Look Alive Hat

 As soon as I saw the album cover for Look Alive, I knew that I needed to make up a silly hat to match. 

I spent a little too much time making this... next time darker yarn, at least twice as many spines.

Doing a search on Ravelry, I found this Ribbed Winter Hat pattern by Nea Creates. With the very distinct front and post double crochet ribs it looked perfect. I made one small change and added three rows of single crochet around the base, as I like a little edging on my hats. I used a 4mm hook and Redheart Soft in Guacamole.

After that it was a mindless sort of task to add the spines. I tried at first with two colors of embroidery thread, but not only did it quickly fall off, but I ran out super fast. Then I found a brand new skein of yellow crochet thread. I cut about 4 inch lengths and held two together to make a simple tassel with a knot at the base to keep it secure. I did every other vertical rib and every other stitch so as to not be too knotted.

I trimmed them all down once done to let them stick out a little better more like spines. I also added a bit extra around the brim as the album art does seem to be dense around the edge. 

Time to Complete: 6 hours
Difficulty: Easy

Alfur from Hilda

Do you watch Hilda on Netflix? If you don't, get on that. 

We've probably watched the first season four times through now, heading into a fifth as we countdown the days till Season 2 premiers. Our three year old girl loves it. I wanted to crochet a tiny Alfur, but the more I thought about it, the less I thought that would work very well. I considered Sculpy clay too... but of course decided to go and learn a new skill: Needle Felting. 

I ordered the Clover needle felting pen tool and a multipack of unspun wool that had the red and white colors I liked. I also ordered a set of leather finger covers and a needle felting mat from Amazon after I stabbed myself many many times the first few attempts. I basically just read a bunch of blog posts by others and watched a few you tube videos.

I made a yellow ball. I know... wow right. But then added another and worked up a few tiny eyes and a beak and voila! A fat chick spirit from Spirited Away! Then I tried out a sort of fuzzy ghost, which was cool to leave part of it unspun and unfelted to give it that wispy ghost look. More recently I'm trying to make a character from a webcomic I like, but am not sure how it't turning out...

These experiments helped get me a bit of confidence, but of course I couldn't just stop with needle felting... of course not. I decided I wanted him to be able to be posable. That meant needle felting the body around a skeleton. I attempted to make my own armature with beading wire, and while it looked ok, it was not the right color, nor very sturdy.

this black wire was way too thick

So I decided to outsource the skeleton to a friend who does paper flowers. I figured she would have a better knowledge of wires and could wrap it in black so that it would look correct to the character. 

my attempt

I sent her my rough drawing, a picture of what I had come up with, and an idea on scale and she sent back like the perfect thing. Shoulders can move a little and the wire is tough enough that a bend will stay in place. She also coated it in clear modge podge which should keep it safe should when I pose him in the leaves and stuff. Of course I forgot to take a picture of the new armature sans felt...

wrapped skeleton

With a round head, cone shaped body, cone hat, two small ovals for hair poufs and two long ovals for ears... I had me a little Alfur! The eyes, eyebrows and smile were tricky... But the pen tool has three needles, which can easily slide out, so I was able to use one needle for these small parts. Just takes patience and a lot of poking. 

Got to say... all that poking is nice and cathartic if you manage to not stab yourself...

Difficulty: Easy

Time to complete: about 4 hours

Flogging Molly Dress

Most husbands seem to amass clothing. I feel this is a universal. Even if they haven't worn something in oh say 15 years it's still in the bottom of the closet or shoved in a drawer. This is the case with mine anyway.

He's got several well worn shirts, but has been saying since day one of Sophie being around that I needed to make his well loved and worn Flogging Molly shirt into a onesie. I do love the idea, but at the rate she was growing and the rate at which I know how to sew and pattern, well I ended up going with a swing dress. I had just purchased a few cute ones from a friend selling Lularoe, yes I'm one of those housewives, and it looked perfect to pattern from.

Step one was finding a few pieces of tissue paper, which I always keep after getting gifts. I tried to find the fewest seams and made four pattern pieces, one for half the front, one for half the back and one for each left and right sleeve. Since my tissue paper wasn't that big the front and back patterns had to be only half and I would just flip it over to get the full shape on the fabric.

