A Little Palatte Cleanser

The last two weeks were Spirit Week at Eat.Sleep.Knit (it's usually just one week, but they gave us a second week to finish the mascots).  I decided to make a mascot stuffie partway through, so here is Confetti, the balloon dog!  (I'm in the Puppy Floats Team.)

The pattern is Snooker the Balloon Dog, and he's knit and then folded together just like an actual balloon dog!  I used Malabrigo Sock in the Parade colorway.  It takes less than 50 yards.  The knitting is easy, but there are some fiddly parts because you need to knit it tightly so the stuffing doesn't come out.  The directions are clear, and I would absolutely make another one at some point. 

A Stunt Double

A year ago Caleb was about to begin a Micro Paleontology course, so I made him a Tiny Dinosaur.  This fall's classes don't really lend themselves as obviously to specific mascots so I made him a Stunt Noodle.  The Stunt Noodle is a versatile helper, ready to offer assistance with all subjects in a less chaotic way than the original, back home.  Also, there is no pet deposit with the Stunt Noodle.  

Caleb has no idea that I made the Stunt Noodle and I've hidden it, packed with his stuff.  When we move him into his apartment I will set it out on his desk and surprise him with it.  I can't tell you how many times I just started giggling as I was crocheting him and I think Caleb will get a kick out him.

The pattern is Toby the Siamese Cat, but I've obviously adjusted colors to match Mr. Noodle, the original.  The main body color is Squoosh Fiberarts Beefcake Sock in Mocha.  The dark points (face, ears, tail, and paws) are Cascade Heritage Sock in 5609 Bark.  I also used a tiny bit of Madelinetosh Twist Light in Kitten for his inner ears, whiskers, and tummy.  I used regular, round eyes instead of cat eyes because when he (the Original Noodle) does the Crazy Eyes, right before the does the Crazy Things, his eyes are round.  Caleb knows the expression well.

Hopefully, the Stunt Noodle will add a welcome taste of home to Caleb's first apartment, as he starts his first semester at College Station!

I Made A Tiger!

The last few years I've participated in Eat Sleep Knit's Yarnathon program which is a combination of yarn buying loyalty rewards, knit (and crochet) alongs, and random other yarn related things.  There are four teams each year and this year I am a Targhee Tiger.  (Team sorting happens at 12:01 AM EST New Year's Day for previous customers.  It's very exciting.)

At some point during the year (it's been in the summer the last couple of years at least) there is Team Spirit Week.  It's a week of team based activities including a Mascot Challenge, which is to knit or crochet an image of your team's mascot.  It could be a stuffie or a dishcloth or anything with your mascot.

I've usually done little amigurumi stuffies for this challenge and this year was no different.  This is my tiger.  I used the Snowy and Amber The Tigers pattern.  This is not a beginning amigurumi design, but I can say the head, body, and legs are all crocheted together as you go.  The rest is added on later, and it took a few hours to sew on all the details and finishing bits.  I used Emma's Practically Perfect Sock yarn in Volume (orange), After Dark (black), and Terrazzo (cream) with a 2.25mm hook.

I love my little finished tiger!

Also, I should probably mention that I have no affiliation with Eat Sleep Knit other than as a customer and I'm not getting anything from this blog post except for a reason to share my new tiger, which I'm very proud of.

Teacup Rex

This fall Caleb is taking a class called Micro Paleontology.  When he told me about it, my brain started working through the definition of the class title and I said, "Tiny Dinosaurs?"  Yes, he's going to be learning about Tiny Dinosaurs!  Naturally, I decided he needed a little moral support for the class so I made him a little Teacup Rex!*

This is the Timothy the T-Rex pattern, which I've always thought was adorable, but had never made.  I used Malabrigo Rios in Lettuce for the main color and Squoosh Fiberarts Ultra Worsted in Event Horizon for the stripes.

The pattern calls for 10mm eyes, but all I had was 9mm or 12 mm.  When it comes to eyes, bigger is usually better (unless you're going for a beady eyed look), so I used the 12mm eyes.

This was a great pattern and had some of the best sewing up directions I've seen.  She tells you exactly where to put the arms, legs, and tail as you're adding them to the body.  This means he stands up nicely!  There's no wobble to this guy.  He's extremely stable, which doesn't always happen in crocheted critters.  I think he's adorable and can't wait to give him to Caleb when we move him back into school for fall.

