Link and Fairy amigurumi

Last month I was contacted by my awesome sister-in-law and asked if I could make a gift for her husband. He’s a fan of The Legend of Zelda and we decided I’d try to crochet a Link figure. I don’t have a lot of experience with Amigurumi, but I found this blog post by Stephanie at  All About Ami, a very talented crocheter, and I decided I would give it a go. As you may notice in my posts, most things I do are a little outside my comfort zone, but my goal is to always try something new. What’s the worst that can happen? By trying, I then expand my experience, and learn something new in the process. Another thing I often do is bite off what seems like more than I can chew. I never just take the easy route. So, as I began creating this Link character, I decided that I wanted his arms to be repositionable, and his friend Fairy to be able to attach to him so that she didn’t get lost. I basically followed all of the pattern linked above, but added just a few features which I will try to explain.

Here are some photos of the process…

First I crocheted the inside of the head, and the body. The head is going to be attached using a ball joint method, so that’s why it looks weird and out of proportion. The head and body instructions are very well explained by Stephanie  (link to her blog post is above.)

The only difference with my design is that I added some strong jewelry wire, I think it was 16 gauge. I just curved the ends so they would stay inside the arms and not poke sharply out the hands. The wire makes it possible to move the arms to wherever you want them. I loved this feature. I also added a small but strong magnet inside his left hand, on the top part of the arm. This will be further explained later in this post. His hands and feet ended up bigger than Stephanie’s, I think because of the weight of my yarn, but I liked them a little overly big, so I just went with it.

Link body with wire inside arms.

Next was the head, again followed Stephanie’s instructions, but altered the hair slightly by embroidering the front to look like bangs. I also just used some yarn to sew in the eyes and nose. It worked for me.

Followed her instructions for the hat. This took me a couple tries but I finally altered it just enough to get the sizing right. Again, I think her instructions were great, I just used different yarn so had some trouble. Sometimes you just have to figure it out as you go and problem-solve.

Next was the shield. This was my favorite part. I totally followed instructions for the structure, but looked at a picture of the real thing when it came to embroidering the details. For those I just used yarn, but if you want to be more particular you could use embroidery thread.

I also followed Stephanie’s instructions for the sheath. I decided instead of crocheting a sword that I could carve one out of wood. It was a random last minute decision, and I’m not sure I completely pulled it off (doesn’t really look like his sword), but I had difficulty getting a crocheted sword into the sheath and this just worked better for me. Plus, I’m trying to learn to carve, so it gave me an excuse to practice.

And finally, I made Fairy. I was inspired by Kara on K Hook Creations and altered the pattern slightly, but for the most part it is a very similar design. I made sure the add the magnet in the bottom of Fairy, between the smaller wings. This enables Fairy to be attached to Link when you want. I also love this feature.

I then put it all together! Yay! This project totally hits all of my little geek heart strings and I loved it so much I had a hard to putting it into a box and shipping it to someone else.

And here are a couple of photos of them standing. Sorry for the bad photography. I’m learning. As you can see, Link can look in any direction and his friend Fairy is always on his arm. The sword, sheath, hat and shield are all completely removable as well. I think he turned out pretty great! Hope you like it and follow those amazing ladies’ blogs linked above who shared their patterns!

Happy crocheting! Give Link a try, he’s fun!