I am just posting this here, for my info. I am unfortunately still buried under Bad Moon Rising jackets. I have almost finished this batch, but have agreed to take another batch of 50 later today. So...I haven't had much time to crochet. At all.
However, I just came across this link on Facebook, and it looks like a very interesting crochet along, and I would very much like to try the pattern. I'm not sure what yarn in - maybe all shades of the same colour. I haven't had any time to think on it.
The pattern is called 'Mandala Madness', and can be found here. It is currently on part 6, so I'm a bit late to the game! As usual. Heheh.
Well, I haven't had much time to do any crafting the last couple of days. I was expecting to get 10-20 shirts to work through. Nope! I have over 40. They're supposed to take me half an hour each, but apparently I'm running a bit slow, because they take me about 45 minutes to an hour. I think that's because I'm using a particularly fine marker on the fabric so that it doesn't show through or bleed. Compared to other shirts I've seen, mine is particularly hard to see. Guess I like to make things difficult for myself!
I hope to have finished the shirts by Friday morning, and then I can get back to my usually crafting and blogging!
As I write this, it is the morning of the 17th. My mum's birthday dinner was yesterday, and yes, I did finish Sophie. She absolutely loved her. She knew that I was making her a blanket, and I have no idea what sort of blanket she was expecting. But it was clear from her reaction that Sophie was not it. She seemed genuinely astonished. I couldn't be more pleased.
One month of work, 4 kilograms of yarn, and 175 cm in length
I began Sophie on the 16th March, and I finished her on the 15th April. Exactly one month, on and off. More on than off towards the end, admittedly. And definitely the most badly managed project I have ever done! When I bought the yarn last April, I read the wrong list of yarn. I had intended to make the smaller version of Sophie, and so I ordered the yarn from the 'small' list. The problem there was that I ordered the weight of yarn and used the hook size for the large blanket, which required much more yarn. Had I started Sophie when I received the yarn, instead of waiting until the last minute, then I might have noticed the yarn shortage before my yarn supplier was out of stock of most of the colours, maybe even before Cascade stopped making the shade of yellow that I used. But I'm a bit of a plonker like that.
In the end, I used 49 balls of Cascade Pacific Chunky, in the following colours:
Blue Mist (92) x11
Cotton Candy (18) x3
Spring Green (16) x4
Lavender (26) x5
Yellow (12) x3
Violet (38) x4
Bronze Green (87) x2
Honeysuckle Pink (51) x4
Dusty Turquoise (23) x5
Cream (01) x3
Italian Plum (44) x3
Gold (13) x2
Now that Sophie is finished, I have time to work on my other projects. Once the RSI in my wrists settles down a little, I'm going to finish my sister's wedding gift, and then I have another request for a unicorn plushie. In the meantime, however, I have some paid work to do. The fashion company I worked for up until the end of last November needed some hand sewing done. I am quite pleased that my name came up in the conversation - It does help that my sister works there though. On Friday I took delivery of some vintage army jackets. It is my job to pick the velcro patches off of them, and hand sew a motif onto them. I'll be paid per jacket, so I can't complain. And sitting at my dinner table with an endless supply of tea? Well, I can think of worse working conditions.
I'd better get to it then!
It is over. I have to accept that I can't finish Sophie the way I would like to, and I have to adjust the pattern to fit with what time and resources I have available to me. I feel like I have failed. It's silly, because my mum doesn't know what Sophie is supposed to look like, and it's not like I don't have a pretty impressive blanket to give to her on her birthday. The problem is that I know.