Step two was a bit harder. I needed to plan out how to lay out these pieces onto his old shirt with the minimum of cutting. I wanted the front and back to be one full piece each so that I could keep the Flogging Molly logo intact, but I also didn't want to feature the many, many holes that were in the shirt. I very carefully cut out the front and back shape, the front being the most important and I managed to get the logo to be kind of tilted towards the bottom which I kind of liked. The only real other way it might have fit was to have the logo upside down, which seemed odd. The two sleeve pieces I cut from the original sleeves themselves. That way I would not have to hem the sleeves.

Thank goodness my mother in law has a very nice sewing machine and I spent two evenings over at her house working on this little dress. I think I managed to do a nice job of it. Except that one sleeve is actually inside out, but as it is sort of a punk dress and I really didn't want to rip out that many seams on an already fragile fabric I just left it.

After hemming the bottom of the dress up, I tackled those holes that did end up being in the fabric used. From the scraps of the t shirt I cut out 10 different sized heart shapes which I used as "patches" over the holes. Several of the larger hearts covered two or more smaller holes. For these I used a large zig zag stitch to give it sort of an intentional messy look. Most of the holes and hearts float around the bottom of the back of the dress and there is one up on the back shoulder. The front of the shirt had nearly no holes, so I simply added one more heart over her heart just for decoration and to tie it into the back.

For now it is a bit big on her, but she still loved running around in it anyway. And of course my husband loves to see her in it. He thinks it was such a success that I will have to make more so it is a good thing I kept the pattern. In any case it was certainly a great way to get an old t-shirt out of the drawers and back into use for a little bit anyway.

Difficulty: Easy for advanced sewer, for me, intermediately hard
Time to Complete: 7 hours

At-At Walker

I am so excited to make this pattern. It is the AT Walker pattern by Krawka on Etsy. I bought the pattern with a bit of gift card money because it is so damn cute. I had no idea who I would make it for, but I knew I would make one. With the new movies coming out, it was super fun and timely to make for a good friend's new baby. If only I could have figured out how to make it go "pew-pew." Maybe I'll add a voice box next time.

For the At-At I bought one skein of charcoal and one of dusty gray, both Red Heart Super Saver. I thought I would have enough make two at the same time, but it turned out I actually had to order more of the dusty gray direct from Red Heart! So I ordered two extra skeins so I can make Sophie cough*myself*cough one.

All the parts are pretty straightforward to make, there is just a lot of them. 50 to be exact. The only real thing I thought I might have changed was the way to start each straight piece. Instead of working sc into a chain, I bet it might have been a bit easier to sew later on if I had started with a foundation row of single crochet. Just a slightly different technique really...

Really this pattern was easy to make up. I kind of lost my excitement wading through the many different crochet squares, but once I started assembling, all that joy upon seeing the pattern the first time came back. I actually started giggling as I sewed the legs on, and you know it's a good pattern when that happens.

One other note, she had used sport weight and a 3mm hook, I used worsted weight and a 4mm hook, so I think mine came out a slightly bit bigger. This AT-AT stands 12 inches high from base of feet to top of back and 15 inches long from front of cannons to the butt.

Sophie for scale.

I might have to make the next one in time to take it to see Solo with me...

Difficulty: Easy
Time to complete: 50 hours

Kubo's Monkey

If I had my life to do over again, I would have wanted someone to tell me that you could grow up and make things for a living at a movie studio called Laika.

I've been a fan from the start. Coraline brought me on board as I was already a fan of Neil Gaiman's writing, and I even made a yellow coat for the crochet little me so we could be her for Halloween. Then Paranorman came out and won us over with its sheer quantity of details, B movie horror, and humor. I even made a comic and several posts for their #WeirdWins contests, leading to me winning four stunning posters, which I still have framed in my home. Then Boxtrolls, which I will admit I did not love as much as the other two, but still had such warm and loving characters that I had to make my own Fish, complete with box.

When Kubo and the Two Strings was announced, several people said to me "Ang, it's like they made a movie just for you." I was so excited to see it when it finally came out this month. I knew I loved it from the first few moments as the mom crawled across the beach to her son, and I started crying right then. Some people say that Pixar is making fairy tales that grown ups can enjoy, but I feel like Laika has always taken it just one step further, like they are making fairy tales for grown ups instead, that kids can also enjoy. This other way around is somehow more powerful to me, and so much more moving.

