Have you heard of amigurumi? It is a crocheting technique wherein you use primarily single crochet to create these wee, cute creatures, which can include animals, fictional characters, or even human beings. An Albert Einstein amigurumi figure showed up in my Twitter feed not long ago.
I’ve dabbled in amigurumi before, making an amigurumi frog years ago.
I saw an amigurumi bunny pattern roll through my Twitter feed around Easter and it gave me an idea.
My daughter and her husband are dealing with fertility issues**, working through the process of IVF (in vitro fertilization). In order to support them through the process, which can be psychologically draining, I gave them a pair of happy bunny figurines to place in the Children & Creativity section of their home according to feng shui principles.
Feng shui is a philosophy and practice of harmonizing your environment in order to improve various areas of your life. These areas are represented within the bagua, a map of 8 life sections plus a central area that represents you and your health. There are different schools of feng shui and it’s all rather complicated to discuss within the scope of this blog post, but the book I refer to most is “Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life” by Karen Rauch Carter.
In my experience with feng shui, it works best if you think of it as a way to remind yourself of your intentions in each area of your life, with arrangements or “cures” in each section serving as the psychological prod you need to move forward with your goals.
Bunnies are perfect symbols of fertility because of how prolifically they breed.
My daughter placed the pair of happy bunnies in the children area of her home, but I’ve always wanted to get her a third bunny to add to the set because 3 is the appropriate feng shui number for the Children & Creativity section. Which makes sense, doesn’t it? Two is for the Relationship section, which is next to the Children & Creativity section of the bagua. Bring 2 together and get a third, the baby.
Try though I did, scouring thrift and antique stores, I could never find a ceramic bunny figurine that would coordinate with the happy bunnies, who are a beautiful shade of turquoise.
When I spotted the amigurumi Easter bunny pattern, inspiration hit. What if I made Liv and Eric 3 bunnies?
While the pattern I found was cute, I wasn’t completely sold on it, so I poked around online for more amigurumi bunny patterns, finally settling on one by Sir Purl Grey. This is one adorable bunny!
It took me a few weeks to make 3 bunnies, not because the pattern was hard, mostly it was finding the time in between everything else I have to do. Also, I needed to wait for the safety eyes I ordered to arrive from China. This took over a month and then I couldn’t use them for a couple of reasons. One, I couldn’t get the backs attached to the eyes … the fit was just too tight. Two, even if I could have gotten the backs on, the eyes likely would have pulled through the crocheted fabric because there is too much give between stitches. That’s not safe for a baby.
So, on the advice of my husband, I ditched the safety eyes in favor of sewing yarn eyes.
May I present to you … 3 fertility bunnies!
I took quite a few photos of these bunnies, both individually and together. Each one has its own personality. Once I started taking photos of the backs of the bunnies, I found myself posing them more creatively. Suddenly I could see them forming an amigurumi bunny rock band.
Once they are done serving their feng shui purpose, these bunnies can become toys for the future baby. Gotta be practical and think ahead.
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**Did you know that 1 in 8 couples deals with infertility? That’s a lot, certainly more than I expected. Liv and Eric have experienced the dismissal of others who think infertility is no big deal, being told to “just relax” and pregnancy will happen. Or people act as though it as a personal failure, usually the woman’s personal failure. It is neither. While pregnancy happens relatively easily for many couples, the process is physiologically complicated with the interplay of hormones in two different people, timing, and environmental factors. Things can go wrong anywhere along the line and cause loads of heartbreak. Male infertility is just as likely as female infertility, in case you were wondering.
Because of the general notion that something is “wrong” with infertile couples, no one wants to discuss the topic with those who are infertile, which causes them to feel lonely in their journey toward creating a family. When I asked Liv and Eric if I could blog about the fertility bunnies by bringing up their situation, they gave me the okay, with Liv saying, “We both feel like it shouldn’t be some big secret.”
These fertility bunnies are letting the secret out of the burrow.