Here is where I got to as of 1am on Thursday morning (UK time):
The problem here is not even time - It is that I have run out of yarn, again. I used almost 4 entire balls of the lighter blue in that butterfly band, and I only have another two balls arriving in my next shipment. I have hit my absolute limit for buying more yarn - I have literally spent as much as I can, there is absolutely nothing left, even if I had the time to get any more delivered. The yarn I already ordered should hopefully arrive today, so I have bout two days to use what yarn I have to get as far as I can. So here is my plan:
First, I will use the yarn I have to finish the band of butterflies - that isn't an issue. But I am completely cutting out the end rows - That end band of blue would need 4 or 5 balls of blue, given the rate that I am getting through them right now. And I have never been a fan of the zigzags/diamonds on the edge - I was planning on maybe cutting those out of the blanket anyway. So cutting down the amount of yarn I need to use is my first step. Secondly, as I have low amounts of most of the other colours, I am changing the colours of the flowers and blue after the butterfly band to accommodate what yarn I do have. I currently get 1 and a bit rounds out of a whole ball. These are the colours I have left:
The leaves that would ordinarily be a light or spring green will become olive green. I plan on keeping the red for the flowers, as I now don't need the red for the edges, and the blue will then become cream.
I have no idea what colour to do the red border. The edging on the pattern requires two colours, and I don't have enough of two complimentary colours. I could use yellow instead of red for the flowers, and then use the red and the dark red-purple for the edging?
I'd definitely be open to suggestions!
I have just completed round 90 of 113 total rounds. This means I'm about 79% done with Sophie, though I only have three days left to complete her.
I have also pre-emptively ordered more yarn - Two balls each of the two blue colours. There's no way I have enough to finish the 23 remaining rounds, I just don't know how much short I'm going to be. I hope that I have ordered enough and that it arrives before I power through the few balls I have left. I didn't want to wait until I ran out before I ordered more because I am on such a tight schedule.
Due to the cost of the yarn so far I'm going to have to get creative with the remaining colours to complete Sophie. For example, I am now completely out of the light green I was using, but I have almost 2 balls of a darker, olive green. So any green rows from now on will be substituted with olive. It's not ideal - Olive will darken the blanket, but considering the olive will pretty much be close to the edge I think I might be able to get away with it. The flowers on the olive are supposed to be fuchsia, but I need the fuchsia for the zigzags around the edge, so I might pair the olive with some cream. It might lighten the look of the olive at the same time.
I feel like all I'm doing right now is trying to work out how best to use my remaining yarn - It's becoming almost like a game of yarn chicken tetris or something!
I took a photo of Sophie laid out across the bed. Please pardon the unmade look - The sheets are in the laundry today! There is no way I can get all of Sophie in the camera lens now, So I might start laying Sophie out on the floor, and standing on the bed? I'm just not sure there's this much floor space anywhere in the entire flat!
Three days left
My mum's birthday dinner is 7pm on Saturday. I'm halfway through round 87/113. Unless I can work some kind of miracle, I don't think I'm going to make it.
It's hard to stay positive through this impending sense of Doom....
So, I am currently on round 77 of 113 rounds of Sophie. This means that I am actually further along than I thought I was - about 68% done - and if I can manage to get 6 or 7 rounds done a day I could actually make it in time for my Mum's birthday. The problem is that I am going so late at night that I start to make stupid mistakes. Last night I had to frog the same round twice over - The first time I had done three and a half sides before I realised I'd been making mistakes in every side. So I frogged it, did two sides, then realised I hadn't quite frogged it far enough and I had to pull it all the way back and start again. I must have spent hours on that one round, which basically was 40 popcorn stitches, 24 (US) doubles, and a bunch of singles. It should not have been that hard, but I was so tired by that point I was making stupid mistakes.
Then this round - Round 77 - had to be pulled back about 250 stitches, all because I missed a sc, ch1, sc cluster. One single group of stitches missed out, that just happened to be at the very beginning of the round. I was not impressed with myself..... Currently mid way through round 77 however, Sophie now measures 49 inches from straight edge to straight edge, and 53 inches on the diagonal. It will be close to five feet when it is finished. I am only five foot six, so it is definitely going to be big enough!
I now have added incentive to get Sophie finished this week, as I have been offered an opportunity of some paid work (from home) from my old employer. Considering how much I have spent on yarn this month I would be an idiot to say no! So at some point I can expect delivery of some jackets, for embroidering the lapels. Fun, fun, fun!!
Well, the yarn for Sophie is here. :D I have spent most of the day trying to make progress on it, to the point where I dropped out of pre-organised events in my game, and I never miss those.