Kubo and Monkey

It was only a matter of time, then, that I would make something from Kubo, and Monkey seemed the perfect choice. I don't want to spoil it if you haven't seen it, but I loved the combo of protective, sassy, and wise that she pulled off. The dynamic between Beetle and Monkey was a joy to watch both for Kubo and the audience.

naked monkey face

I made her head, body and legs from some basic Red Heart which yarn I had on hand. The face and ears were from a leftover dusty rose color acrylic I also had in my stash. The taupe brown  of her hands is the same is Vanna's Choice from the beak of my Graboid. Finally I went out and bought one skein of Lion Brand's Wool-Ease in White-Multi, which has a little bit of shiny blue and pink something running through it. I felt it was perfect for her fur, which seemed to shine in many of the scenes.

really wanted to get her chest right

third version monkey paws

After spending a few weeks making body parts and ripping them out again, I finally got some shapes I liked. Then I remembered that Monkey has a left and right hand, and left and right foot, and that I would need to tweak the patterns to get it right. Then came stuffing and assembly, which always takes a few tries to get it all positioned right on the body. After that I added a bit of embroidery to the feet and added a little pink paint to the paws and face.

a hairless monkey!

Finally it was time to add the fur. This part took forever when I did Lion and he only had fur on part of his head and body, not everywhere! I only got about half of her body done when I ran out and needed to go buy a second skein. I spent about 15 hours just pulling the "fur" through. Then it was time to give her a hair cut. This was crucial, and I did use shorter tufts than Lion so I would have less to trim, but she still needed shaping around the face along the arms, neck and back.

looks a bit like when she was poofed by birds

She is finally done after about a month of work. Working on this just makes me appreciate how the Laika makers took the time on every puppet, every detail, just for us to take in without notice. It's amazing. Now she just needs a sword unbreakable...

Difficulty: Intermediate/Hard
Time to complete: 15 hours body, 10 hours fur
Finished Size: 13 inches from head to butt when sitting

Yes, I did write up the pattern, but not sure how I feel about sharing it yet, plus I still need to transcribe it. If there is interest, I will probably share.

Totoro Tattoo Concepts v2

One of the most consistently popular blog posts I have done is the first Totoro Tattoo Concepts post, from back in 2013.

A good friend is looking to get another tattoo soon and I casually remarked that I really need to move on from wanting to having... She of course is super excited now, and so I started to revisit the original idea I had. When we left off I had narrowed the idea down to a Totoro and a gingko leaf. That's pretty basic I am coming to see. Not to mention my design is a bit flat.

the 2013 design

The new idea is in the same vein but just much more. A while back I splurged with christmas money on a Noritake Totoro bone china cup and saucer. I was kind of stunned to see the lovely colors, line work and realism of the floral art mixed with the totoros I love.

the Noritake Cup I bought

The more I thought about it, the more this art became the inspiration for what I want to get now. I want color, I want little details, delicate line work and color. It could easily include a gingko leaf instead of the flora they use. And I could also add a few other things, like a jonquil or maybe an aster flower to represent my hubby, soot sprites, and acorns to name a few. I started looking through all the different designs and thinking about where I might want it to be on my body. I decided on getting it like a high cuff right below the bend of my elbow on the inside. Then I printed out a lot of the designs I really liked and started tracing and composing a shape.

version 2.0, super rough sketch, obviously would need a real tattoo artist to give it the once over

It is important to say that nothing has really changed in terms of other's negative opinions that I know I will hear, nor with my crippling fear of needles. What has changed is that I realized if I keep telling myself "one day" I can keep pushing it off without ever growing past my fear. Now just need to get the art polished up and save up my pennies...

Sootsprite Toms ft. Totoro

I'm not much of a shopper for a girl. I pretty much wear the same shoes till they die. So when my sister told me about a Tom's Warehouse shoe sale that she attended in Houston I quickly took to Facebook to see if there was a similar one in Dallas. Lo and behold there was!

If you have never heard of Tom's shoes, I'm not sure where you have been living. I had one pair about 5 years ago, but as I tend to dislike closed shoes, I never replaced it when it wore out. However, on the last day of the Warehouse sale, which was held in Fair Park, in Dallas, all shoes go down to the low low price of $10 a pair. So of course I went and picked up four pairs.

