Tiny Totoro

A coworker jokingly asked if I would make him a Totoro when he discovered that I crocheted well enough
to work shows and sell what I stitched. I surprised him by slowly working my way through this tiny Totoro by the end of the summer.

It was simple enough. Starting with leftover grey yarn from the Bender Hat and my trusty cthulhu hook, I made a magic circle of six, increased to twelve, and maintained that for eight or so rounds. I cut felt to appear as the whites of the eyes, punched a hole in it, put a safety eye through it and then clipped it into the body. The ears were chain and single crochet except for a half double at the turn around to flare it out. They were stitched on using my yarn needle and the tail. I cut short pieces of grey and pulled apart the strands, pulling them through the cheeks and tying for the whiskers. Then I stuffed it and decreased to the end like with the cthulhu (using the back stitches) so he would sit without falling over. Finally, I hot glued on the white felt stomach and puff-painted on the accents.

My kids were taken with him, the coworker was surprised but appreciative and I was proud, as it's the first thing I've managed after babying my wrist.

Carpal Tunnel

Temporary placeholder while I put together my portfolio.

Lace Choker

My Vampire: The Masquerade LARP character found herself with something of paramour who gifted each of her personalities their own choker. Because our game doesn't often get actual visuals for things like appearance, weapons or costuming, I opted to go ahead and try to make one of the pieces as described by the other player.

Using the same hook as for the Nerenya sweater and some baby weight synthetic white yarn, I whipped up this 1.5 to 2-inch height rectangle. With a slightly larger hook, I made a chain with lavender yarn to serve as a tie closure threaded through the cut out design along the bottom. By cutting strips of leftover black felt from Fanime and stitching them together for length, I made the middle accent. Finally, I pulled a necklace with a lavender chain and mirror pendant from the collection I inherited from my grandmother and wove that through the cut out design along the top.

It's simple and effective and evokes the feel of the piece perfectly.

This is my first and possibly last full project after Fanime for a while, as I've come to realize that the pain in my wrist is more than fatigue brought on by crocheting for a month straight.

Pictures to come.

Fanime Stock 5

Cozies.  Oh glob, so many cozies!  I really hope they hit it off as bracelets/armbands as well.  Not everyone drinks hot beverages from coffee/tea shops.

I've drawn out all my roughs so I know what each character cozy is going to look like.  I've got something like 80 designs and have estimated I'm going to have about 370 cozies by time I'm done generating stock.  I've started by making the base color cozies, ch 36-38 and sc 9 times around (sl st + ch 1 at the seam to make it even), and will add the edge contrast after the bases are made.  That way I'm not constantly switching yarn and figuring out what color needs to go where.

I've done pink, grey, some green and a lot of orange so far and will be taking my tub with me while roadtripping these upcoming weeks.  I will have a right mess of cozies in the coming days.  I probably need to buy another skein of orange, yellow, white and a few others.  White's an incredibly popular color based on the designs I've done.

After the contrast color is added, then I get to have fun with felt to make the characters come to life.  Totally looking forward to that part.  Super glue, thread and patterns everywhere!

Fanime Stock 4

Hearts and bows, oh my!

The hearts were very easy and paired together as laid out in the picture, will make very lovely hairclips.  I need to steam and press them before attaching them to the clips so that they lay flat, but that'll take all of a half hour.  Mostly waiting for my huge, unabridged dictionary to flatten them.

The bows are super cute.  The one pictured was a test, ch 50, sc back and forth to the desired height (occasionally using only the backloop to give a good scrunch point), then add the contrast along the top and bottom edges before sewing the ends together and wrapping with the contrasting yarn to make the "knot" and hide the seam.  Those will go either on barrettes for hair wear or pins for bowties.

Fanime Stock 3

Roses.  Roses as far as the eye can see.

I might have gone a little overboard on roses.

For all the bobby pins, snap clips, barrettes and pin backs, my plan was to have a selection of roses, bows and hearts.  Except I didn't stop to figure out how many and what color of each before starting, just figuring I'd use a bunch of older yarns to get rid of them.  And I ended up with a lot of roses.  I'll probably have to clump them to use them all.  They'll probably look better that way anyhow.

The larger ones I'll make calyxes for and attach to hot dog sticks for long-stemmed roses.  I'm sure those'll be popular, but I probably need to make more red and white ones.

There's a handful of bows at this point, just an easy ch 25, turn and sc back across for 24 st until 3-5 rows high, folding in both ends and stitching together before pinching and wrapping yarn around to make the 'knot.'  I'd like to make more and slightly larger ones for the pin backs to make bowties.

I've just started on hearts, which are thinner and more curly than I expected.  I think I'm going to have to double them up and maybe even poke a little stuffing in them to make them do what I want them to.  They'll work out in the end, though, and look lovely on snap clips.

Fanime Stock 2

I told myself I'd wait to try nalbinding until after Fanime so I'd have plenty of time to make all the stock I'll need.  Which of course meant I started obsessing over it.  Bought a couple needles (one of which was a custom order, the other coming all the way from Estonia) and some wool.

So, I told myself I could make a coffee cozy bracelet after I'd made 10 cthulhu.  Which I was good, I waited until I'd finished.  Except I had two different needles and two different colors of yarn.  And I had to try all of them.  So I ended up with four cozies, which wasn't too bad, and discovered how to move the yarn relatively quickly.

I taught myself with the magic of YouTube (how I seem to learn everything these days), specifically the Oslo Stitch tutorial found here.  It was easy enough, though I'm still trying to figure out how to taper the starting and ending edges so they're not so blaringly obvious.

The grey yarn didn't work as well as I thought it would, just because the white strand has to loop perfectly to not look like a random explosion of yarn with this stitch.  But it's a learning experience!

More adventures into nalbinding to come around June.