The Very Hungry Caterpillar

You may remember the baby shower I threw a little over a year ago. Well, while we were on holiday in Hawaii, the baby of honor turned 1! His mom, my good friend B, created a little Very Hungry Caterpillar themed nursery for the little guy and the theme carried out throughout the year. For his birthday party she went for a Very Hungry Caterpillar do. While we couldn't attend the party, I had a few little gifts for the birthday boy. The first was a little crocheted caterpillar.

I found a pattern online and followed it pretty closely. The biggest change I made was that you were supposed to connect the caterpillar at the end so that he is permanently in the crawling position. I thought it would be more fun if the little boy could position the caterpillar. I figured that I could just use wire so that he could bend and hold his shape, but I needed a way to keep the wire from poking out of the ends - I put our abundant supply of bottle tops to work. I just coiled the end of the wire and hot glued it to the lid. Simple.

This made the actual crocheting bit kind of a pain because I had to crochet around the wire, but it totally worked.

I wanted to use a few different shades of green. Originally I thought about using two strands of different colors at a time to more closely mimick the caterpillar from the book, but that would have made him quite big and I wanted to keep him on the smaller side.

I stopped after doing two segments of each color.

Then I just had the wire bit to finish up. Again, I coiled the wire and glued it to a lid.

Then I snuck it in the last segment.

Closed it off and the body was done!

Next up were his antennae.

Then his sweet little face - done in felt.

Then his little feet - six of them just like on the book.

Once they were attached he was still missing something.

His little back fur! For the back fur I used a few different colors of self-striping yarn to give him more of the multi-colored look from the book.

I love him!! After finishing the caterpillar I showed it to Y and said, "do you think she'll like it?" Y looked at me all confused, "isn't it for baby K?" I mean it is, but let's be real, baby K couldn't care less - this was for his mommy. I showed it to K the morning after I had finished and he knew right away who it was supposed to be. Success!!

Happy first birthday, little K!!