I got a black sparkly pair for work, a blue jean colored one with white flowers for casual settings, a teal mosaic looking pair that goes with my extensive teal wardrobe, and a plain gray canvas pair.

That last gray pair I had plans for... totoro related plans. I have seen a lot of cute hand painted shoes lately and figured it would be no big deal to add a little decoration to them with a black marker. I stuffed the toes with paper towels and got out a Prismacolor fine/broad tipped black marker and just sort of free handed a bunch of soot sprites all over.

I did debate doing only soot sprites but I couldn't help adding a whole mess of them to one and then balancing that out on the other with a few totoros.

For $10, custom shoes are a lot of fun and I could totally see going and getting a ton of cheap pairs for a kid (or kid at heart's) birthday party or activity.

In any case, this was a lot of fun and an easy way to spend a few hours. For sure would love to do something more intricate and colorful next time, perhaps on a pair of white shoes.

Difficulty: Easy
Time to Complete: 4 hours

Graboid

*UPDATE* 4/2018: Due to a request I now have a written pattern. Feel free to email angela dot skees at gmail dot com for a pdf copy.

Look, I love lousy movies. Like a lot. Ask me which Batman is the best? I'm gonna say the "neon" Batmans (aka Batman and Robin or Batman Forever) with all the bad puns. I love the Godzilla from 1998, and Twister, and Men in Black 2, and Legend. The list goes on. Gotta say though, Tremors might be the number one on the lousy movie top 10.

So when I was laying in bed, trying to sleep, and my brain is chattering away, for some reason I started thinking about bad movies. It's like I can watch them in my head. I was also wondering what next I could make. And it hit me. Why, oh why, have I never made a plushie crochet graboid?!?

A Graboid.

It's like perfect for crochet. Other people have done plushies, which is a help to look at how they constructed theirs. As I was planning to go to a desert-y locale during the summer I jumped on this project to get it done in time so I could take pictures.

First issue was finding yarn. These are subterranean creatures and are covered in dirt and sand throughout the movies so finding a good picture for coloring was a bit hard to do. In the end I decided for a more monochromatic tan color scheme than that graphic above.

I had some Lion Brand Homespun on hand in Pearl. Even though I despise that yarn I really liked the subtle browns and tans going on. I tried to find something similar in a regular worsted as opposed to the fuzzy irregular Homespun, but failed. I found a nice taupe color in Vanna's Choice that really complimented it to create that darker head. The head is actually like bone kind of or a big beak as compared to the soft worm body, so I thought they would make a cool look together. The tongue worms I still haven't found a color I like, but I do have a bit of this dusty sort of pink in my stash that might work. And I will need a tiny bit of a red color for the inside of the mouth where the tongue worms come out.

I started working on the body from the tail up to the neck where it joins. Using the pearl homespun I worked up several rows and then started increasing rows. Every few rows I did one that had some of the spikes come out. I would just sort of eyeball where the spikes should go. The body spikes help it move through the loose soil and I wanted them to stand out a bit from the body, so I started carrying a second darker solid tan (pretty sure it is Bernat Satin in Sable) and switching to it to make popcorn stitches. Sort of like the Daleks I made way back in the day.

I got a good way in and wasn't sure I liked the shape it was making, but kept going. At this point I was writing each round down as I made it. So that I could tweak as needed and still be able to turn this into a pattern eventually. The tough part is that homespun felts together really really fast, so if I needed to rip this out and redo it, it was pretty much hopeless.

As I kept increasing the body, I started thinking about how large the overall plush would turn out to be and how to make it proportional in my mind. I kept feeling like I was increasing too slowly overall. This is gonna be a baby sized graboid for sure, but I still wanted it to be a good huggable size. Also, just to note, I was stuffing as I went along, as the spike yarn was crossing across the inside space.

The body spikes I sort of just placed as I felt they were needed while trying to be roughly symmetrical. I also tried to keep at least three or four rows between them so they had their own space. I also gradually started adding more and more until they met at the top of the back. The belly side is free of spikes so it's easy for me to tell where the top and bottom are. It took me about two months to get the body alone done, but mainly because I was only able to work on it about two hours every two to three days during that time.

