Liliana

When one of my best girl friends asked how I felt about becoming an auntie in the somewhat near future in the summer of 2014, I didn't expect to become one as quickly as I did. Her and her soon-to-be husband are expecting the little one in November; I was among the group who received phone calls before the general Facebook announcement went out in March when she confirmed they were expecting.

And I dragged my feet all the way up to the baby shower I couldn't attend (being on the wrong coast) and managed to fail to complete a baby set for them in time. It was only a week late, though, and I personally think it was worth the wait.

I went back to my favorite baby pattern collection, Doreen's Baby Gems, and repurposed the same one I used for Nerenya a few years back so that the little one could have her very first Sailor Moon cosplay. (The wedding will be a cosplay wedding, where the bride will be Neo Queen Serenity and the groom will be Captain America--Liliana, of course, will be the Small Lady.)

After much debating, I settled on bright but still subdued pink and blue with pastel yellow and a white with an iridescent shot through it.

I followed the jacket pattern, just switched between the blue and the white to give it the sailor uniform look and left the sleeves off. I did the bow as I do most of my hair accessories and cozies--chained enough to make a loop the right size, then alternated SC and DC around until it was the right height before gathering in the middle and winding a very long tail around to make the "knot".

I also followed the bootie pattern, switching for the white stripe, of course.

I ditched the bonnet pattern in favor of a simple baby beanie, however, in increments-of-6 rounds and adding stuffed spheres and twisty chains for the trademark meatball head look. For the spheres, I started with a pink magic circle, switched to the yellow and picked up the back loops on the first round only to give the appearance the hair shields were actually set over the hair.

I used PlanetJune's Love Hearts for the transformation locket on the heart and AmiNation's tiny crescent moon pattern for the moons on the boots and stitched them on with the yarn needle. It was pretty difficult supergluing the ends so that they wouldn't be scratchy, but the trick was to press the end onto the glue rather than let the glue soak into the end like I usually do.

Finally, I stitched the bow onto one side of the jacket and made a white chain loop just big enough to fit around it and attached that to the opposite side of the jacket to basically made a large, toggle-style button.

Chibi cosplay perfection achieved.

Digby

When my roommates and I first moved in together, we went down to a local tavern for dinner after the big moving day. It happened to be trivia night and the first thing that popped into my mind when asked what our team name would be was "stegosaurus". Except the roommate doing the writing wrote down "stegosores". It stuck. Our apartment mascot is the stegosaur. Our wi-fi's named after it, all our party invites on Facebook have to feature a themed stegosaur, my roommate who collects action figures bought a plastic stegosaur that lives on our TV table.

But during the summer, I started crocheting our real stegosore mascot.

I used Lily Sugar'n Cream in Cottage and the vague memories of the elephants I made a few years back.

I started with 4sc in a magic circle and continued around about 8 times before starting to increase. I'd add 3 in approximately the same place to make a hump on one side until it was the right size (about 30sc around), sc'd around about 3 times, then started to decrease (again on the same side to bring the hump back down. I stuffed it when it was closed enough to hold the stuffing in. When it got down to about 8, I sc'd around about 3 times, added 6mm safety eyes, sc'd around 2 more times, then decreased so it closed off.

I used the same pattern for the legs as the elephants--4sc in a magic ring, increased to 8, sc'd around about 5 times. I stuffed them and sewed them on with a yarn needle.

For the tail spikes, I made 2 chains of 10 and just pulled them through the end tail. I put a dot of superglue on each side to hold them in place.

For the back plates, I made a chain of about 35, but worked in a corner every 3-4 chs to make it roughly zigzag. I stitched it on at the valley points with a yarn needle.

He lived on the living room table about a week before the action figure collecting roommate brought out his Star Lord figure to ride on Digby's back. They've lived mostly peacefully on the table since, minus the times Digby gets rowdy and throws Star Lord onto the floor--often at seemingly random intervals.

Noah

It didn't even cross my mind when I met a coworker's pregnant wife over the holidays that I'd need to get on another baby sweater, so when he started talking about "any day now," I ran out to Michael's for Bernat Softee Baby in Little Trees and got down to business.

