I Found This on the Internet So I Made It, Part I

I don't know if anyone observed the sheer animalistic awesomeness that is my big-ass blue crochet hook in the Skull Blanket post, but I just couldn't resist crocheting something new with it. As it happens, I had some impulse-purchase lavender Super Chunky yarn lying about. I also had a mad hankering for a circle scarf, and I happened upon the perfect pattern over on Handmade by Anne Potter, namely the Soho Bulky Cowl. I'll admit that I was sceptical at first, because whilst her scarf looked awesome, the pattern seemed way too simple for it. I was super happy with the result though, and it crocheted up in no time!

It is super warm and cozy. And my ratties freaking love riding in the folds like a pouch. Easy pattern, brilliant result, mad props to Ms Potter <3

Thursday Project Round-Up

I've never really been able to get the hang of Thursdays. I mostly spend them wishing it was Friday so that I can goof off and craft. So to get in the spirit, I'd like to use Thursdays to take stock of any ongoing projects I've got going, separately from my Etsy store.

Giganto pile o' yarn

One of my current big projects is my skull crochet blanket. It started out as a yarn-destash project, but ultimately I got completely carried away and bought tons more yarn. Oops! Anyway, it was inspired by finding my big, blue, beautiful crochet hook, weighing in at over 15mm thick! The whole blanket is made of double crochet stitches (single crochet, if you use American crochet terms), using three strands of double knit (aka light worsted) acrylic yarn. The first picture shows where I was at last Thursday, and the next of where I am today!! I'm currently attaching a black linen backing using blanket stitch, and I'll be stitching the skull to the backing too. I messed up my pattern here and there, so it looks like my skull had a serious go at a professional ice hockey career, but lalalalala whatever :-) What do you think? And yes, the cotton candy colours make me ridiculously happy. I'm adoring pastels and pastel goth at the moment!

Ignore the foot. Sigh.

HorrorBunnies Live!

I have finally taken pics of my HorrorBunnies, after they were in my craft basket for AGES. Anyway, here for your viewing pleasure:

Zombie HorrorBunny

Frankenstein's HorrorBunny

Werewolf HorrorBunny

Cthulhu HorrorBunny

Teaspoon Bunny

Vampire HorrorBunny

A Very Cthulhu Christmas

I made this tiny Cthulhu for my dad for Christmas, based on the pattern in Creepy Cute Crochet :) As you can see, it turned out perfectly fine, and I make all apologies for every negative thought I have ever had about the patterns. As I said (at length) in a previous post, reading instructions on whether to crochet in both loops rather than in the back loop only is rather important -_- I will at some point post a picture of an earlier attempt at a Cthulhu from the same pattern. I also made another tiny Cthulhu, with slightly different eyes, for a friend for her birthday.

Anyway, just so that you can see that I do actually ~make stuff.

Things in Jars

One of the craft ideas I have been bashing around is to crochet miscellaneous things (like small octopi, weird aliens, whatever...) and then put them in jars with mock-scientific labels. As ideas go, it is one. I googled the idea ("amigurumi in jar") to see what's out there... and holy cow, the internet is weird.

Some things are really cute, like this Spider in a Jar from 1400 Amigurumi Patterns:

(Ngaw look at his widdle eyes and legs ^_^ )

Other things are really cool, like this baby alien (and others) from These Loving Hands

and the eyeballs in a jar:

Or just really awesome, like these mushrooms by SquidHead (she also has lots of octopus amigurumi ^_^ this makes me happy)

But what caused me to double-take was this, by Lil' Spider Baby:

Yep. It's a foetus in a jar. Why this disturbed me, whereas the eyeballs or the needle-felted teddy-bear foetuses in one of my earlier posts didn't, I have no idea. Maybe we should ask Freud or my mother ^_^

Gadzooks! A post!! a.k.a Musings on amigurumi basics and why reading instructions is important

A NOTE BEFORE I BEGIN: My posts will henceforth be written offline and then dragged around on a flash drive until I get somewhere with internet. Hence the date on this and hopefully future posts. I have not lost my mind (that I'm aware of), despite what the contradiction between the written date and the posting date may imply. That is all. As you were, gentlemen.

As I'm sitting here writing this (overly delayed) post, I am mentally facepalming so hard my brain might haemmorhage. If you'd care to listen to my misadventure in the form of a melodramatic rant, read on :) If not, skip to the TLDR (Too Long Didn't Read, for those who don't know) at the end ;)

I've been crocheting for around a year now, after learning how to do so from a series of magazines called The Art of Crochet, which I bought whenever I happened to wander into a CNA. I don't wander into CNA's terribly often, so I have the magazines more or less in pairs with a ten to twelve issue gap between each pair ;) Regardless, I learnt how to do the basic crochet stitches, and learnt that most patterns are simply modifications of those stitches. Simple, right? And really, since all I really want to make is amigurumi, I should be fine, right? So this intrepid little crafter promptly bought all the yarn she could lay her grubby hands on, and started making things from a friend's copy of Creepy Cute Crochet.

And they were hideous. Tiny malformed abbherations which looked oddly ribbed and stretched and god knows what else. I went onto the internet (yay for the repository of all knowledge!! \o/) and the all-knowing internet told me that all I really needed to do was turn my crochet work inside-out before stuffing. Ta-da, no more ribs! Yay, mystery solved, shove the tiny abbherations into the corner, my world is good once more.

