Flounder Hat

I made this hat for one of my best friends for Christmas. I'll admit that I'm awful at making/getting presents for all of my friends by the actual holiday, but I'm also going to point out that I finished the hat quite awhile ago now (though I only recently gave it to her, which has helped explain the delay in posting).

Her name is Ariel and The Little Mermaid is a big thing for her. She has tons of stuff with it on it, so that's kind of always a safe bet as a gift. Plus, foreverrrrrr ago I knit her a hat as my first foray from scarves when I first learned how to knit. Only recently I learned that the hat is actually a bit too big for her. Instead of fixing it, I decided to make a new one because I know I can do a much better job now and also because crochet is waaaaaaaaaaay preferred over knitting for me and I wanted to crochet her an awesome hat. Cue pictures of said awesome hat:

I can't believe how perfectly the hat came out. The only thing I'm not 100% happy with is the tail fin, but that's just me nit-picking. I am 110% happy with how the dorsal fin turned out. With the first part of the fin curving forward and the other two aiming backward along with the majority of the fin....ahhh. It is such a great feeling when your vision for a craft translates perfectly to real life. Even down to the detail that the tail can stand up or slouch down!

The hat also fits perfectly and she loves it. Could I ask for more? Maybe, but I'm sure not going to try, haha

Pirate Eye Patch and Lace Rose/Pineapple Blanket

Per usual it's been forever since I've updated this thing. I promise that, despite any lack of posts, this blog will never actually die unless I specifically say so. Sometimes I just get caught up in life and don't have time to craft or don't have time to share the things I've been crafting. This time it's been a little bit of both, but I thought I'd share some of the things I have made since I last posted. They were made months apart and have nothing to do with each other, I just stuck them both here since I thought it'd be superfluous to post two separate entries for them.

The first project is a pirate eye patch I worked up for a costume for my boyfriend in a night. It comes complete with a Jolly Roger attached to it. I don't know if I wrote down the pattern, but I basically sc'd it to fit and reverse sc'd around the whole thing once it was done to add a little bit of a border. The Jolly Roger should be easy enough for anybody to wing that might want to make one. I only got one pic since it's pretty straight forward:

The second project I posted on here is a blanket I made for my boyfriend's mom. It was from a pattern my mom found for me, but this should be it: Click for Pattern. The motiffs were real easy to work through once I did it a couple times and I found the open work kind of fun. The pineapple border was a pain to do as it is worked up all at once and I found it a bit confusing (messed it up at least once and of course didn't figure it out until I got to the end of the round and saw that it didn't line up). It didn't work up as big as it should have for me (why do I fail so badly at gauging?? WHY??!?), but I thought it turned out to be a nice cute little decorative afghan!

Hope everyone enjoyed the random grab-bag that was this post. Hopefully I'll get a couple more up before half a year goes by, haha

-Erin

Kirby

I made this as a gift to my boyfriend that loves Kirby. I wanted to make it HUGE, which I think I accomplished pretty well. It's also free-standing because I had the foresight to put pellets in the feet to help weigh it down. I'm very pleased with how it turned out especially considering Kirby's body looked a bit lumpy before assembly because of the way I like to make spheres.

The kitty is for size comparison (and is also not mine). I have more pictures in the pdf for the pattern which can be found here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/56189094/Kirby. If anybody uses it you should let me know if there are any mistakes as I haven't worked through my notes. You should also let me know so I can see what you've come up with!

Hopefully I'll update this more often since it's summer and I only work a couple hours a night! I've also got a couple of projects I've already completed that I need to get on here sometime too...eventually, haha.

-Erin

Sam the Turtle

I know I haven't updated in forever, but I haven't had much free time to crochet and the little I have done have been amygurumis I've been making up myself and have been making "practice" versions first so I could get the form down before making another one in which I'd worry about the coloration. Plus, I've started dating someone since my last post and he tends to take up a good chunk of my free time that would otherwise have been spent crocheting, haha.

That being said, my boyfriend had an awful, stressful day yesterday and I figured I would make him up something real quick to surprise him with and hopefully cheer him up a bit. We spent quite a chunk of time looking at crochet books before at the bookstore and he found a pattern for a cute little turtle and asked me if I would make him it. I told him I could make up one for him from my own pattern, so I figured I would do that yesterday for his cheer-up surprise! On to pictures! (clickable thumbnails)

As you can see, Sam doesn't quite stand so much as he leans using his shell as a sort of kickstand, but it's all good! I whipped him up in a couple of hours so he's small and simple, but oh so cute (in my opinion at least :) ).

