Are you wondering where I buy my supplies like yarn, tools and animal eyes and noses? This guide will help answer all your questions about it.
Please note that I use affiliate links below. This helps support my blog. Everything linked will be to brands that I've personally used and tested myself.
Yarns
My favorite type of yarn to work with is chenille yarn. Chenille's texture is so soft and velvety and is wonderful to cuddle and work with. However, it is not the most beginner friendly yarn as it is a bit harder to see the stitches because of the fuzz. That being said, practicing to work with it is very worthwhile and once you get used to it it becomes even easier to work with than regular worsted yarn.
Here are my favorite chenille yarn brands that I use to make fluffy animals like these:
- James C. Brett Flutterby Chunky: This one is my absolute favorite. It is wonderfully soft and chunky but not too chunky. Each 100g skein is usually enough to make 2-3 of my cube animals. I use 5mm crochet hooks when working with it to achieve the necessary stitch tightness for the shape.
- Sirdar Smudge: Another great chenille yarn. It is chunkier than Flutterby so a 100g skein is barely enough to make one cube animal and sometimes you may need a bit more than one skein. I use 7mm crochet hook when working with this one.
For worsted or double knit yarns: I use Red Heart Super Saver (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk). I use 3mm or 3.5mm hook with this yarn depending on how really tight I want to make it. 3.5mm should be just fine. This yarn holds its shape super well and is very economical pricing wise!
Beginners Friendly Yarns
If you are just starting to crochet and you are still learning, then I highly recommend the James C. Brett Noodles Chunky. It is super easy to work with for beginners and the result is super adorable. Here is a little pup I made with this yarn.
Hooks
My favorite brand of hooks hands down is the Clover Soft Touch (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, LoveKnitting.com). I naturally do a lot of crochet and these hooks are the most comfortable ones I've every used. I own them in every size available.
Wool/Tapestry Needles
For the chunkier yarns you'll need needles with really big eyes. The one I use for all my work are especially made for chunky yarn but work for DK/worsted yarn just as well. They are called Wool Needles (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, LoveKnitting.com).
I use these needles to attach the amigurumi parts together.
Animal Eyes
I have many sources for eyes and I own them in all sizes, colors and shapes. However, my favorite to use are solid black ones. They just seem to lend themselves to extra cuteness factor :)
Small to Mid Sized Eyes
- If you want to get a good variety of sizes 6-12mm: (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk)
- For my worsted/dk animals I almost always use 8mm or 9mm eyes. You can buy these in bulk for cheap from ebay.com
Large Sized Eyes
For my larger critters I tend to use button eyes as these sizes are not often available in safety eyes:
- 20mm button eyes (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk): Usually use these when making animals with flutterby chunky.
- 25mm button eyes (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk): I use these with the chunkier yarn like the Sirder Smudge.
Animal Noses
- Triangular noses: (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk) I usually use 7mm wide noses for worsted/dk animals and 13-15mm wide noses for bigger animals made with chunky yarn.
- Heart shaped noses: These are my favorite to use but are very hard to source. My main source for them is CelloExpress.co.uk. I use the 7mm wide ones for the worsted/dk animals and the 12mm wide ones for the bigger animals. I've recently came across another source for these heart noses in ebay.com.