I tried another of my choice baby patterns, this time in 101. It was a bit stop and go for a while, moving forward and ripping back out and so on. The pattern wasn't as clear as the others have been, but eventually I figured it out and made my way through it, slowly given I could only manage one or two rows a day with my wrist.

I opted on a white and blue ch strand for the "belt" to keep the sweater closed, but something that contrasted a little more would have been better. A darker brown, maybe.

Unfortunately, I didn't complete it in time to deliver it before he went on paternity leave, but most of the office had already seen it by time he came back and it was quite the hit. I was very impressed with how smooth and uniform the pattern was--I often get somewhat transfixed by things like that, so I was very happy with how it turned out.

Doodlebobs

There were quite a number of folks on my gift list this year, and with them being all over the place, I needed something small I could easily mail or pack to take home with me over the holidays. I settled on wine charms, because they fit all the requirements and offered the challenge of being something I hadn't attempted so far.

I picked up a package of Lion Brand Yarn Bonbons in Beach, a string of Bead Landing Bits and Baubles large hole glass beads, and a package of hoop earrings about 2 inches in diameter.

To get started, I roughly followed the pattern I found here, but once I had the foundation chain on the hoop, I branched away. I used two colors for each of mine, doing the foundation chain and another row in one and then the last row in the contrasting color. I didn't add beads to all of them, as I didn't have enough, but I sc'd through the beads on the last row on the ones I did add them to.

It was pretty easy once I got the hang of it, though being able to move the hook/yarn through the opening of the hoop was pretty essential to prevent yarn twisting. I tied groupings of 4-5 together with festive ribbon and sent them off. For the ones I gave at home, I tied them into the ribbons of other presents or just hung them from the tree.

Adobe Premiere Pillow

The summer camp I grew up with means quite a lot to me--I consider it one of the best and most stable circles in my life, even though I typically only see and interact with the people in it from May to August. Having worked there 12 years, I've grown up around those folks and seen those folks grow up around me.

When our tech guy started, he was probably 11 or 12, and for the first three or four years, he didn't speak to anyone but his siblings (there are five of them total and all went through the program). I wanted nothing more than to be the one he'd open up to, but even when he nearly broke his ankle in capture the flag one summer, he never made a sound. During a staff meeting soon after that, our boss gave him the ruse of a heads-up-seven-up game to break his silence to all of the staff at once.

We grew closer after that--a lot of the staff didn't put forth the effort to get to know him even after his first words, and I quickly realized that he wasn't shown the appreciation he so readily deserved. He made sure all our computers, video cameras, and still cameras worked and were in top condition. He made sure the yearly video was compiled, edited, rendered, and playable across platforms. He made sure the theater where we watched or listened to anything was functional. But he's quiet and shy and standoffish, so no one realized how much he did.

I try to make sure he knows he's appreciated. He's a huge fan of Adobe products and I had a friend start working in the office a few blocks away the summer of 2013. That friend was able to get me into the company branded store and I picked up a Photoshop mnemonic pillow for him because they were sold out of Premiere. This year, I decided I'd make the Premiere pillow.

It took a lot longer than I anticipated.

I picked up a ball of Red Heart Soft in Black and one of Lily Sugar'n Cream in Soft Violet to get started. I worked in square rounds starting with four in a magic circle and increased on the corners until the square was roughly a foot across. I edged it in about an inch of the violet, made a corner using the back stitch, and did another inch to give the pillow some width. I made another black square the same way, edged it in about an inch of violet.

I used the violet to make an upper case P and a lower case R. The P used a bar of sc about four inches by a half inch and a sc arch about five inches long by half an inch wide. The R started with a bar of sc about three inches by a half inch, then I attached a partial arch about two inches by a half inch. I stitched them on the first square with a yarn needle.

Then I started joining the two pieces together along the violet edges, stuffing when only half of one side was still open. I didn't stuff it quite as much as I should have--the corners puckered--but it turned out very well and was received happily. I finished it in the van ride as all of us as a staff were delivering thank yous to various service sites on our very last day.

Fanime 2014

Second year as a seller definitely went a lot smoother.

