Heart Cactus Amigurumi

I know it's still January, but Valentines day is just less than a month from now! Besides, I think we should celebrate love everyday, don't you agree? Not just romantic love, but all the kinds of love we feel - love for our family, for our friends, for our pets, for our hobbies, for our food, for our passion, everything! And I believe that if everyone takes time to celebrate love everyday, even just for a while, the world will be a so much better place. Feels like I just answered a beauty pageant question.

Anyway, enough of the beauty pageant feel and let me go back to my beautiful reality of crochet. For the past days I have been thinking of what to post for Valentine's day. I had several ideas which I eventually scrapped, because I realised they're a bit time consuming, and I've been a bit busy (again!) lately because of work and school. So I thought of doing something simple in the meantime, and while I was looking for inspiration in Pinterest, I came across this cute pattern for heart amigurumis. Maybe I can make a keychain out of it? And then I saw my immortal succulent on my bedside table, and finally the idea hit me. I'm going to make a heart-shaped cactus. So cute!

Materials
Hook: 4mm crochet hook
Yarns:
Gantsilyo Guru Milk Cotton Light Lime (green)
Gantsilyo Guru Milk Cotton Light Wood (brown)
some yarn of your choice for the flower


Stitches Used
ch (chain)
sc (single crochet)
sl st (slip stitch)
sc2tog (sc decrease / sc 2 together)


Heart Amigurumi Pattern

The design for the heart amigurumi was inspired by the pattern I found here. This pattern had 3 different sizes of hearts, but I wanted an even smaller size because I want my cactus to be cute and not too bulky, so I tweaked it a bit. But if you want to make yours bigger, maybe something you can use as a centerpiece (or if you simply want a heart-shaped pillow), do check out that cute pattern. :)

Heart Base

Using green yarn, make a magic ring. Note: do not join at any point, continue working in the round.

Row 1: ch 1, sc 4 in the ring. (4sts)

Row 2: *2 sc in the first st, sc in the next. Repeat from * around. (6 sts)

Row 3: *2 sc in the first st, sc in the next. Repeat from * around. (9 sts)

Row 4: *2 sc in the first st, sc in the next 2 sts. Repeat from * around. (12 sts)

Row 5: *2 sc in the first st, sc in the next 3 sts. Repeat from * around. (15 sts)

Row 6: *2 sc in the first st, sc in the next 4 sts. Repeat from * around. (18 sts)

Row 7: *2 sc in the first st, sc in the next 5 sts. Repeat from * around. (21 sts)

Row 8: *2 sc in the first st, sc in the next 6 sts. Repeat from * around. (24 sts)

Row 9: *2 sc in the first st, sc in the next 7 sts. Repeat from * around. (27 sts)

Row 10: *2 sc in the first st, sc in the next 8 sts. Repeat from * around. Do not fasten off. (30 sts)


Heart Bumps

Now we're going to start making one bump of the heart. We will have to fasten of at the end of one bump, and then rejoin the yarn for the other bump.

Continuing from where we finished in the heart base:

Row 11: 1 sc in the next 15 sts. (15 sts)

Row 12: Skip the next 15 sts and sc in the first st of row 11, sc in the remaining 14 sts. (15 sts)

Row 13: *sc2tog, sc in the next 3 sts. Repeat from * 3 times. (12 sts)

Row 14: sc2tog 6 times. (6 sts) Fasten off, and weave the tail of the yarn to tighten the opening of the bump.

Start stuffing your heart at this point.

Hold the heart such as the finished bump is on the right side if you are right-handed, and on the left side otherwise. Remember how in row 11, we only did 15 sc's on the first 15 stitches? So we still have 15 stitches left that are unworked from round 10. Join your yarn on the first unworked stitch in the center of the heart base, right where row 11 of the first bump ends (refer to image here; sorry I wasn't able to take pictures while doing this!).

Row 15: sc in each st around, and then sl st to the bottom center of the finished bump. This is to avoid having an opening right in the middle of the two bumps (refer to image here). (15 sts)

Row 16: sc in each st around, skip the sl st. (15 sts)

Row 17: *sc2tog, sc in the next 3 sts. Repeat from * 3 times (12 sts)

Finish stuffing your heart.

Row 18: *sc2tog 6 times. (6 sts) Finish off like we did in the first bump.


Soil Pattern

For the soil, it depends on how big your container is going to be, so you can add/remove increase rows in this pattern to fit your "pot."

Using brown yarn, make a magic ring.

Row 1: ch 1, sc 6 into the ring. Do not join. (6 sts)

Row 2: 2 sc in each st around. (12 sts)

Row 3: *2 sc in the first st, sc in the next st. Repeat from * around. (18 sts)

Row 4: *2 sc in the first st, sc in the next 2 sts. Repeat from * around. (24 sts)
Note: You can stop the increase at this row and proceed to row 6 if your container is small.

Row 5: *2 sc in the first st, sc in the next 3 sts. Repeat from * around. (30 sts)

Row 6-12: sc in each st around. (30 sts)
Note: You can add another round of increase here (to 36 sts) if your container is big, and you can also add more rows of sc's if your container is deep.

Row 13: *sc2tog in the first st, sc in the next 3 sts. Repeat from * around. (24 sts)

Row 14: *sc2tog in the first st, sc in the next 2 sts. Repeat from * around. (18 sts)

Fill your soil ball with stuffing at this point.

Row 15: *sc2tog in the first st, sc in the next st. Repeat from * around. (12 sts)

Row 16: sc2tog around. (6 sts) Fasten off.


Flower Pattern

For the flower, I used the flower pattern I found here (the flower pattern is somewhere at the bottom part of the post). It's pretty simple and very easy to make, and I already used this for making my cactus amigurumi gifts last Christmas (stay tuned, I will be posting these too, soon!).


Assembling the Cactus

First, attach your flower to the heart amigurumi. You can either sew it, or just use hot glue if you are a bit lazy like me (haha!). You can attach in anywhere you want, on one of the bumps, on the front side, etc.

And then attach your heart amigurumi to the soil, again either by sewing or using hot glue. Note, however, that since our heart has a small tip at the bottom and is therefore top-heavy, if you use hot glue it might not be very stable especially if you made a big heart. You can flatten the bottom part a bit to have more surface to glue on to the soil.

Finally, put your cactus in a container of your choice - pot, teacup, can, what-have-you! As for me, I used a cupcake paper cup, which happens to be a square in this one.

And there you have it! This design is so simple and cute, and not overly romantic-looking, so you can give this to your friends or your family as a simple Valentines token.

Again I apologize for the lack of pictures to guide you along the way of constructing the challenging or confusing parts of this design. Next time I will do my best to stop myself mid-crochet, and take pictures first before finishing everything off!

Enjoy crocheting AF! \m/



This pattern is free and not for sale. Please credit and link back to this site when sharing, using for business, etc. Thanks! :)