thank you to everyone who's put toy patterns out there - I now have about 5 large binders full of patterns and more yet to be put in a binder. Something that intreged me was the food patterns. Cute, but a bit dull. So I started changing them; I would make a food, and put a face on it.

Instant success! So my first round of toys was food with faces. And people loved them. They loved them even more when they found out that the eyes I use are the type that have a locking 'nut" that goes on the back post of the eye, making it very hard for anyone to pull them out.

About this time, I realized that some of the most popular stuff at an anime festival was anything with a face- a bidet with a happy face would have been a hit with the attendees. So I start focusing even more on the foods, and start looking for patterns for things I haven't found. But I couldn't find them! Not in books, not online, not anywhere! And sometimes, I did find them, but they didn't look "cute" enough to me.

My first pattern was toast. The normal one is actually the size of a piece of bread, but then I made a large toast- a foot high and wide. Still cute. Then I was looking for a chicken leg, but again, no luck. So I made one. and I wrote the pattern down.

And I lost the pattern. AHHH! I still haven't found it, so I still have the last chicken leg I made so someday I can sit down and "dissect" it to come up with a new pattern.

Patterns started flying out of my head - I'd crochet a row, write it down, do the next, and so on. My notebook looks a mess, because sometimes I backed up and redid a section, so I scribbled it out. Sometimes I made two versions. Sometimes an idea took me forever to create - like a simple smear of jelly for on the toast.

I started dreaming patterns - one morning I woke up with the complete pattern for green eggs and ham in my head - and it stuck. Took a month til I had time to make it (Christmas mailing season was HECTIC!) but it was still there.

Some ideas came of making other things - I was making the meatballs for a flying spagetti monster hat when all of the sudden, the pillbug got invented. Someoen once suggested I make them the exact colors of certain medications, but i thought that might be a tacky gift. Other patterns came from a mistake. I was trying to make a star one day, and it got messed up, but suddenly it looked like a foot for something. It floated in my bag for weeks, until I sat down and started making a creature that looked like a gourd. Suddenly, the creature had a foot, and I have a creature and a gourd pattern!

Others have come as special requests - I found a pattern for a snake scarf, made several and sold them. One of the women who bought one liked them for her grandsons, but wanted something more dainty for her granddaughter - all of the sudden, a duck scarf. Now she wants me to make her a zebra scarf for next Christmas, and I'll admit to being stuck on that one. But it's only July, right?

Now since I ran this store, most of my crocheting was done on site, and a lot of times, people would come in and just watch me crochet for a while,and talk about how their grandmother or aunt used to crochet. You can blame my grandmother, I'd say - she's the one who taught me, and who used to make some of these toys for us when we were kids. Most people seem to think it;s a lost art, and some folks even dragged their friends in to watch me. It was an intersting time. Sadly, the store became a victim of the economy - as in I lacked one - but my toy making hasn't stopped.

Crocheting toys has become a passion for me, as has making my own patterns. One of these days, I hope to sit down and actually make the patterns make sense, so you too, can have my patterns to play with.

I hope you enjoy my collection of crocheted creations, and I hope it inspires you to go out and google "free crochet patterns" and see the wealth that all these creative and talented minds are so willing to freely share.