Almost forgot that I've come up with (what I think is) a cool and cute idea. I'm not claiming it's original or anything, but I've decided to crochet little hearts and put them inside any amygurumis I make as a sort of secret surprise. I could totally have a tagline like, "my amygurumis have heart!" or something, plus if they ever get destroyed for some reason, it'd kinda be a small sort of happy twist to be able to see the heart inside! It may be totally lame, but it amuses me and that's all that really matters, right? ;)

In my last post I decided that, since I'm a zoology major, any post I make involving animals will be accompanied with some fun facts about the animal species so...

Did you know??
The upper part of a turtle's shell is called the carapace and the bottom part is called the plastron. The scales that make up the part of the turtle shell we can see are called scutes and are made of keratin which is the same protein that forms a variety of structures in animals from mammalian hair to bird feathers and even the rhinoceros's horn! Turtles are the only animal in which the scapula (shoulder blades) are located inside of the ribs. The lungs of turtles are attached to the top of their shell which is why you should never hold a turtle upside down for extended periods of time (as all their other organs will compress their lungs!) Almost all turtles have temperature dependent sex determination (TSD) in which the temperature at which the eggs are incubated at determines the gender of the offspring.

It's kind of scary that I'm almost done with my last real semester of undergrad classes. I'll have many many more years of school while I'm working on getting a doctorate, but it'll be nice and weird to have a break for awhile before that goes on. Hopefully I'll have some time during then to work on crocheting lots of goodies and actually worry about setting up something so people can buy things if they want (I just have my horse, unicorn and orca hats sitting in my room since I won't wear them and haven't gone out of my way to find someone that would, haha).

Until next time!

-Erin

Killer Whale Hat

The other day I watched Free Willy on Netflix with my roommate. I used to love that movie and it was because of that movie that Killer Whales were my absolute favorite animal as a child. I had three stuffed whales, my favorite being Willy of course (the other two were Luna and Spot). I had sheets with Orcas on them and even had a cool 3D puzzle thingy of one. Keeping in line with my goals for coming up with a number of animal-themed hats that I would like to try and sell, inspiration struck while I was watching the movie. What better for my next hat to be than a Killer Whale! This is what I came up with!








This is my absolute favorite hat thus far. I love the way that it turned out aesthetically and fit-wise. If I can toot my own horn, it's just great! :) I gave him button eyes so they would stand out a bit more than black yarn on black yarn would. Plus the earflaps are fins! So geeked! :D

I also came up with the idea to add a couple cool facts about the animals my hats are inspired from. I am a Zoology major after all so I feel it's kind of my duty to foist a little knowledge on your unsuspectingly :P. I'm trying to figure out exactly how to present the facts and I think, for now at least, I will go with a super cliche and cheesy lead-in. So...did you know?? The Orca or Killer Whale (also known as the blackfish) is the largest member of the dolphin family. Killer whales are considered apex predators which means that they are at the absolute top of their food chain and have no natural predators. They also have very complex social systems that are only rivaled by elephants and higher primates like us! I could go on forever, but you should just check out wikipedia because they are very awesome animals.

You may have noticed that I now have a mannequin to display hats! Someone over at craftster was so kind as to tell me that they have them for cheap over at ebay so I picked up 2 for one! I want to paint them so that they look a bit better and hopefully won't make that horrible styrofoam noise when they touch things (I don't know why but that sound is absolutely awful to me; worse than nails on chalkboard!). Once I do that, I may try putting (some of) the hats I've made up on ebay to see if they sell! I figure that's a better option for me right now since I don't have the time to devote to figuring out my Zibbet shop while school's going on.

Anyways, I just had to say again how pleased I am with this hat. I'm not bold enough to ever wear it but it still makes me happy!

Now I just have to figure out what animal I should do for my next hat! Suggestions very much welcome!

-Erin

Horse/Unicorn Hats!

First off, I just want to start with the humble admission that I am dumb. This is for two reasons:

1. On my last blog post I meant to mention that I now have an email that will solely be devoted to craft-stuff. That's right people, nerdyhooker@gmail.com is now in existence and is awaiting the moment that I actually put it to real use. On a related note, if you feel like emailing me for any reason, please do so! If you have questions on anything I've made that you want to keep secret from the general internet world, or if you just want to chat, or something, feel free!

