Anthos' Sweater

I know the subsection of people that make the up the audience for this post might be zero, but sometimes you just need to make something silly to get back into the swing of things.

You might remember that a while back I purchased a small mandrake root doll from The Beast Peddler on Etsy, named it Anthos, and gave them an Instagram. Following the Beast Peddler's tumblr has made me realize how many people have roots of their own and make cute clothes for them. I have no skill for sewing, even after sewing 50 patches on to my jacket, and just thinking about cutting and making tiny sleeves for arms that are a quarter of an inch long is giving me a headache. But I can crochet!

Jennings Street Yarns here in Fort Worth had a flash sale so of course I stopped by and bought a single skein of lace weight yarn. It is Sublime Lace and is extra fine merino wool in Tan. I can't seem to find it on their website or on WEBS (an online yarn store), but it is light and super soft and I love the natural color. I was thinking then that it might be fun to try to make a tiny sweater for Anthos, complete with collar and trim.

You have to wait till it's an item before you wear it. Duh.

A photo posted by Anthos (@anthos_root) on Aug 27, 2016 at 5:53pm PDT

The yarn itself recommends a 3.25 mm hook but when I started working with it I felt that hook was way too large. I switched to a tiny steel 1.3mm hook. Keeping the yarn tension with such a thin yarn and small hook was the biggest challenge.

I first started out with a full cabled sweater idea but after getting a few rows in I couldn't tell if the cables were actually visible and standing out or not, and it was taking for ever. So I frogged it.

The second attempt went a bit better. The first one I had been working in the round after making a chain and connecting it, that meant that I kept having to put it on and off him after each row since Anthos' arms are not really to the side of their body like normal doll sweaters would be. This second time I worked the body as a long rectangle with the seam being at the back. This way I could add the arm holes in one row and then keep working. I seamed the long rectangle with slip stitches and then turned and worked two rows of single crochet along the top side to make the collar. After that I added a bottom ribbing trim with a row of single crochet for definition, followed by a row of double crochet. This was a good foundation to make the ribbing which was done with two rows of back and front post double crochet, alternating every two stitches.

For a first finished sweater it is a bit plain, but I still like it a lot. This whole sweater took a minuscule amount of yarn so I can for sure make more, and get a bit more ambitious. Perhaps I will make another full cabled or one with more pronounced ribbing and a bigger collar. In any case this was a lot of fun and since the yarn is such a neutral color, I can even do small dye batches to get more colors.

Anthos is pleased as punch.

For now, Anthos is ready for Fall... if it will ever come to Texas, that is.

Difficulty: Intermediate
Time to Complete: 5 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

Views at Terlingua Ranch Retreat

In my Graboid post you saw some of the lovely desert-y locale I was talking about. Let me show you the whole place. Welcome to the Terlingua Ranch Retreat.

You might remember, or know, that my husband and I really love the Big Bend National Park area of Texas. We went last year at in the spring, at Thanksgiving, and at Christmas. Well we didn't go this spring, and were itching to get back, so we rented another small property in the same group of houses as LTM Ranch from Big Bend Vacation Rentals. These houses are all managed as a group and it is now part of my bucket list to try out each and every one.

Downstairs from the front door. Stairs upstairs to the far right. Kitchen to the left. Bathroom behind the fridge wall.

This house was pretty small but very charming. Perfect for two people and a dog. I'd say the whole place was maybe 1000 square feet. It faces so that the one of the two porches on each end of the main living area is always in shade. It has a small downstairs containing the kitchen, small eating area, a living room and bathroom.

front porch views

Right inside the front door is the stairs to the bedroom which is the same size as the whole downstairs, so you can get an idea of how small the place is.

Upstairs is pretty roomy, queen bed, two closets. You can see the swamp cooler in the wall to the left.

Being there in the summer might not have been the best idea as it runs off the grid. Power to the house is generated from a wind turbine, a solar array and a small gas generator. The trick was balancing the power consumption with keeping the house cool. By the last night we had it down to a science, running the window AC units in the morning off the generator, shutting the house down and letting the batteries charge during the hottest part of the day while we went out, and then using the swamp (evaporative) cooler through the night.

View from the upstairs windows.

The days got up to about 101 degrees by 2pm and the nights only cooled off to about 88 after midnight. We brought a huge 5 gallon igloo cooler for ice water and it made the whole trip so much better. Keeping us and the dog hydrated with COLD water was the best.

Simple is the best.

The other way to keep cool was to use the outdoor shower. Let me tell you this simple amenity made all the difference after a long day. As there is no one for miles, it was lovely to look out on such a view.

View from the shower 

I would wait till just before sunset so that most of the heat of the day had passed and I could watch the colors change. And what sunsets there are!

You can see the wind turbine and solar battery shed to the left, back porch to the right.

seriously.

stunning.

