March break fun with tater tots

Posted on by trish

It’s March Break! Time for car­toons in the AM, all-day craft exper­i­ments, and lun­cheons with hot dogs and tater tots! Actu­al­ly, my mom nev­er bought us tater tots, and I don’t real­ly eat them a lot as an adult. But I think there’s just some­thing real­ly cute and fun­ny about tater tots. Well, the fact that they’re called tater tots. And they’re short and round. And who can for­get their 2 min­utes of fame in Napoleon Dyna­mite? Unfor­tu­nate­ly, many tots had per­ished in the mak­ing of the film. So! I thought I’d make a tot that one can safe­ly car­ry in one’s pock­et :D

It’s designed with a flat bot­tom too, so it does­n’t always need to be car­ried around — it can stand on its own like an inde­pen­dent lit­tle tot, on a desk or coun­ter­top or whatever.

If you, too, would like to make a tot to car­ry around in your pock­et, here’s what I did.

I used:
A bit of worsted weight yarn in yel­low
3.5mm cro­chet hook
Stuff­ing (I used yarn ends)
Two small black beads for eyes
Embroi­dery thread and nee­dle for mouth 

Edit 08/29/11: Row 1 is to achieve an oval base by work­ing sc’s into both sides of the begin­ning ch. Apolo­gies for not being very clear before, I added new process pho­tos after a few inquiries specif­i­cal­ly regard­ing this step, hope it helps!

Row 1: ch 5, 3 sc in 2nd ch from hook, 1 sc in each of next [2 ch], 3 sc in next ch, 1 sc in the remain­ing loop of each of the next 2 ch (the under­side of the same [2 ch], indi­cat­ed by the arrows in the pic­ture below).

Com­plete row with sl st in the first sc of round.

Com­plet­ed row 1 (an oval base):

Row 2: ch 1, in back loop only, sc in 1st sc, sc in each sc around, sl st in begin­ning sc. (10 sc)

Row 3: ch 1, sc in each sc around, sl st in begin­ning sc. (10 sc)

Row 4 — 5: Repeat row 3 (add or omit rows here to make taller or short­er tots)

Sew on eyes and mouth. Stuff with stuffing.

Row 6: ch 1, 2 sc tog 5 times, sl st in begin­ning sc, leav­ing a 6″ tail, tie off.

Weave tail around each sc in the open­ing, pull tight and tie off. Weave in end.

And here we have it, a tater tot! Almost as quick and easy as mak­ing the edi­ble kind. And of course, I had to make more than one…

All lined up!

 

Cir­cle time with Mrs. Clip (who also works part-time as a chip clip around here).

 

So what else can we do with the tots, except car­ry­ing them around in our pockets?

Well, one could prac­tice juggling…

 

Or play tater-tot-toss (and say that ten times fast!)…

 

Or play hot taters with a friend or two…

 

And when you’re busy with oth­er things, they can hang out on the fridge (on the frozen sec­tion, of course). Just put a safe­ty pin on it and stick it on a magnet.

 

And they nev­er go stale! So in a mon­th’s time just add some wings and they can dou­ble as chicks for an East­er display.

 

What am I going to do with all the tots? Well, I’m afraid I have more plush than I have room for them. So if you like the tots but don’t know how to cro­chet or don’t have time to cro­chet, I’ve put three in the shop, they’d love for you to visit!

And I would like to thank Mike for spend­ing the whole after­noon help­ing me with the pho­to­shoot and putting up with my sil­ly deter­mi­na­tion to take the per­fect toss­ing pic­tures. Love you!

And I’d like to thank you for drop­ping by! I real­ize that many of us don’t have the lux­u­ry of March Break but I hope you enjoyed tak­ing a break and vis­it­ing with the tater tots here!

24 thoughts on “March break fun with tater tots”

  1. Oh my gosh, I loved this post! Too fun­ny! Yes, you do have a very nice hus­band :-). It was quite the thrill when my broth­er and I got tater tots as kids; love them!

