Handy Dandy Handycrafty Thread

A thread for, I suppose, yarns about crocheting and other textile/craft projects I might embark on (I know there's a bolt of fabric in my room which urgently needs turning into a dress, but we'll see how that goes later down the track).

If nothing else, documenting things I've half-finished might persuade people to guilt me into getting them actually-finished. A quick head count makes me realise I have four projects lying around in assorted states of incompleteness, two more straightforwardish ones I need to make a start on, and another one which is still in the planning stages because hands are a bitch to figure out how to make from scratch.

Anyway! Forget those buggers, this is my latest project and hopefully close enough to completion that I will get it done without hitting any stumbling blocks.



It's my Grand Battle fruit-contestant Sen, in a pleasant shade of Chikorita green that got swiftly re-purposed when inspiration suddenly struck for those creepy talon-mitts. He doesn't have arms, he's a fruit. The initial plan was to have him balance precariously on one arm, with the tail somehow balancing things out, but the wires I put in aren't strong enough so I might need to do some tweaking.


Hands. It took a fair bit of sketching to figure out how to best-distribute the fingers, but the wire was quite obliging. New pair of pliers sure helped.

I probably got a bit lazy with the crocheting, so a lot more simple tubes and sewing happened compared to, say, my Nyroti crochet project.

This dude should be done in short order when I find some suitable eyes and figure out how I want to do his crests. Then I could either make some more octopi or finish a long-neglected pokemon or something else.

Thread bookmarked, turned into homepage, printed out and placed over bed.

This is some amazing stuff Schazy I don't even know how you do it

I'm going with you a Wiccan

Twenty bucks on witchcraft as well.

Will your next project be Yggdrasil, then

If this is witchcraft, being in some kind of poorly-researched and dated hacker flick from the 90's would get you burnt at the stake. This project is merely wires, pliers, and a series of tubes. The pliers were a bloody godsend, and made the normally-hardest part of making a symmetrical skeleton that much easier.

After that, it's mostly making tubes of varying thicknesses. The fingers are three stitches/loop, the lower arm about six and the upper arm varying a bit more to give it a more tapered shape. Little triangular panels were sewn over the hands to cover up the mess of wire therein, and the head's honestly the most complicated part crochet-wise.

Will your next project be Yggdrasil, then

Weeeeell I have been tossing up yarnbombing a tree

Well hey now start small with trees

Yarn up a mythical seed first

Imp Regress, should have this one done in a weekend

SpoilerShow

E: About two hours down the track, I ran out of brown with one leg left to go. I'll hopefully restock tomorrow, for now time to have a crack at the wings.


Wings turned out nicely. Put too many/too-large-to-scale ridges on the end, sewed those back in. Might look at a subtly different green to do the leaf venation. Dude still needs a last foot.

I picked up the embroidery cotton today while hitting up a craft store to get my mum some yarn sliver for Mothers' Day. They had little glass eyes too, so Sen is now chilling on my pillow with a derpy dead-eyed fruit-lizard look on his face.

This is where I got up to after discovering my local haberdasher didn't have the cotton colour I needed. He's finished for now until I can swing by the original craft store and get me some cotton.



Good weekend project would attempt again

Oh god trying to turn a 25m skein of embroidery cotton into a tidy ball was an awful idea

There is a tangle mess of thread all over my bed

Sorted! That's now a cross-stitch project which'll probably take me bloody ages because a single-colour project isn't going to take too much brain-wrangling and more just loads of sewing.

This is progress on today's project.


E: And just about done. I need a spot of glue to set his teeth all nice and pointy, then that's one more off my list of favourite 'mons rendered in tiny crochet form. He's about an inch long.

SHORKS

IN THE BASEMENT

You yarn so good Schazer it amazing. I don't even understand

<3





Y'get that picture of it on my finger and appreciate how small it is. I'd stick it on my phone or something if I didn't know it'd suffer hell of a lot of abuse on dangling off that.

You could always repair it, i guess.

or make another one?

E: Also that is the greatest thing and i'd love to own one

Schazer you are basically the very best, like no-one ever was

Schazer, three questions:

Are you YARNGOD?

How much for one, and do you ship internationally?

Nay, I am but a Dwarf in the Fortress of Eagletime, permanently under a strange mood and making things nobody has any use for except to look pretty.

As for your second question, I was initially going to say "no" but I had a really good think about it, and consulted my marketing team. I'll flick you a PM and we'll find out if I'm making a complete twat of myself as I foray into the world of business.

And so the SchazerCorp Yarn Business Empire is born.

Sen is finished!

Posing like a dork, for some reason. I discovered his pointy little toes don't give him enough purchase to stand on hard surfaces, but he does stand as I intended on top of a pillow.


Apologies for the bloody decor in this house.

His little talons are so cute :O (Is talons even the right word?)

Jeeeeeeeeeeeeez, that he stands on anything on those three little toesies is super cool!

He is the cutest derptato monster.
BEARTATO HAS NOTHING ON YOU.

Moltres. Base is complete, the flame details need adding.



You might remember my working on a Chandelure forever ago using a similar trick for the fire. (If, like, you have a comprehensive recollection of my various stopped-and-started craft projects through the year or three.) That stalled because I got the proportions too wrong, with too-bulky limbs and the like. A possible second attempt could be a thing. Later. Maybe.