*The actual class is taught through the Marine Sciences department so I seriously doubt they will be learning about the elusive Teacup Rex, since they were a land dinosaur.

It Is Finished

 Leviathan is all finished.

When the time came to sew the eyes and eyelids on, Newton generously assisted.  With his help, I was able to get them sewn on in twice the time it would have taken if I had been forced to do them alone.

I am really happy with the finished project and can't wait to give him to Caleb for Christmas!

Have a great weekend!  I'm going to go knit something!

Progress!

Once I finished the suckers, Leviathan has really flown off the hook!  I got this picture yesterday afternoon and this is before I stuffed the body and closed up his underbelly side.  (Unfortunately, getting a photo this morning isn't working because it's so dark in the mornings here.)  If you've ever made a stuffed animal, you know how they can take an insane amount of stuffing before they feel firm.  I felt like the body was never going to be full!

Today I will be starting the eyes and, believe it or not, they're the last part of this project!  I'm really, really hoping I can have a finished octopus to show you Thursday or Friday!  As you can see, Newton is really excited about my progress too.

On a completely different topic, we've done something here that we NEVER do - we got the Christmas tree up.  I usually wait until after the first week of December, but this year we decided as a family to put it up early.  Why?  Because Professor Newtonium is crazy.  We decided that it might be better for him to get used to the tree for a couple of weeks before we put ornaments on it.  Also, I can decide if we're going to actually use ornaments or if I'll just decorate with the big ribbons, pop the angel on top and call it a day.  I usually use just the ribbons when we have baby animals, but since Newton will be almost 10 months old by Christmas day, it's possible that we might be able to have ornaments.  I put it up yesterday afternoon and so far he's been very impressed that I can make a tree in the living room, but otherwise hasn't really messed with it.  I wasn't sure what he'd do overnight while the rest of us slept, but it was still standing this morning. 

50% More Tentacles Than Two Days Ago!

I have finished half of my tentacles!  Actually I've finished half of Levi's* tentacles, and I'm almost finished with tentacle number five!  I hope to get them all finished this week and start joining them and working on the body.  I've had to be very careful to keep the tentacles put up when I'm not right there watching them.  

Someone (who happens to be the color of hot cocoa) is really interested in them.  He showed up to "help" me with blog photos this morning and I'm pretty sure if he had a chance, he would absolutely steal one or more tentacle.  Honestly, I'm pretty sure that the finished critter is going to have to go back to college with Caleb for it's own safety.  Newton likes to steal things he can drag around the house.

He has also been helping with laundry around here.  I went into the laundry room to get a load out of the washer and put it into the dryer, flipped on the light, and saw this.  I screamed (as you do).  He didn't really care, and wasn't concerned about me starting the dryer either.  He's a different sort of cat!

Have a great weekend and I hope you have laundry help too, if you want it!

*I've given the octopus a working name of Leviathan and have been calling him Levi for short.  I have no idea what Caleb will name him.

Tentacles!

I've finished all of the suckers on all of the tentacles, woven in all of their ends, removed the markers for the suckers and added tentacle markers!

I've also started to finish my first tentacle!  The black poly stuffing I ordered for this project was definitely worth it just to prevent show through.  I am now in tentacle finishing mode and it feels much faster than suckers!

Some Spinning

Occasionally I take a break from crocheting suckers on tentacles and spin a while.  I've finished spinning the singles for my Mohave Turquoise gradient batts.  I've got two more sets of gradient batts from Fellview Fibres so I'm going to spin all of the singles and then chain ply them all (not together).

The second set of batts is the Antelope Canyon gradient.  This is a seven step gradient (the first was a five step), but it's still about 100 grams of fiber total.  This one is 100% Merino, while the singles above are a Merino/Tussah silk blend.  Once again, I'm spinning for a finished fingering weight yarn once it's been chain plied.

And just in case you were afraid you'd come to the wrong blog - I've finished the fourth set of suckers on all the tentacles and the ends are woven in.  That's 80% of the suckers finished and I'll be starting type five later today!

Now With 60% Suckers!

Yes, I've finished the third type of suckers, all of my ends are woven in, and I'm about to start the fourth type.  I realize that from this angle there's not much difference between the sizes of suckers, but the first ones are the flattest, and they get a little bit taller each time.  I think types four and five will be both taller and wider in diameter than these first three types.

