Ready, Set, Plant!!

Adoxograph and I were chatting the other day, lamenting our shared abundance of yarn coupled with lack of inspiration. I suggested that we have a cooperative project in order to spur each other into action. The most animated of our conversations of late have been about the game Plants vs. Zombies, so she suggested that we crochet plants and zombies from the game.

What an idea! An army of crocheted plants! I love this. This is my first attempt. It is the Chomper, my son's favorite:

I made the head from a Pac-Man pattern that I found. The teeth are the points from the ghosts. My husband says that it looks like an angry Gobstopper.

As you can see, the craft wire proved problematic as a support system, so I resorted to kebob skewers. Ultimately, I would like to get some small pots with maybe some foam or other counter balance to support the plants. There are leaves around the base and in the back, as on the plants in the game. This little plant was much more detailed than it looked at first glance.

Next up, the peashooter:

practicality on a Sunday night

I go through socks something fierce. It is to be expected, I figure, but it means I end up with a lot of holey heels. Mostly, these socks linger for an appalling amount of time in my sock drawer before finally getting thrown out. But every once in a while, I'll darn up a pair. I like doing it, there is something satisfying about the process of mending, but the end result is bittersweet.

I can never really wear these mended socks the way I wore the originals. The repairs make my sensitive feet more tender, rub in my clogs in weird ways. They are good enough for around the house, but they will never really be the same again. Strangely, this makes me want to decorate them more, to festoon them into something supremely unpractical. I'd probably stop short of lace around the cuffs, but I'd seriously consider just about anything else. An embroidered Taj Mahal on the instep? Well, that's a bit above my skill level, but not out of the question.

Just fixing the heels is enough for today, though.

continuing the series of bad self-portraits

Maybe I would do better at this if I worked from a picture rather than looking in a mirror.


Actually, though, I think this one is on the good side of average for this effort.

An exercise in frustration

More self portraits today. This first was just an effort to capture general body position, and I feel okay about it, especially the knee in the foreground:


The second one was a genuine face drawing effort. Again, it kinda sucks:


However, I do feel like I did a better job on the nose. For comparison:

Okay, yeah, I am really weird looking.

Now? BED.

Oh no, megaman has fallen into my drink!

tee hee. Ok, here's a non-action shot:
I totally forgot the smell of these things. Serious olfactory nostalgia.

Even the Earth is an oblate spheroid

All right, so I was aiming for crocheting a sphere. Keeping in mind that I wasn't bothering with any of that pattern nonsense, I thought, "okay, start with a little loopy bit, increase, maybe a couple of rows at the same diameter, decrease. Clearly this should be acceptable."

Not so!

Instead of getting a nice sphere (I went for eyeball colors, because, hey, if you're crocheting a sphere that is going to have no obvious purpose, anyway, it might as well be an eyeball, right?), I got this:



Not even close to a sphere. Really, I don't even think it constitutes an oblate spheroid--if anything, it sort of approximates a cylinder, and even that is rather a stretch. Just to avoid people making the same mistakes I did, here is what I did:

1. Chain 3, then loop what would have been your fourth chain stitch through the first chain stitch to make a little loopy jobber.
2. Working into the center of the loopy jobber, make 8 single crochets (or I think that's what they are, anyway. I'm still a little unclear on the terminology).
3. Start a new row by chaining 3 through the first single crochet, then single crochet two stitches into each of your 8 stitches in the previous row.
4. Start a new row, then alternate between stitching once and stitching twice into the stitches from the previous row.
5. In the next row, stitch singly into two stitches for each one you double stitch into
6. keep up the pattern you should see emerging here whereby you stitch singly into one additional stitch between doubly stitched stitches compared to the previous row.
7. How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
8. At some point, decide you are happy with the diameter of the thing, do one row where you just stitch once into each stitch from the previous row.
9. Decrease by stitching singly into the same number of intervening stitches as you had on the last increase row, only now instead of having that double stitch, skip one entirely, and stitch into the following stitch. (i.e., stitch 7, skip 1, stitch 7, skip 1, etc.)
10. Stuff with stuff. Tie off and explode head.

I also recommend that you do as I did and work on this at 10AM in a pub on a Saturday while watching your friends watch soccer.

The whole FAIL aspect where the geometry of the thing is concerned has me thinking that I will attempt another stitchsphere later in the month. For now, though, please enjoy (hell yes).

In at the wire...

woot! perler bead megaman coaster thingy! 11:35 p.m.! pix tomorrow!

happy Crappy Week week

This has just been one of those weeks when everything has pretty much sucked. Monday? Sucked. Tuesday? Tuesday really sucked. Wednesday? I had a ton of meetings, and also it sucked. Yesterday? Started out like it was going to be okay, but then descended into suck. Today? Exhausting, erratic, more fun than the previous days (everyone at work apparently got the "inappropriate for work Friday" notice, which at least made the day interesting), but still pretty well punctuated with suck. To make it even more fun, the majority of my local buddies were also experiencing Crappy Week week, so I couldn't even wallow in misery.

Please don't even ask about Tuesday, though.

However, today was different, because today was February, and, like my sister, I have embarked upon a perhaps misguided effort to make something every day this month. This meant two things: a trip to Michael's for some supplies (which was facilitated by the fact that I sat on the edge of my tub this morning creating a list of completely random stuff I could make over the course of the month), and the incredibly painful act of making my first thing.

I decided on a self portrait. Well, more like 2.5 self portraits. Here are some of the things that make these particular self portraits particularly excellent:

1. I don't actually look like any of them.
2. Looking at yourself that closely for that long really draws attention to all seven signs of aging that they mention in those skin care product advertisements. Note how this is particularly clear from my depictions of the dark circles under my eyes. Did I mention that this week sucked?
3. I used to be pretty good at this.

Top this off with the fact that I couldn't find the cable that makes my camera talk to my computer (I have a sneaking suspicion that it may have been an unfortunate victim of the great Division of the Goods), and, well, it kinda sucks.

So yes. It's a rather inauspicious beginning to a month of craftiness, but that's okay. I have...ideas. And I do believe rather sincerely that if I can execute successfully on even one or two of those ideas, I will be most satisfied with the outcome of the month. There are a couple in particular that I am pretty excited about. Conveniently, the exhibitionist element of blogging means that you all get to watch as I spiral downward into a dark place where arts and crafts dare not show their faces.

I also feel compelled to mention that I've just discovered that my roasted acorn squash has gone bad.

Awesome.