E: Also yes it just occurred to me how much that looks like blazing armpit hair, shut up

EE: Wheeeee







I am super-pleased with its little feet because I'm a dork like that.

These are all so super-brilliant

Moltres looked like a bit of a derp without the details, but it turned out pretty well afterwards, I think. :3

Sir Wulfric Cardamom.



I will be hard-pressed to be persuaded to work with yarn like this again; it's made for the cuddliest damn cephalopod ever but was an absolute bitch to work with. You can't see your stitches, you end up pulling apart the non-feathery plush stuff every other stitch, and the bloody stuff obscures all its details, which made it look like an amorphous blob under my cruddy camera's flash. One of these days I'll actually try photographing something at the not-2am when I finish a project.

Additionally, being some kind of double-stranded nonsense (one strand of feathery cobalt-blue shit, one strand of what feels like either the world's smallest pipe cleaners or thin noodly bits of new dressing-gown fabric following a variegated colour scheme tentatively encompassed by the word "mocha") you get bugger-all yardage in a single ball. Wulfric's about a ball and a half and fucked if I know what I'm going to use the remnant yarn for.

Merry 2013, teamfriends! I did not get up to nearly enough yarncraftery in the closing months of yesteryear, so I thought I might post a to-do list for the coming year of things I want to make/things that I've already started making but want to finish. Order is somewhat arbitrary but runs approximately from most urgent to most pipe-dreamy.

• The rest of my POKEDDEX (not crochet but w/evs)
  
• A thing for a very considerate friend who has been waiting on said thing for a while
  
• Articuno
  
• Galvantula
  
• Scizor
  
• A fully articulated jumping spider
  
• Eemp, Right, and Rong
  
• Realistic birds (secretarybird?)
  
• Parliament
  
• More things as I think of 'em

I'm also possibly reviving this thread because I received an offer from someone to buy my embroidery-floss Tropius, which was pretty awesome news :>

I'm generally not a huge fan of post redundancy, but I guess my complete things'll end up there as well? This seems more conducive to process photos and musing about esoteric things like textile choices and how to make fiddly body parts.

Alternate thread subtitle: What are bird (wings) we just don't know

A revival, but sadly not an especially interesting one.

I've been working on bedsocks for a friend, by which I mean I get about a round done and then forget them for a couple more days until they ask me how they're going. Which seems to be the case with most my projects now. Thanks work and the double-barrelled shotgun you've fired into my attention span's gut.

Socks are hard. They are not simple cylinders, they're more like a cylinder and a tube and a weird angular awkward joiny elbow bit that has to somehow be the strongest part of the sock. Socks are normally knitted, not crocheted, which means I've got even less idea what I'm doing. Mostly making a few rows, then undoing the whole thing again.

I was using a double crochet cluster stitch with a rather chunky hook, which built up fast but was going to be waaaay too flimsy. After darning up the ragged remains of my own socks' heels I can tell that much. Now I'm using Single crochet thermal stitch, which'll be much slower going (between the small stitch size and the constant doubling-back) but creates a noticeably durable textile.

This would probably not be worth documenting if I couldn't gloat about how I managed to convert it to working in the round, which was pure guesswork and thus probably not as hard as I'm giving myself credit for.

The yarn is Ashford Tekapo, 8ply random dyed.



Instructions so far (more like personal notes when I tackle the second sock):

-Each "full" row is actually two rows of single crochet thermal stitch, which makes for less-than-even increases on subsequent rows but mostly works alright.
The toe:
1: 6sc in a magic ring, join to the first stitch with a sl st.
2: chain one, 2sc in the outer loop only of each sc, join to the first stitch with a sl st. (12)
3: chain one, turn, [insert hook into the skipped loop of the first chain on Row 1 and the loop on adjacent stitch of Row 2, pull a loop through, yo, pull through both loops as a sc.] [sctc]. Repeat sctc for each chain on Row 2, sharing Row 1 loops as necessary. Join to first stitch with sl st. (12).
4: chain 1, turn, [sctc in one stitch, 2 sctc in the next stitch]x6. Join with a sl st. (18).
5: chain 1, turn, sctc in each stitch, reusing Row 1 loops as necessary. Join with sl st. (18).
6: repeat Row 4, but with 2sctc every 2 stitches for another increase of 6. (24).
7: Repeat Row 5.
8-11: Repeat steps 4 and 5 with six increases per paired row (36).

Foot:
12-~46: sctc in every sctc to create a "sock" tube. (i.e. 16 double-worked rows long) Cry for twenty minutes as you figure out how heels work. Ensure that the last row has its chains outward; i.e. the next row of sctc will be worked on the inside of the sock.

Heel:
Chain 42, or a large enough circumference to comfortably pass the widest point of the foot (front base of shin to back of ankle). Attach with sl st, without twisting the chain, to the third stitch back from the base of the chain. This forms the edge between the leg and ankle portions.

~47: sctc in every stitch (35 stitches.) sl st in the chain back of the first stitch on the "foot" loop.
48: ch 1, turn, sctc in every stitch (exterior).



36 stitches on a 6mm hook with my 8ply yarn produces a foot about 8cm in diameter, which is about perfect for a bedsock that you wear over another sock. The only good way to gauge whether it's the right size is to proceed on for several more rows at 36 stitches and see if the resulting tube fits.



I'm still figuring out how to tackle the ankle. Feet apparently don't quite work how I expected them to!