2. I did not realize that I could directly upload pictures onto blogger. On all my previous posts I was using photobucket for the pictures, but now, no more! Well unless I don't like blogger's thing, but we will have to see on this post!

Okay, enough of that, on to hats! Eventually I want to come up with a number of patterns for animal-related hats that I can sell. It is the perfect combination of my favorite hobby (crochet!) and my educational passion (animals! since I am a Zoology major and all...), plus I'm hoping that at least some of them will turn out super cute ;).

As the title suggests, the first pattern I've come up with is for a horse/unicorn. It's the same basic pattern, you just add or subtract some parts and substitute some colors depending on which one you'd like to make and exactly what sort of horse or unicorn you have in mind. For the sake of completeness, I made one of each! On to pictures! (Disclaimer: the trained eye might notice that I have edited my face out of the pictures in which I'm wearing the hat. I would have done so a bit less crudely, but I don't have access to photoshop right now. I may switch out the pictures later when I do. Another disclaimer: I really need one of those head mannequin thingies since, in order to get pictures that show off all angles of the hat well, I may have had to resort to sticking it on my flamingos hindside... it made for interesting pictures at least! haha)















I think I might have figured out this blogger picture thing but need to figure out a way to maybe put them side-by-side so they don't take up so much room? Or just take less pictures? haha. I remember back in the good old days when I had a greatestjournal (aka livejournal but better), you could hide pictures underneath a link. Dang, I can't even remember what that was called but I'm sure people that use livejournal still know...

Anywho, you can see my handiwork! I left the ears off of the unicorn since I figured it would be a bit too much going on with the horn, but my mom vehemently insists on me adding ears to it also. Agree? Disagree? Also, I tried to make the earflaps look like the rings on the side of a bridle so the braids would be reins. Not quite sure I accomplished that, but it doesn't look horrible. At least I don't think it looks horrible, haha. The incredibly astute might also notice that the unicorn one isn't technically done because I haven't added the braids to the earflaps. This is because I want them to be pink (black just seems wrong with all the other pretty colors I've got going on) and I don't own any pink yarn because I kind of hate the color pink, haha.

Comments and such welcome as always! I'm not posting the pattern this time since, as I mentioned earlier, I eventually hope to sell the hat/pattern, so sorry guys!

-Erin

Updates

In the vein of trying to keep up on posting on here semi-regularly, I figured I'd post about some things I've changed/made/been working on.

First off, new template for the blog! While I liked the old one, it just seemed a bit dark for me. Someday I'll take the time to get a real template and stuff for my blog, but for now this will do!

Second, I have a hat/scarf I've made myself that I need to take pictures of that will eventually make its way on to here as well as another very special hat that I am waiting for the right person to model. This is a very "special" hat mind you, and I'll be looking for feedback to see if people would actually buy it, haha

Third, I am working on making a Zibbet shop to eventually sell patterns/items on! Zibbet is awesome because, unlike etsy (or at least by my understanding, feel free to let me know it I'm wrong), Zibbet lets you feature 50 items for sale for FREE. You can update your account and pay a monthly fee to get special features and sell more items, but I'm definitely not anywhere near that point. Getting my Zibbet shop up and running will probably be a very gradual process, at least for the selling actual items part, while I work out some standard shipping procedure/policy. It will also be gradual as I have to come up with the patterns to sell on it and don't want to sell any that aren't very good quality or a bit beyond a totally beginner level. Plus I will not sell any patterns or items made from copyrighted material on there and since that tends to be what I enjoy making most, it'll probably be some time before I perfect normal ones, haha.

Free patterns will always be available here, other patterns will eventually be available at my Zibbet shop once I get it up and running, and I will keep posting here to keep anybody reading updated on progress on any craft-related front!

Hopefully pics of the things I've already completed will be on here soon!

-Erin

EDIT: I can't believe I almost forgot this! My Yoshi blanket has been feature on Craftster's crochet board's Hot New Projects for some time now! I realize this doesn't mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but I'm very excited about it and am thankful for all the positive comments and feedback everyone has given it over at www.craftster.com. I love that website and stalk the crochet forum on a daily basis (usually more than once daily) so this is so cool for me! :) And if you don't believe me, I even took a screenshot of it for proof, haha (proof for me, but I'll share)