The World

And of course, the last piece of the birthday present was the world.  Discworld, that is.  Again, PlanetJune came to the rescue in helping me make that a reality.  I made the underworld first in all blue, reveled in the fact it was actually flat, photographed it, stuck it in Photoshop, laid a map of Discworld over it, marked stitches as different colors, printed it out and went to work on the top world.

I didn't realize until it was too late that I was pulling the yarn on the underside too tight, but it helped make the mountain 3D in the end.  I didn't cut the yarn between colors because that just seemed like too much work, just let go of the one I didn't need anymore and pulled up the one I did.

As to be expected, the pattern and what I was working on quickly departed from each other.  I don't know how, I don't know why, but I had to start changing colors on the fly and it worked out.  It's not 100 percent accurate, but who cares?  It turned out more perfect than I could have hoped, and it fit right on the backs of the elephants on the back of the great A'tuin.

There was so much back and forth making this, and for a while, I really worried that it wasn't going to turn out.  And then it all came together and it did.

Turtle!

The next part of that same birthday present was a turtle, pattern also purchased from PlanetJune.  This introduced me to the idea of shaping a 3D piece by adding or removing stitches.  Blew my mind.  Getting more and more crafty every day.

The turtle was a lot slower-going than the elephants for several reasons.  New techniques, of course.  Having to rip pieces out and start over a number of times, too.  General end-of-semester business, too.  Also a little bit of fear that it wouldn't turn out or it wouldn't be liked by its recipient.

It was worked on in the dorm, in the car, in the office, in class, at work - everyone saw it and everyone thought it was the best thing ever.  A number of people wanted one.

I managed to finish it by holding my hook different after the injury with the elephants, and got a lot of funny looks because it forced me to use my elbow for leverage rather than my wrist.  Digging and scooping and catching were all very different motions when I couldn't anchor the hook between those last two fingers.  It was a good learning experience.

As with the elephants, there were turtle parts.  There were shenanigans.  There was not a mailing issue that I heard of, which was great (unless you count the mailroom screwing up and giving me the wrong tracking number).

I really enjoyed working on the shell most.  It was so different from how I would have thought to approach the problem and really showed just how creative you can be with crochet as a form.  Building up the edges and figuring out how to make it more smooth than angular was particularly impressive.

I'll admit I'd love to have a turtle myself, but I don't know if I can devote myself to a month of work again so soon.  In the future, I will eventually have a turtle of my own to love.  This one was well-received.

Hephalumps!

For a friend's birthday, I decided to make a bit of an elaborate project that started with four elephants.  I bought the patterns from PlanetJune, because it was cheap, she's clear about her patterns and they were adorable.

When you're self-taught, you don't realize what you're doing wrong until someone else points it out and then you realize how much more sense it makes to do it this way as opposed to the other way.  For instance, when I first started, I didn't understand what people meant by sc and was doing a sl st to make things.

Anyway, doing the elephants, I suddenly realized how much more durable crafted objects were when you use both st of the last row instead of just the front one.  And so these elephants really mean a bit more to me than they already did.

Finger puppets happened.  Injuries happened (I've got a scar from my hook wearing off the skin between my ring and pinkie fingers).  Piles of elephant parts happened.  I used a yarn needle for the first time.  Three-legged elephants happened.  Mailing incidents happened.  Shenanigans continued.  And there were elephants.

Red & Camel

My school has a three-week long winter term where students can take one accelerated class for 3 hours 5 days a week, mostly to get undesirable core out of the way.  After they changed their credit system from 4 to 3, winter course shifted to mostly two-week courses.  They failed to make sure the students knew that.  So I arrived back on campus a week early with absolutely nothing to do.

After a trip to Jo-Ann's, I came back with Sensations Rainbow Boucle in red & camel, two skeins (853 yards each).  I started with a ch of 156 and sc'd the whole thing, back and forth.  It became my "I don't want to think" project and took two or three years before I finally made it through the first two skeins and the third I'd purchased to complete a border of dc going perpendicular around the outside.

It ended up a lot wider on the starting end than the finished end.  It's a definite trapezoid.  The border wasn't even all the way around and is a bit wavy in places.  But it's warm, it's done, and the cats love it.