  2. I think we still have a bag of frozen tater tots in the freezer…are it yours and Mike’s? Because we don’t know why it’s there…o.O
    On anoth­er note: I love the cir­cle time with Mrs. Clip, and the tots as East­er chicks! Soooooooo Cuu­u­u­u­uute!!!! :D

  5. oh my, the one time i buy the tots i for­get them in you guys’ freez­er (though i think those are hash­browns, not tots). yes, cir­cle time! you can tell i love spend­ing time with the kinder­garten class :D

  7. ok, well I have a bit of an itty bit­ty prob­lem with the 6th row… I don’t real­ly under­stand it. :/ is there any­way that you can show a pho­to­tu­to­r­i­al or something?

  8. Hel­lo! Thank you for your com­ment! It’s always help­ful for me to get feed­back, I under­stand my instruc­tions are not always as clear as they should be…

    Any­way, about row 6, it’s basi­cal­ly sin­gle cro­chet (sc) 2 stitch­es togeth­er, and repeat that until there’re no stitch­es left. Accord­ing to the pat­tern you would have 10 stitch­es in row 5, and so you would end up with 5 sc at the end of row 6. After that just slip stitch into the first sc of the round (it would be a 2sc togeth­er stitch), like all the pre­vi­ous rows.

    Just in case you’re inter­est­ed, here’s a video demon­strat­ing the 2 sc togeth­er maneuver. 

    Hope that helps! If not, feel free to con­tact me and we’ll work this out!

  11. oh, thank you! I got real­ly con­fused because I thought you meant to INCREASE. *facepalm* I knew I was doing some wrong. :/

  12. These are awe­some, haha. But is this amigu­ru­mi or just reg­u­lar­ly cro­cheted? Sor­ry, I’m kind of a con­fused per­son since I just start­ed cro­chet­ing like 2 months ago XD. I know amigu­ru­mi is usu­al­ly worked in rounds so it’s prob­a­bly just reg­u­lar­ly cro­cheted isn’t it? haha, I feel stu­pid, I don’t even know if I spelled amigu­ru­mi right XD. Yeah, I pret­ty much only under­stand amigu­ru­mi stuff so if this isn’t I’ll prob­a­bly just try to cre­ate my own pat­tern or some­thing. Thanks!

  13. hi autumn! amigu­ru­mi just means cro­cheted or knit­ted stuffed toy in japan­ese. they don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have to be cro­cheted in rounds, though they often are. but either way, the tater tots are worked in rounds. hope that helps! :D

  14. I love your pat­tern for your tater tots — thank you for shar­ing it. I’ve tried numer­ous times but it nev­er comes out look­ing like yours. By any chance, do you have a tuto­r­i­al for the tater tots like you do for some of your oth­er pat­terns. Visu­al aid works bet­ter for me. Thank you very much.

  15. thank you for vis­it­ing, Don­na! tater tots is one of my ear­li­er pat­tern before i made it a habit to add in-process pho­tos to make the pat­tern eas­i­er to under­stand. unfor­tu­nate­ly i don’t have any in-process pho­tos for the tots, but i will try my best to have lots of pho­tos for future pat­terns! if you can let me know which part of the pat­tern you’re hav­ing trou­ble with i’ll try my best to help! what i always do as well is shape the fin­ished plush in my hand, just squish­ing it this way and that until it looks the way i want it to. hope that helps!

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  19. I love the idea! Although I’m stuck on row one, as I’m new to cro­chet­ing. Could you pos­si­bly reword it??

  20. I love the idea but I’m kind of new to cro­chet­ing, could you pos­si­bly reword row one, I’m stuck…

  21. thank you for vis­it­ing! you’re not alone regard­ing row 1! i’ve added process pho­tos and more expla­na­tion about that because of a few ques­tions i received. row 1 is like cro­chet­ing in a cir­cle, you turn the work clock­wise as you cro­chet, except it’s cro­chet­ing along a chain. you cro­chet into each stitch of the chain, and at the end of the chain, you turn the work 180 degrees clock­wise (the first process pho­to shows the work after it’s been turned), so you start to cro­chet into the free loops of the chain you had pre­vi­ous­ly cro­cheted into. hope that helps!

  22. this step is a decrease round. you gonna com­bine 2 stitch­es into 1. first stitch, you don’t fin­ish the sc, but leave the 2 loops on your hook, and sc the 2nd stitch, fin­ish­ing the stitch off, there, as you would for a nor­mal sc. you con­tin­ue to do this all the way around. :) hope this helps you.

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