At this point, I'm hopeful that I will meet my progress goals for this project!  Have a great weekend, I'm going to be making more suckers and weaving in ends (SO. MANY. ENDS.)

All Suckers, All the Time

That pretty much sums up what I'm working on here.  My goal is to have the suckers completely finished by Halloween, and the entire creature finished by Thanksgiving week, before Caleb comes home.  I've now finished the second type of sucker (you can see how they're just a little bigger than the first type), and woven in the ends.  I've actually started the third type of sucker (there are five types total, for each tentacle), but this time I'm weaving in the ends as I finish each tentacle, instead of waiting until I'm finished with all eight tentacles for each sucker type.  Make sense?  Don't worry, neither does making a giant octopus with hundreds of suckers, but it's so awesome, I'm doing it anyway! 

Suckers

I have been adding suckers to the undersides of Levi's tentacles.  The good news is I've gotten 20% of them done.  The bad news is I still have 80% of them to go.  Also, I have to weave in ends.  For each sucker.  I'm weaving in each time I finish a section in an attempt to keep them under control.  (I don't think there's any way to avoid the weaving in of ends.  Fortunately, I truly believe that the suckers really make this pattern, and knowing that I'd be disappointed if I didn't add them makes it slightly easier.)

I'm going to be here a while!

Meet Levi

This is Leviathan, or Levi as I've been calling him (the crochet, not the kitten - he's still named Newton, Newt, Noodle, Noodle Bug, Noodle Doodle Doo, Kung Fu Noodle, and the ever popular Dammit Cat- Go To Sleep).  The pattern is Apollo the Octopus and I started him for Caleb back in January.  Then I kind of stalled out, but now I'm back to work on him because I want to give him to Caleb for Christmas.  What you're looking at is the underside of his tentacles, and yes, I double checked that I still had eight of them after taking this photo.

I'm using Malabrigo Rios for his body, with Purple Mystery being his main color and Zarzamora for his underside.  You can see the colors better in this shot, and if you look at the tips of the under-tentacles, you can see the Purple Mystery and how dark it is.  I had originally planned on using Lettuce (a dirty chartreuse green) for his suckers, but I think it would have been too bright.  I'm planning on using a light gray (Gris I think) instead.  I'm actually to the point where I will be adding the suckers next and while this is definitely the biggest amigurumi I've ever made, the instructions and pattern are super clear so far.  All those stitch markers in the photos are to help with sucker placement.  Now if you'll excuse me, I should probably get started adding suckers!

While I Was Out Last Week

So last week I had a crazy schedule and on top of it I had the flu.  Thankfully it was the Flu Light and not the Flu That Knocks You On Your Butt For Two Weeks, but basically by the end of the day all I could do was snuggle into bed under all the covers with Max and watch Netflix.  Am I the only one who kind of loves that Netflix checks on you periodically?  I know they aren't going to call 911 or send hot soup if I don't answer, but for some reason I think it's sweet of them.  Never mind.

Anyway, I did get some knitting and crochet done, but most of it happened over the weekend.

I finished the body and the first sleeve of my handspun Cranberry Memories.  This was the perfect autopilot knitting while I was sick.  I've got to sew the sides of the pocket, but I'll get that at the end when I weave in all the yarn ends.

I also crocheted Caleb a shark.

I found the pattern for Chum (love that name!) and knew I wanted to make it for Caleb and last week seemed like the perfect time to do it.

It's a well written pattern and I'm really happy with the finished shark.  Even with being sick, he worked up pretty quickly.

A Tiny Narwhal

 

Last week was Team Spirit Week for the Eat.Sleep.Knit Yarnathon and they offered a half star for every person who made a mascot.  (The team with the most stars at the end of the year wins.)  As a Narwool, I needed to make a narwhal, so I grabbed my trusty narwhal amigurmi pattern and decided to make a fingering weight one.  Normally this would have been a single evening's work, but I have to be very careful with crochet so I don't make my arm worse.  It took all week.  I did discover that working at a tiny gauge is easier than the bigger gauge of my giant granny square blanket, but I still had to limit my time spent crocheting.

I used some Dream in Color Jilly in Dream On for the body and some Malabrigo Mechita in Natural for the horn.  Just in case you were curious about the size difference between a fingering weight narwhal and a worsted weight narwhal, here's a picture with the new narwhal and the Emotionally Ambiguous Narwhal I made a couple of months ago.