But it's working out, as Sophie is growing. She is now too big to lay out on either my sofa or my gaming table, so photographs are going to slow down purely because the bed is a less convenient place for taking photos! That, and Sophie is getting too big for me to fit all of her in the camera lens... I already had to stand on the furniture. Maybe if I ask my partner to boost me on his shoulders....?
I was quite pleased with my delivery from Love Knitting, who I don't usually use. The yarn came in the same lovely organza bags that Wool Warehouse use, and it was nicely presented. They also included some boiled sweets in one of the bags, and a 10% off coupon for my next order, though the coupon does have a use by date on it. This upset me a little, as I am well over budget for yarn this month and definitely can't be ordering any more yarn for a long while. I would love to, I just can't. :(
I was also very happy with the substituted 'gold' yarn. I obviously would have preferred to get my hands on some of the 'yellow' shade that I originally started the project with, but the new one is definitely a nice yellow, not too disimilar to the original colour. It is more vibrant - more of a canary colour than a gold though. I really don't think that it will look too out of place in the pattern, especially as the pattern calls for a 'Canary' yellow. I just couldn't get it at the time.
I now have 7 days to get Sophie finished, so many things will be put on hold - including my game and possibly my blogging! It's very important to me that I get this done on time - I'm currently on Round 74 of I don't know how many. It doesn't help that I've had to frog almost the entirety of this round because I put my 3 double crochets in the wrong place. ...On every side.... Wish me luck!
So, with no yarn to work on Sophie, and while I really should be working on Persian Tiles for my sister, I have dragged out my dusty old Wacom Bamboo, and tried some drawing.
I can't remember the last time I did any drawing - I used to draw all the time, but college, then uni and then work sapped all my time, and I haven't been able to draw in years....
However, I play World of Warcraft a lot, and in my guild there are a number of budding artists, and they were all sharing their Deviant Art pages, and comparing graphics tablets the other night (one of them recently bought a Cintiq - the envy is real....). And this has encouraged me to pull out my equipment and start drawing again.
This rather handsome fellow with the impressive mutton chops is Daegore, my troll Druid. He is the character I am currently levelling, though he is not my main character. I usually play a Tauren warrior.
I love this drawing at the moment, but I am struggling to marry my drawing style with digital art - It is a problem I have always had, but this drawing is the closest I have come to being happy with it. The one thing I don't like is that this drawing is too much like Blizzard's style. This is because I copied the character directly from my games character screen, so there's not much I can do about that. Once I get back into the swing of drawing, I am sure I will be able to make him my own. I always used to with Tig, my tauren.
Whether this drawing will ever be finished, I can't say. It's particularly large from where I sketch directly into the program and enlarge the canvas as I go, and I don't know how much time I will have to work on it. But for now, I am happy. :)
I have run out of yarn, again!!! This time I have run out of the colours that I was unable to order the first time around. Wool Warehouse - my usual go to for all things yarny - was out of stock of the other colours I needed, and they are still out of stock now. After some internet snooping I am beginning to get the impression that Cascade are no longer making one of the shades, 'yellow'. While really bloody annoying, this is the risk you take when you buy yarn for a project and then don't start said project for another year....
After some extended internet browsing, I was able to come across another website which had most of the colours I needed - Love Knitting. The only one missing was that pesky 'yellow' shade, which isn't even listed on Cascade's own website. I have substituted 'yellow 12' for 'Gold 13', and I am hoping that the colour change will not seem so obvious, given that the blanket is a host of colour changes. As long as I don't change colour mid row I should be ok.
So I added the yarn to my basket - another 12 balls - and as it was my first purchase I managed to get a discount code for 15% off! That is more than I would have gotten from Wool Warehouse, so I was impressed, but it was a one time only deal. So I don't know how often I will be going to Love Knitting for yarn over Wool Warehouse...
So, here is Sophie as she stands - I am partway through part 8 of 20... Worried about how long the rest of my yarn will last. So far I am blasting through yarn like there is no tomorrow, but hopefully I have enough of the other colours to last....
Because of this extra delay, I have had to admit to my mum that I was making her something for her birthday, but that I don't think it will be ready in time. I've lost too much time on it. Apparently, she already knew... Go figure... Mums, eh?
