Crochet Breakfast: Egg & Toast

"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting to-day?" said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.

(from Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne)

All-day breakfast and weekend brunches are certainly one of life's pleasures.

So let's start off with a simple breakfast set of buttered toast with sunny side up egg, wiener sausages, broccoli and cherry tomatoes. This breakfast set isn't a standard classic as it doesn't have ham or bacon. But there's so much emphasis on healthy eating and superfoods for the past decade, so I believe that a standard breakfast ought to have at least one super vegetable. This one has two — tomato and broccoli. Not a great inclusion according to Hubby (who doesn't eat them), but a great one according to me!

One of life's pleasures: all-day breakfasts (on IG). Something classic. I've belatedly realised that I've forgotten the dab of butter that was supposed to sit on the toast!

The Toast

The toast was modified from the original toast amigurumi pattern in Crochet Cafe by Lauren Espy (A Menagerie of Stitches). Lauren's toast amigurumi is in and of itself fantastic and super adorable. But I used fingering weight yarn (Scheepjes Catona) and 2.5mm / 3mm hook, so I had to enlarge the work by adding stitches and rows. I also wanted my toast to be thick-cut, and also changed how the crust was worked.

For the toast's stuffing, I used plastic recycled from takeout containers to keep the sides flat, and stuffed the middle with fibrefill. I tried this so that the crochet toast can be laundered and withstand rougher play, as I originally planned to give this to my niece. She loves to play masak masak (the term we use for playing house or play cooking in Singapore), and a lot of the prototype crochet food items have made their way into the toy box I've set aside for my nephews and niece.

The Egg

The sunny side up egg was my own, but I received a lot of guidance by referring to various crochet fried egg patterns, namely, from Lauren Espy's Crochet Cafe book, as well as the fried egg crochet patterns by Many Evenings (I love this one!) and by Flo and Dot, this video tutorial by KimCraft, and this cheeky egg crochet pattern by Tiny Curl. 2023 update: There's another fantastic free crochet egg pattern by Off the Beaten Hook that includes both whole and fried eggs.

The Sausages

The wiener sausages were made from my own pattern, but I'm not entirely satisfied with them yet. I got them to curve by working FLO sl sts on one side. This was something I learnt from the free elephant amigurumi pattern by Craft Passion when I made it for my nephew at the end of 2020. In a way I think they're okay but I'd like to try making them a different way so the finished stitches look the same all around. There are many types of sausages around the world, so I'm looking forward to attempting a few different types. Maybe starting with the salami roll in Lauren Espy's amazing and adorable amigurumi charcuterie board!

The Tomatoes

Adding cherry tomatoes to any breakfast gives it that bite-sized burst of tangy umami. After Shokugeki no Souma, tomatoes are like (pleasant) memory triggers. In both the manga and the anime, Souma waxed lyrical about tomatoes being a great source of umami because they are high in glutamic acid, and that cooking them down increases their flavour profile. Hmm...maybe that's why I've always loved tomatoes, especially grilled, cooked down, or sun-dried. They're so flavourful. And they're also healthy because they're high in lycopene, a powerful antioxidant.

For the cherry tomatoes, I made them based on the free crochet tomato (pomodoro) pattern by Farecreare. Specifically, I only used the part under "Il pomodorini ciliegino con l'uncinetto", which means "The crochet cherry tomatoes". In her pattern, there are 2 sizes for the cherry tomatoes, which are on the vine in her pattern, grande (large) and piccola (small). I only made the large ones. The post and patterns are in Italian but she includes crochet diagrams. And I was able to translate the Italian crochet terms using this invaluable multilingual crochet terms resource by Oombawka Design Crochet. This resource covers the basic UK and US crochet terms in German, Dutch, Spanish, Danish, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Finnish.

The Broccoli

Finally, the 2nd super vegetable in this breakfast set, the broccoli! Broccoli is a cruciferous vegetable, a long list of vegetables long touted for their health benefits.

I used the free crochet broccoli pattern by Ronique. The 2nd one with the split floret was a crochet experiment, but I'm meh with how it turned out. Ronique's broccoli pattern is in Japanese but the pattern is in crochet diagram format. And though I have the advantage of understanding basic Japanese, the We Love Amigurumi guide was invaluable in helping me understand the pattern. It also helped that I didn't have the same culture shock like when I attempted my first Japanese crochet pattern (the crochet castella cake). Also super handy were these Japanese crochet resources, included the 3 mentioned before in the crochet taiyaki post:

• Ronique's page on crochet chart symbols, and crochet terms in Japanese and English;
• Purlyshells on reading Japanese crochet patterns;
• We Love Amigurumi on reading Japanese patterns;
• dancingbarefoot's Japanese pattern tutorials;
• The Little World of Whimsy's hook conversion guide;
• Japanese Knit and Crochet Pattern Help on hook conversion (as well as other useful info);
• Fruity Knitting on Japanese yarn weight terminology in pdf (the original post is on Japanese knitting); and
• Twig and Horn on reading Japanese kitting patterns, specifically the section on yarn weights.

I chose to use the Ronique pattern because I personally preferred the look of the floret tufts in her pattern. In terms of language differences, it may have been a little more troublesome to use her pattern, and working the crochet broccoli was a little more fiddly, but when the amigurumi came together, it felt worth the effort! At some point, working the ch sts to make the floret tufts actually became quite therapeutic once I got the hang of it.

However, there are several English language crochet broccoli patterns out there, for something more straightforward. For example, the free patterns by Amigu World, Asmi Handmade, Crafty Kitty Crochet, Farecreare (Italian), Look At What I Made, Signe Elfriede on Hobbii. (2023 update: And one by Off the Beaten Hook!) There are paid broccoli patterns that are quite realistic, e.g. Olino Hobby and Mary Brown Craft (pattern no longer listed), and an adorable one by Amigurumi Food (pattern no longer listed).

Materials & Tools:

• Fingering weight yarn in white, golden yellow, beige, chocolate brown, golden brown, medium green, dark green and red.

I used Scheepjes Catona No.105 Bridal White, No.208 Yellow Gold, No.404 English Tea, No.157 Root Beer, No.412 Forest Green, No.515 Emerald and No.390 Poppy Rose; and Schachenmayr Catania No.418 Greenery.

• 2mm, 2..5mm and 3mm crochet hooks
• Stitch markers
• Scissors
• Yarn needle
• Plastic sheets, cut to size

• Fibrefill stuffing

This post was published in June 2023 but backdated to the original date of the draft and when the crochet ensemble was completed.