Or is it? Ever in the back of my mind was the niggling doubt about the tiny abbherations... their tiny bodies all weirdly elongated... in a night-sweat of being haunted by my past failure (what? crocheting is serious business, yo) I looked up some product reviews of Creepy Cute Crochet, and some others complained of the same problem. So it's not just me... I'm not the problem, right? RIGHT??? And in a fit of denial I have not made anything from someone else's pattern since. I made up the pattern for my Bunnies based loosely off what I have seen in other patterns, and a vague understanding of the effects of increasing and decreasing on the shape of an amigurumi. For the most part, I think I did pretty well. But my stitches still didn't look as tight or neat as some others, and the tiny gaps left by decreases bugged me. I finally sucked up my pride today, and happened upon Planet June (who has recently come to Cape Town! Where I live!! How cool?? *dies*) and her lovely tutorials.

MIND. BLOWN.

Because I had learnt to crochet normally, for non-amigurumi purposes, I had been taught to crochet in the back loop only (BLO). Which is dandy when you're doing someting like double crochet (UK treble crochet) back and forth, makes a pretty pattern, world is shiny. But as a method for amigurumi, it sucks quite a lot. Your stitches are immediately longer and more open than they would be if you crocheted under BOTH loops. Which makes sense. Also, it makes your invisible decreases, you know, invisible. *claws at face a little*

Which brings me to the point of my long and melodramatic rant... I may have to rework all my patterns, because the shaping is entirely different depending on how you stitch. I do know that how you do it is a matter of personal style, but I feel that the methods suggested by June are far superior to what I've been doing. Wibble. But at least I have learnt something new, and hopefully my amigurumi would be better for it. I wonder if maybe I should try my hand at Creepy Cute Crochet again, and see if my results are better this time round?

Aside from all that, I have been working on some very enjoyable projects and ideas. Now that I'm on holiday I will hopefully do more crafting. And more blogging! My lack of internet has been very frustrating, but I think by writing my blog posts and then just dragging them along on a flash drive until I get to somewhere with internet I will end up being more prolific. Rather than just ranting at myself in my mind like a crazy person ^_^

TLDR:
- Read Planet June's tutorials. Your life will be better for it.
- I will have to remake my old patterns and am being a big girls' blouse about it.
- Crochet patterns often assume you know things that you don't. Always make sure what they expect of you before whining about your amigurumi looking mangled.
- I hope to blog more by writing my posts as they occur to me, and then posting them when I can.

HorrorBunny Progress

I feel somewhat bad about only posting again now, but I have been run off my feet the past little while, with a really busy test week behind me. I took this weekend off, and spent most of Saturday baking and finishing off Cthubunny and Wererabbit :D Why yes, I am finally telling you what the hell I've been working on. I also baked a banana loaf and some cupcakes for Mother's Day, which was on Sunday. My amazing friend Claire has taken pictures of all the crafts and baking, so the moment I motivate my lazy self to go get the pictures from her, you can admire the fruits of my labours.

In addition to the two HorrorBunnies (and one other bunny) I have now finished, I am stitching together a third addition to the motley HorrorBunny group, FrankenBunny :) I am especially excited about him. Hopefully Claire and I can go take some fun shots of the bunnies when they're finished.

Song of the Morning and progress reports

So the song of the morning is thankfully once again a good one: A Desolation Song, by Agalloch.

In terms of crafting, progress is being made on the collection of amigurumi I will henceforth call the Horror Bunnies :D I'm having way too much fun making them. However, all good things must, come to an end... or at least be put on hold until my TEST WEEK FROM HELL (TM) is over *sobs*. However, I hope to at least finish the three I have been working on before the week is out, since I doubt my short attention span will keep me entirely plastered to my books. Not least since with 2 of the three I need only do the finishing touches.

The finishing touches have made me consider the merits of using different materials for eyes... which would be best: safety eyes, beads, buttons or felt circles? I have a fairly limited range of safety eyes available to me at nearby habby stores, so those are mostly out, whereas buttons and felt come in a million different colours and shapes. The downside of felt is that I then have to try to cut the circles out to be the same size and, you know, circular. I have surprising amounts of difficulty with this. Hmmm... finishing touches may be put on hold until I successfully source buttons in the colours that I need. I suspect the ragdoll-look of buttons may actually suit the Horror Bunnies, but you guys can judge for yourselves when I finish them and post pics.

Wow that's a lot of public holidays

This long weekend has primarily been spent in bed crocheting, or sewing the Cthulhu plushie for my friend. The crochet has mostly been me working on an original pattern for little bunny amigurumi :D (Easter and the accompanying sugar rush may have gone to my head...). I'm really very excited about the pattern, because I have literally a squillion ideas for what kind of themed bunnies I want to make with it ^_^ Hopefully pictures will be posted soon...

But before I give too much away, I'll tell you about the other thing I'm very excited about. A friend of mine told me about a restaurant in Muizenberg called Closer, which I would very very much like to go to. There aren't a lot of designated vegan (or even vegetarian) restaurants in South Africa that I'm aware of, so hearing of a good one is very exciting! Though, it occurs to me that I should probably do more research into the matter before making such sweeping statements -_-".

But... SO MUCH TO BE EXCITED ABOUT :D *bounces around*

P.S. I've had a LOT of sugar

Promises, promises...

In an attempt to remind myself of what I want to post, and out of an inability to leave my new toy alone, I have compiled a brief list of projects I am working on and favourite recipes that I wish to share.

Recipes

• Baba ganoush
• Hummus
• Chickpea patties

Crafts

• Black steampunk gloves
• Totoro amigurumi (made from the free pattern designed by Heavens_Hellcat)
• Cthulhu amigurumi
• Zombie-Killer t-shirt dress
• Shoulder Cthulhu (don't ask... all will be explained and revealed).

As you can see, I suffer from a short attention span, so things tend to happen at once.

This list reminds me of the fact that I need to make a disclaimer: I will only be posting patterns or recipes which I created (should I feel inclined to do so); however, I will be posting pictures of the results of recipes or patterns designed by other people, and credit them. Obviously.