My first finished Amigurumi Mermaid

So, the Mermaid (1 of 2) I posted about before is finished! All she needs is a name and maybe some jewelry.

It was a bit of a pain to put together, and the pattern was confusing in a couple parts, but that's probably because of my lack of experience more than anything else. She looks pretty cute. I thought I might not be keeping her, so I started to make another because I wanted one of my own. That one is almost finished except for her ears and one hand. I was a little frustrated with this yarn (Caron One Pound) at first, but it's not as bad as I expected. The Vanna's choice I used for the skin tone of Mermaid #2 is infuriatingly splitty, though. She looks worse just for the splitting! More on that eventually. For now, here are the photos of my first amigurumi project!

After seaming her together and stuffing her, I had to make a yarn and straw contraption to assist in holding her head up. Lots of glue was involved.

This is the little hole where the other end of the straw goes.

Then I had to sew on her neck to cover the ugly straw. Also, the seaming wasn't done in a proper "mattress stitch" which hides the seams better. Will try that next time...

At this point I was thinking that she wasn't too pretty, and too pasty for a mermaid, but she had a nice shapely fin going on.

Attaching her hair: I added a bit more than the directions required, and I made her hair about 8 inches longer than it said (because she was bigger overall). I then unraveled each strand of the vanilla-scented yarn to make her hair look more like hair, and less like a rag doll's yarn hair. It gave a crimped look, which reminds me of the character Madison from "Splash".

She turned out pretty cute after adding her shells, hair, and face. She looks more lively now (and less pasty).

I totally didn't follow the directions for making her face. I mean, I used them as guidelines, but her eyes were tiny in the pattern. Much better now. She's got a doll face but is cool enough for grown ups to want one (me).

After unraveling about 150 strands of yarn, I had to sew on her long, beautiful, 80's style hair. How do mermaids crimp their hair? Do they use tiny clams?

I crochet chains directly into her shells to make it look like bikini ties.

So, there she sits decorating our library. I'm going to make more sea creatures eventually, like an Octopus and Nessie!