Once it was big enough around I felt it was ok to just keep that width for several rows to elongate the wormy body, continuing the pattern of spikes. After that I worked a few rows of decreasing, with no more spikes, for the neck area before the beaked head.

throat piece widening to mouth with tongue worms anchored to base

Next I made a throat and mouth for the Graboid. The throat is just a tube that I inserted into the body cavity and stuffed around so that I could have a place to retract the tongue creatures in. Figured it might also make it eating other toys easier if it could swallow them a bit, ya know for pictures. I widened the tube at one end to the same number of stitches as the last row of the neck and sewed it in place.

iCord body and tube head for tongue worms

I was originally at a loss for how to do the tongue creatures since working a tube of only four sc around is a giant pain in the butt, but after learning the i-cord technique for the Norse Cords, I decided that would be perfect for making the thin and long mouth tongue worm things. I made them all about the same length and then at one end widened up into a round 6 sc open tube for the head and mouth of the tongue guys. I embroidered a little black on the tops for the little horn hooks they have, but it kind of ended up looking like eyes.

throat in with a few tongue worms stuck in

I had some ideas for the beak head shape and set about trying to make and assemble them. I sketched out the shapes on paper first and held them up to the body to see how they would work together. Then used tape to hold the shapes in place and see if they would really work right. Then I set about making those shapes in the taupe vanna's choice yarn. I only did one piece of each shape as it took 5 shapes to get the full beak done. Only after assembling it all and attaching it to the body did I realize that it didnt really have enough structure to hold itself up, so I might have to go back and see if I can't stiffen it with glue and water or something.

bottom jaw pieces

I really like that the soft squishy body yarn has a different texture from the more bony beak like head, and that the body spines have a little sheen to them. All those different colors and textures really made it look like the different parts in the movie.

I super love how it came out. Pretty cute and super squishy.

Time to complete: about 40 hours
Difficulty: Intermediate
Size: About 18 inches from beak to tail, 10 inches around at widest part of body

Iorek's Armor

So last week I made a polar bear named Iorek as in the armored polar bear from the Golden Compass. As it would be fun and challenging to make actual armor for him out of crochet, I went for it.

I debated using felt and sewing together the armor, but that is a bit cheating I feel. The plan was to make armor plating using the crocodile stitch and free form shapes and squares all sewn together. I picked out a mottled brown that I think is Vanna's Choice in Barley that I had on hand.

The first thing I did was make two sets of two scales, vertically for the shoulder pads, as this was a pretty easy thing to make. I used this good reference by Crochet Chiq for the vertical chains of scales.

collar piece, shoulder scales, triangle scale chest and half circle chest piece

For the front I worked a triangle shape of scales, starting at the point then making a row of 2 and a row of three on top. I used just the first few rows of Bonita Patterns's Triangle shawl pattern that I purchased and used a while back to get how to make this. I then made a super large half circle shape that spanned the area across his chest to affix the triangle scales to.

For the back I did a longer set of 5 vertical for the spine sort of armor.  For the back I also made two half circle shapes for the shoulder plates and one more half circle which I then lengthened to go under the spine plates.

front side assembly with shoulders

After all these bits were made I needed something to affix them all to, to hang off his shoulders right. So I did a simple circle of three rounds of single crochet like a large collar and started assembling the armor by sewing it onto the collar.

backside assembly with shoulder plates, back plate and spine

After that I thought he needed a helmet. This was a bit tricky since I wanted his ears to stick out. Sure I could have just made a helmet and sewn the ears on, but no. So I started with a small circle and then just sort of eyeballed out a widening wedge for the back of the helmet. Then I left a few stitches free on each side and worked front side panels of about the same length as the back. Then I added a small ridge on the front with a picot to give that little triangle point in the center of the eyes. After that I made a single crocodile scale to add to the helmet.

Flat helmet piece and its single scale

I used the tails from the sides to sew up the helmet leaving openings for the ears to poke out of and sewed the scale on to the front.

Once the armor was all assembled I realized that I made it sort of samurai-ish... I wanted it to be a but cooler though so I used a bit of leftover super thin Madtosh gold to add swirl filigree to the flat front armor, the back shoulder plates and on the back of the helmet. To keep his armor nice and snug, I threaded a piece of yarn between the shoulder pads and the chest piece like a shoelace and tied it under his arms.

front

backside

feet and bear butt

Overall the armor probably took another 3-4 hours to make, and one more for the filagree.
He's just so dang cute, fierce and cuddly.