I got more yarn! Yeah, I know, I really don't need it. I mean.....This is how my yarn stash is currently looking, minus the yarn for Sophie:
But I am a sod for a good yarn box. This will be my last though, because I have gone too crazy on yarn lately. I seem to have developed a compulsion for buying yarn, and I need to reign it in before I bankrupt myself! (Okay, maybe it's not quite that bad.....but it could be!!)
When I heard about this yarn box from Dye Candy a few months back, I couldn't help but sign up for it. The theme is My Little Pony, and while my 11 year old son does love MLP, I am not convinced that he will trade his epic Minecraft blanket for a much smaller My Little Pony one.... So while I know I am going to make a blanket with this yarn, I have no idea who I am going to make it for!
As the yarn is sock weight, I plan on making a knitted blanket - one with mitred squares like this tutorial shows. I am hoping that the squares will be of the right size to work with sock yarn, while at the same time being able to show off the colour changes in the variegated yarn properly.
> 
I have never done this before, however - I am still very much a novice when it comes to knitting. I can knit a scarf, sure, but I haven't really tried anything else. It will be a while before I get around to this blanket though. So fingers crossed that it works well when I do get to it! If not, I may find myself switching back to the trusty old granny square.
The yarn for the Star Wars blanket has arrived!! I love getting yarn deliveries, but now that the yarn is here all I can think about is starting the blanket. Not really conducive to productivity on my other projects! Hahaha.
For this blanket I opted for DK acrylic - I know this blanket will get some heavy use, and with kids and cats in the household it needs to be easily washable. From past experience I have found that Stylecraft Special DK is very good for this - It works up well, and when it is washed it retains it's shape and it's colour. I have never washed at higher than 30 degrees though, and absolutely never tumble dry. Just in case. ;)
Again, I got my yarn from Wool Warehouse, and fortunately I was able to find a 10% off code on the internet (SC23, if anyone is interested!). So in total I got 36 100g balls of yarn for £58. It is a lot - both of yarn and money - but that's still a pretty good deal.
The colours I ordered for this blanket, including the additional squares I plan to add, were:
White (1001) x2
Black (1002) x11
Aster (1003) x1
Matador (1010) x2
Cloud Blue (1019) x1
Copper (1029) x1
Walnut (1054) x1
Graphite (1063) x2
Mocha (1064) x1
Grey (1099) x2
Sunshine (1114) x2
Royal (1117) x1
Silver (1203) x2
Parchment (1218) x2
Jaffa (1256) x1
Camel (1420) x3
Cypress (1824) x1
I realise that this is a lot of yarn. I am pretty convinced that I bought too much - I didn't realise that the webpage was listing the colour counts in 50g balls, while I bought 100g.... But with the extra squares I plan to do I at least know I will have enough yarn (unlike Sophie!) and maybe I can make a smaller lap blanket for the kiddie. :)
I do love a good yarn unboxing! Unfortunately, this yarn is going to be re-boxed again. At least until I have finished both Sophie and the Persian Tiles blankets....
Ah well....I better get a move on!
I am really starting to worry a bit now... April has crept in and I am fast running out of time to finish Sophie in time for my Mum's birthday. I am not really focusing on anything else at the moment - My sister's wedding blanket lies abandoned, and I am two weeks behind on my square-a-day blanket. Hopefully I'll be able to catch up once Sophie is finished....
It is 4 am on a Windy UK night, and I have just finished part 6 of Sophie. I am getting quite achy wrists through pushing myself too hard. If I had started this just a little bit earlier it would have been fine, but I honestly forgot I had the yarn for it!
But oh well - Sitting here typing about it isn't getting me any extra sleep, and it's certainly not gaining any ground on Sophie, so I'll just leave this picture here and run away to bed.
Note the fact that Sophie is now too big to lay out on the sofa, and has now been promoted to the gaming table.....
They're here!! They're finally here!
Man, they took a long time, but it turns out they've come from China. So I can't complain.
They're a bit smaller than I anticipated, but I am sure they'll do the job.
Now, if only I had the time to step away from Sophie....