Palpitations

After finishing my Ramble shawl, I had about 50 yards left of Aniversario so I decided to make another Palpitation heart.  I was able to get two hearts out of it (a small and a medium size) and I had enough yarn left to make a lucet cord to connect them.

Naturally, I hung them on my tote that's holding my new sweater project (not off to a great start with sweaters this year, but hopefully the third time's a charm), knit in Aniversario - of course.

I'll show you the sweater tomorrow!

A Tale of A Narwhal

 

Once upon a time, PinkLemon made a narwhal.  She used a free pattern, available on Ravelry, and she crocheted it using 2017's Yarnathon 10K Club exclusive colorway which reminded her of cupcakes with pink icing and sprinkles.  She used a 3.5mm (US E) hook for those of you that are curious.  When she had completed the narwhal, she placed it next to Maximus to get pictures for the blog.  Maximius sat very still with narwhal.  For about one minute.  Then things got a little weird.

I hope you have a better weekend than the narwhal did!

Cthulhu

One of Caleb's subjects in homeschooling this year is American Literature.  We're using a curriculum from the same company we used for British Literature last year and each month he reads and studies a new book.  We both enjoy this curriculum and the books covered, and while they might not all be things he absolutely loves, there's a good mix of authors and styles and if he really doesn't enjoy a book, at least we'll move on to something else the next month.  (He really felt that Sense and Sensibility from last year could have used a few explosions to spice things up.)

This year we have another great assortment of American literature, from Huckleberry Finn, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Right Stuff, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, to name a few.  Unfortunately, one of the books is Little Women.  Now I know there are people who love Little Women and I mean no disrespect to you or the book, I just personally have never been able to get through it.  Knowing that I couldn't do it, I just really couldn't ask my 17 year old son to do it and be able to discuss it with him.  I knew he would be bored and while there are some things in school that we just need to suck up and do, sometimes, particularly in homeschooling, maybe it's better to just do something we're actually interested in (after all, I did make him read Jane Austen last year).  So I decided that instead of Little Women we would study two American authors that are known for their short stories that I knew Caleb (and I) would be interested in - Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft.

As soon as I suggested the idea to Caleb his first question was, "We'll be doing Cthulhu right?"

We definitely are doing Cthulhu and I decided he needed a little Cthulhu amigurumi too.  This is the Cthulhu from the Creepy Cute Crochet book made in some cotton yarn I had in my stash.  He was a little fiddly to make, and I'm glad I didn't go with my initial instinct and make him out of fingering weight yarn, but he's so cute all finished that he was worth it.  I might have to find a raven amigurumi pattern and make one of those too!

Palpitations

 

No, I'm not having any kind of heart issues, I've been making hearts!  These cute little guys are from the Palpitation pattern from Hunter Hammersen.  I've made all three sizes in fingering weight yarn.  The smallest one (Malabrigo Mechita in Cereza) is knit on US 0's (2.0mm).  The medium and large size (Madelinetosh Twist Light in Opaline and Malabrigo Sock in Indiecita, respectively) were both knit on US 1's (2.25mm).

I've got some other yarns and heavier weights pulled from my stash that I want to play around with using this pattern, but since most of my knitting is with fingering weight yarns, most of my leftover bits are too.  This pattern makes a fun little project and I will definitely be making more of these!

Sepp is Finished!

 

I finished my Sepp!  Unfortunately, I just about ran out of yarn which means no baby.  Maybe my Sepp is still looking for the right lady seahorse?  By just about running out of yarn though, I know I've used the required yardage.  This is my last project for Loopy Academy this semester; now I just have to get everything turned in for credit!

I used Malabrigo Arroyo in Lotus for the body and hood and I used Rosy Green Wool Cheeky Merino Joy in Edelweiss Undyed for the face and arms.  The Loopy Ewe had no fingering weight cream yarns when Loopy Academy started (I'm guessing the store was still picked over after camp), so I used sport weight yarns.  Using a heavier weight yarn meant less yardage per skein and it also meant I needed to use a bigger hook, hence the almost running out of yarn.  The eyes are from 6060 eyes.

This was a fun project but it wasn't an easy critter to make.  There were some new crochet techniques I had to learn and lots of little finishing details to add at the end.  I might make him a baby at some point in the future because the baby is super cute, but for now I'm calling him done!