Table Tennis Paddle

Table Tennis Paddle
Originally uploaded by t0fugurl

My dad is crazy about table tennis so I decided to make him this little paddle that he can hang from his paddle bag. Yes he even has a paddle bag to protect his precious paddle haha. I guess he can strap this onto the zipper. I hope he likes it! :)

I've never really tried making something so 2D before. I tried to give it some plushiness by stuffing the handle and blocking the polyfill from going to the paddle part so the paddle still stays flat. The hardest was making the ball. Since the paddle is small already - 3.5 inches - I had to make the ball super tiny to make things proportional.

All my yarn are the same weight and thickness so it was difficult to deviate from making a "standard" size ball. So I took apart a piece of white yarn and only crocheted using 1 of the 4 strands that made up the yarn. I used a 1.65mm hook and the ball turned out exactly the size I wanted!

This was the first time I crocheted with anything less than a 2.75mm hook, not to mention the thin strand of yarn kept fraying! I didn't want to use string as that would be TOO thin and hard to crochet. Anyways I'm pretty happy with the result!