I worked at it during winter term.  I worked at it waiting in line to see Sucker Punch.  I worked at it at my first overnight SCA event.  I worked at it in class, hanging out in the dorm with friends, at home over the holidays.  It's been a bunch of places and it's been a long time coming, and it's worth all the stitches.

At one point not long after I finished it, it fell off my chair and onto my knee brace (which I call my knee corset).  It's a lot of spandex and metal and velcro.  Unintentional felting nearly broke my heart after how long it took to finish, but it's just one of the corners and not that noticeable if you're not looking for it.

The Walrus

Each summer, I have two interns learning how to be leaders and work with kids.  At the end of their month of learning, my co-leader and I give them a thank-you gift based on what we've learned about them or the inside jokes that developed with the kids.

For my second one this year, we had absolutely nothing.  It was the night before the last day and the only idea I had was to get her a stuffed walrus (because she was on her school's swim team and the kids had taken to calling her a walrus), but I couldn't find one anywhere.  Not Toys R Us, not the local drug stores that always have an odd selection of animals, not any of the specialty toy stores.  I even checked the local Petco on the off-chance they'd have a walrus chew toy.  Nothing.

So at about 8p, my mother dug out some brown yarn (I had none, which is why this wasn't my first idea) and I got working.  I worked it much the same as the head of a cthulhu plush, in rounds starting at 6 st.  I increased until 54 or 60 (really whichever one looked better) and instead of doing the curled tentacles, I ch'd 4 or 5 and hdc'd my way back; each new ch was connected to the previous row of hdc.  It didn't look the prettiest, but it worked.

When the body was stuffed and finished, I made a couple small triangles for flippers and a rough trapezoid for the tail.  Then I dug out some thin white and made some quick tusks (ch 10ish, sc back), sewed them under the lip bit and called it done.

She absolutely loved it.  Everyone was very taken by it.  I will admit it was rather adorable.  And it was then I got the request for a manatee.  But that's for another day.

Cell Case

In January, I finally upgraded my phone after four years from a "dumb" slider by Sony to a "smart" BlackBerry.  It was scratched within the first week.  I figured out why the screen was damaged: holding the darn thing to my ear, it hit my earrings.  I never figured out what scratched the back casing or chipped the shiny bits around the screen and keys.

But I did figure out how to prevent a lot of it from continuing to happen.

 I grabbed the leftover teal Red Heart Soft from the bolero, ch'd 20 or so, worked in round until it was tall enough, stitched one end together and had myself a sock for my phone.  The kids at work were super impressed that I did that all while they arrived in the morning.  My co-workers were amazed even though they'd seen me work on the baby jackets.  It was nothing special, just a solution to a problem.

And of course, less than six months after that, I had to revert to my old phone and it didn't matter.

Pictures to come.

Spock Bolero

When I realized, rather late in the semester that I would be walking in the graduation ceremony at my university in May, I scrambled to put together an outfit to wear for the big day.  A dress, of course, with teal tights, shoes and accessories.  But strapless dresses just beg for some sort of mini jacket.  So I started searching for patterns.

And found this maui shrug pattern.

I had a friend pick up Red Heart Soft yarn in teal, two balls, and got to work on a medium shrug.  I pulled it out twice, as the pattern wasn't as clear as it could be, but eventually figured it out and started cranking.  I didn't keep the tension perfect, so one end was wider than the other in the end, making one sleeve larger in the end.  It ended up a little long from sleeve-end to sleeve-end, but it was exactly what I wanted.

Which would have been perfect if they hadn't sold out of the dress before I had the chance to purchase it.  So I ended up wearing something else entirely to graduation.  When the dress was finally back in stock, I nabbed it (the last one to ever be sold from the original distributor).  By that time, the clip and earrings had gone to another lucky lady, so the dream pretty much fell apart.  And then the final nail was my mother telling me the colors didn't go together.

I've never listened to anyone else about color or pattern choices I make, but it still hurt to have gone through all the effort to be told it was wasted on the people to see it.  I still love the mustard/brown/teal combination and keep looking for opportunities to show off the outfit.

Pictures to come.