For PAX East last year, some friends and I
made a bunch of Angry Birds, which resulted in a great many games with strangers and a lot of fun. I've taken a smaller set of birds out to a few other conferences since, and when I was hanging out with some open source folk, I developed a penguin ball to toss around with the Angry Birds. At my last conference, Pycon, I crocheted up a couple of little ones to give away to my fellow
GNU Mailman developers:
Small Penguin Ball
Crochet Instructions:
I use Red Heart Super Saver yarn with a K hook, but anything would do.
Start with white yarn
0: Make a magic ring (6)
1: incr in each stitch (12)
2: {incr, sc} x 6 (18)
3-4: sc around (18)
Switch to black yarn
5-7: sc around (18)
8: {decr, sc} x 6 (12)
Stuff (I use pillow stuffing 'cause pillows were on sale and fiberfill was not)
9: decr around (6) and finish off. Tuck ends in.
Wings (make 2):
Make a magic ring using 7 dc (start with one sc to get you up there), but pull it into a half-circle instead of a full circle
Eyes (make 2):
In White: 0: magic ring (5)
In Black: tie a big knot, thread it through the center of the magic ring. (I chain 3 and then tie that in a knot to make it big enough)
Beak:
0: magic ring (7) fold in half and sew together a little bit when you sew it on the penguin.
Basically, take all those things and sew them on the ball. I hide the join for the black and white body under one of the wings.