Even Gingko had a great time I think. We kept her close but let her roam around and was sure to have plenty of water for her too, while keeping her paws off the hot ground too much.

on the back porch

We for sure want to go back, but maybe in the Fall, as we'd love to just stay at the house all day with the windows open, chilling on the porches and relaxing.

Home for now but that view is gonna stick with us for a while. #wideopensky #texas

A photo posted by Anthos (@anthos_root) on Jul 6, 2016 at 10:35pm PDT

And I have yet to mention the real reason we went... the Stars! This fourth of July had no moon out and had Sagittarius high in the sky which is the direction of the center of the Milky Way. So my husband and I spent every night up till about 2 am watching and photographing the sky. Check him out as JohnnySideways on Flicker to see more.



It's no wonder every time we go that we think about buying a place out here to retire in.

Office Shed Makeover

Did you know I won a contest?

Not sure how many people I specifically told or not... but yeah it's true! A while back I saw some posts and emails about a contest that the Container Store was running. All you had to do to enter was read a few of their Container Stories blog posts about space makeovers they had done for other people and comment on your favorite one, mentioning your own organization challenges. Container Store turned my makeover into a blog post as well! Check it out by clicking here to see their full story and more pictures!

One of the reasons we bought our house was for the amazing outbuilding which was half finished into an office. As I work from home most days, it was amazing to have a full room to dedicate to my craft supplies, yarn tubs, desk and chair and office supplies. As with most people, the furniture items in there were a mish-mash of Ikea, Walmart stuff, hand me downs, dumpster dive shelves, and old stuff that didn't fit anywhere else.

My original office. A bit cluttered but functional.

So of course I commented on a post, as I often thought about getting better shelving for my shed office space. It's not that it didn't function ok, but it was suboptimal. And then I got an email saying congratulations for winning! At first I was sure it was a scam, but I did enter, so maybe not? The email wasn't shady or anything, I just was so unbelieving that I might have won something. I called up customer service and verified that the person who sent the email did indeed work for them, so at that point I figured it was legit. I had won a space makeover with Elfa products!

After signing a few different forms, we set up a time for a photographer to come out and shoot the before pictures. I didn't even vacuum out the bugs. Then came a person to measure the space. After that the floor plan was sent off to the design people to figure out the best configuration. I got to give my input on the configuration, making a few tweaks since I'm left handed, as well as the colors of the hardware and shelving itself. I ended up picking white hardware to match the trim and baseboards in the room already, and sand shelving to match the wood laminate floors. With the purple on the walls I wanted to keep it light and clean looking in there.

The clean and empty space with Elfa delivered.

During this time I spent about two days going through all the stuff, throwing out what I didn't need, donating what I didn't want, and moving the furniture out to the other side of the shed, which is separate and is a garage space. After that I had to clean the room itself. Being a shed outside, it does tend to collect bugs like no other, even though I do get it treated just like the house. First vacuum for the dirt, a second for the large dead bugs, and a third to get the cobwebs and moldings.

A few days later we scheduled delivery and installation. I did my best to stay out of line of sight of the shed all morning of the install as I wanted to keep it a surprise for myself. There is a big difference between seeing a line drawing and the real thing in the space. Once it was in, I was shocked at how big the room felt. The new long desk space running down one full wall was amazing, and all my art books and supplies now fit in orderly and neat ways.

The installed shelving with a happy dog for scale.

I did tweak the placement of one shelf up just a bit to be able to slide my clear tubs underneath the bottom shelf. I used a few of the drawer bins from an old cart for more compartment storage on the shelves of various smaller art supplies. Now that so much of the walls were shelves I did have to move a lot of the art to sit on the shelves, but I have plenty of space for that and to grow into. I still have two empty drawers and tons of space to fill.

Before again.

The finished space. Art back on the walls, comfy chair back in. 

I can totally see myself continuing to tweak and arrange and add to this space, but for now it is simply a dream come true. As my mom always says: If you don't enter you can't win!

Update:
So I don't buy physical CDs anymore, who does, but I had a lot of old album art inserts in my stash of stuff that I didn't want to throw out. So instead I cut off the cover art of each one and tossed the rest. Eight of those covers, mainly for anime and Katamari Damacy, went into a frame on the wall (you can see it on the left in the finished space image above) and the rest sat in a drawer. At Ikea this weekend I saw they had a glass topper for their long Hemnes dresser, which is the set I have in my bedroom, but that glass topper was also the perfect size to fit on my new Elfa desk!

So I took all the album covers and laid them out in a grid on the desk under the space where the glass would go (affixing them with a little bit of tape) and then just set the glass down on top on its rubber feet. Volia! Nice smooth long desktop with cool art underneath. It's so cool to have good colors and nostalgic art right at my fingertips.

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