What to make for my Minecraft mad son who already has everything he could possibly think of? Ok, well not everything, but he has a lot - Minecraft T-shirts, minecraft jumpers, three versions of the Minecraft game, posters, figures, keyrings, toys....the GIANT Creeper blanket I made for him two years ago?
Well, he didn't have a Minecraft plushie. So after trawling Ravelry (like hardcore drugs for idle hands) I came across this plushie creeper pattern, by Minke van der Zee. And if you go to that Ravelry page you'll find that she has more Minecraft patterns, perfect for that Mining Mad small person in your life.
I used King Cole Moods Duet yarn, in the Meadows colourway, and a 4mm hook. I was hoping that the varigation in the yarn would reproduce the speckled pattern of the Creeper texture from the game. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out that way as the colour changes in the yarn seemed to line up in places, making the creeper look a bit....stripey! Such things don't seem to matter to my son though! He loves this Creeper almost as much as he loves his blanket.
The creeper is made by crocheting multiple rectangles and sewing them together, rather than crocheting in the round. This is supposed to give it a more rectangular appearance. As you can see by my photos though, I seem to have completely failed at this! My creeper hasn't kept the original shape after stuffing. I'm not sure whether it needs more stuffing, or less, but it doesn't look quite as straight edged as the one in the pattern.
It is still loved though, and this makes me happy. :)
I don't really have much to say on this right now, apart from how much I love this blanket.
I am following the step by step instructions over at Look At What I Made, and they are incredibly easy to follow. The blanket is working up very fast, although from looking at pictures of the finished blanket (Sophie's Universe) I feel that I may only be about half way through.
I have just finished part 5 of the tutorial, and thought that before I move onto part 6 I would post my progress. All the ends are woven in so far, and the blanket is getting to be quite heavy, but incredibly warm. I am starting to feel a bit panicky about time as I now have less than three weeks before my mum's birthday.
This is what it looks like right now:
As I may have mentioned in the past, I have three furry little bundles of assholery sharing my home with me. Yes, I just called them assholes, but yes, I am masochistic and I love them for it. I am sure any cat lover knows this feeling all too well. My cats are Heidi (10), Greebo (5) and Wicky, (3).
Wicky (short for Gallywix - a character from World of Warcraft) is the youngest and therefore the biggest asshole going! Oh sure, he looks pretty enough, but underneath that fur is the biggest cat-jerk known to man! But he's so cute, so what am I going to do?
The other day I noticed that he was chasing yet another bottle cap around the floor, out of the rubbish bin. He does this all the time. Seriously - It doesn't matter how much I spend on cats toys, something out of the rubbish will always be much more amusing. Just like cardboard boxes and clean laundry are the comfiest beds, and the sofa is the best scratch post! But as the masochistic cat lover I am, on my never-ending quests to fulfill my cats' desires, I decided that I would make him a toy that he might actually play with - A catnip mouse.
I don't know why I decided to do this, because he has had catnip mice from the store before, and lo - he actually only played with the mouse for all of ten minutes - but it was something to do, and for those ten minutes he left both my sofa and my laundry alone. Success? I think so!
For the catnip mouse I used worsted weight cotton from Sugar and Cream in the Jewel colourway, with a 5.5mm hook. The pattern was found on Ravelry by Meelai - The Easy Peasy Catnip Mouse Toy. As the name suggests, it really is very easy to make. I made two mice, and each one took me less than an hour. I stuffed the mice with standard toy stuffing bought from Hobbycraft, and a small amount of dry catnip that I bought from the pet department of the local Wilkos. I am sure that it can be found in any pet store though.
The most difficult part of making the toys was after I got the catnip out from the cupboard - My catnip came in plastic tubs with little caps on. Once the caps were removed all three of the cats started going absolutely mental. Trying to pour dried catnip into the toy with three cats trying to knock it out of my hands was quite the challenge! If anyone else intends to make one of these mice for their pet, I strongly urge them to do it without the cat in the room at the time!!
I made two mice for three cats, and I did expect to have to make a third as the initial interest in the mouse was pretty mental. But, as with any toy I have provided for the little fur-demons, after ten minutes the novelty wore off and they haven't touched them since...
Oh well.