We were indoors instead of in the convention center tent, for starters. A friend (PinkLemonadeGoddess) and I shared a table rather than each get our own (since there were many less spots than last year). I didn't have to produce as much product since I still had a bunch of cozy bases from last year--it was mostly cthulhus, roses, hair clips, soot balls, and customizing cozy bases to ramp up popular stock.

I did break my most-used hook, my F5/3.75mm, which is what I use for cthulhus and the majority of the rest of my popular products. It was a stupid plastic Susan Bates one--the only F I could find when I needed one--so I wasn't terribly surprised, but I did feel like my hardcore-crochet level went up a bit as a result. I have since replaced it, also with stupid Susan Bates, but at least this one's a proper metal hook.

I found a broken wire wrack at a second hand store (missing one folding leg) that worked perfectly as an inclined plane for displaying cozies when I put felt on it so they wouldn't slip. I still had my wire cubes, which I made an arch with to have a shelf above the table (cthulhus lived up there on a tin tray). Underneath I had a three tiered wire wrack with hair clips and such, a mug with long-stem roses, and a bucket of soot balls.

The soot balls were tricky. I'd intended to make soot ball cozies with a feathery yarn I'd picked up, but it was just too difficult to work with, so I ended up buying a couple packages of small Styrofoam spheres and googly eyes. I wrapped the yarn around the balls, gluing as it needed it, then gluing the eyes on. They sold pretty well.

Cthulhus and Roses

Unfortunately, I made about a quarter to a third less than last year because I was directly next to the realistic Pokemon guy. People were constantly crowding in front of and around his table, meaning there were always people standing in front of my table, but none were looking at it.

In the end, I was left with about half a bucket of soot balls, a handful of completed rose heads that hadn't yet been made into long-stems, some hair clips, and a bunch of cozies. The two cthulhu that didn't sell were my favorite of the batch, so I didn't mind keeping them.

I did get the standard increase of activity on Etsy following the convention and managed to get rid of a little more thanks to that, but it's been pretty dead as of late so I've gone back onto Vacation.

At some point I'll move the rest of my stock, but for that to happen, I'll need to be in the same state as my product and materials.

Katie's DirtyCapricorn Portfolio

I've been crocheting for about five years now. My mother tried to teach me while I was in Girl Scouts in elementary school, but she didn't know how to do it, so every square we tried to make turned out a triangle and we gave up. I taught myself during my time as an undergraduate at Pacific University Oregon, with the help of the Internet and Crochet Today! magazine.

Crochet makes a lot more sense to me than does knitting, simply because it's not linear and it's incredibly forgiving. Add stitches where you want, when you want. Don't like it? Pull it back out. Dropped a stitch or your hook came out of the active stitch? No worries, just pick it back up again.

The very first thing I made was a dice bag for myself, which I haven't even done a post for on my blog and still use today. It was a simple rectangle (not a triangle) out of thin, silky white synthetic yarn. I made smaller rectangles to form the sides, eyeballed it, and combination single crochet and whip-stitched them together before making a couple lengths of chain stitch for the drawstrings.

While with knitting, I made lots and lots of boring scarves to give people. With crochet, I am able to give them something they not only like, but use (or at least keep around). Highlights include the following:

One holiday season, I made tiny stuffed cthulhu for all my close friends. They continue to be one of my most-request items and are simple to convert into other plushies, such as Despicable Me minions or the titular character from The Lorax.

Coffee cozies are unbelievably easy to make and even moreso to customize with colors and felt to evoke character. Best sellers include designs from Star Trek, Harry Potter, Sailor Moon, Pokemon and Avatar: The Last Airbender. These are my top sellers on Etsy.com (shop currently closed).

I made a rose for a White Day gift (part of Japan's Valentine's celebration) and made the happy mistake of letting friends see it. Soon I was making rose after rose and flowerpot after flowerpot for Mother's Day, and the long-stem version was my top seller at Fanime's Artist Alley in 2013.

Accessories from hair clips to keychains have also been something of a success for me, especially batches of two-tone heart hair clips.











Other projects have varied from scarves to baby sweaters and boleros to shawls, dice bags to cell phone cases to teapot cozies. I have even stitched an amigurumi DiscWorld and a Bender (from Futurama) beanie.