Plushie Sushi Bentos

Aside from loving and making food, I also knit. And am learning my basics with crochet.

Here's some softies / plushies I made for my boss' daughter. I got the idea when the boss' wife was talking about having a hard time finding some sushi / sashimi play toys for her daughter. When she brought that up, in pops that image of the amigurumi and knit sushi toys I'd seen on knitty.com and (the now defunct) magknits. And so after much procrastinating, a lot of trial and error, and some learning on the go, I give you the following two sushi bentos - they made me crave sushi while I made them!



The two completed sushi bentos above!

Below is my favourite of the two. Some of these were just trial and error, and playing around with little balls of yarn that I had in my stash. Clockwise from the bottom left hand corner, the items (supposedly) are:

- inari (like the confetti-coloured "rice"? ...the boy thought it looked like a dumpling. Meh.)
- tuna sushi
- tamago (egg) sushi w/ a band of nori encircling it
- ebi (shrimp) sushi (in the grey area between "fun to make" and "I can't believe I started this".)
- inside out rolls (definately in the "geez. did I *have* to commit to making rolls?" category)
- pickled ginger "flower"
- small ball of wasabi
- a baby cupcake! This was a lot of fun to make. I wished I had more time to complete it, and to embroider it with some seed bead "sprinkles".
- veggie sunomono, complete with baby "heirloom" carrot and two slices of cucumber





Above is the first bento box I worked on. Although I liked working on this, I almost gave up and wanted to gift the littler girl just one box, because I ran out of ideas on items to make! Clockwise from the bottom left hand corner:

- a baby cupcake! (see above) I really enjoyed the amigurumi items in this project as opposed to the knit items, although I am more familiar with knitting, the circular crochet methods made for near-instant gratification.
- lettuce leaf, topped with a gyoza (both were similar circular "doily" items, the gyoza was just worked a couple round less, with HDCs on the outer hem, as opposed to the TC stitches on the lettuce leaf)
- four mini rolls
- ebi sushi
- tuna sushi
- tamago sushi
- small ball of wasabi
- pickled ginger "flower"

For the entire Flickr photoset, click here.

Next "cooking" projects, will be the big Christmas feast. The bf has been working on stuffing some turkey wings with sticky rice - we had some of the stuffing for dinner last night and it was so good!

Merry Christmas everyone! Hold your loved ones close. I know I will.