Finished projects!

My lazyness continues when it comes to blogging, but not on projects! Yesterday, I finished up two projects I tell you, and I started a new one!

Simon from Yogscast was finished early in the morning hours yesterday. I've been working on him for about 10 days, and maybe you remember me ranting about getting the right skincolor for him.
I do love how he turned out! I maybe should have left his beard a bit longer, but it'll just have to do. Next  up is Sjin, he'll hopefully be easy with his white/orange space suit. I might just work up Sips at the same time so that I'll get their suits right.

The second project that I finished up yesterday, I started back in february. It's another pair of baby rompers, but this pair's for my 'Murican crafting friend Carolyn whom are expecting a baby boy in august. I'm planning on working up a matching cardigan as well, and maybe some socks and a few hats. Made in merino wool on 2,5mm needles. Pattern can be found here.

I just love colorful projects! So much fun! And speaking of colorful projects, I did start the cuddly pullover sweater last night. It's impossible to catch the colors on camera. The Alpaca, the darker thread has a green hue to it, while it appears bright blue in every picture I take.

The last pullover I made, the bamboo one are still lying around, waiting to get the ends weaved in.

Getting the right skin color ain't easy!

As you guys know, I'm working on these crochet amigurumis of some of the Yogscast members. But as I started working up the belly of Simon earlier this week, I suddenly realised how idiotic using white as their skin color. Duncan, Sips and Sjin all got white clothes and it would look ridiculous.

So the horrible search for a good skincolor started. Ofcourse I wouldn't be able to find one in the same yarn thickness that I'm working with for these... Not even eBay would help me out!

In the end, I decided to try and just dye some yarn, hoping to get a good color. Turned out to be a bit hard, and I was limited with my tries cause I only had two white skeins lying around.

I figured the best way to get the right shade would be to tea dye the yarn. Since black tea got a really strong color, I decided to try out herbal and green tea. Green's on the more yellow side while herbal got a more grey/pink hue. Combining these seemed to be the best way in my head. But the result sadly turned really light yellow.
Then I got the great idea to use just a tiny bit of pink lemonade Kool-Aid to give it a more blush feeling. Ofcourse, Kool-Aid is really annoying if you want to get a even spread of the color, so it didn't work out too well... It looked perfect at first, but it only colored 1/4 of the yarn. I figured I could try and add small doses of the Kool-Aid on the un-dyed parts... But all in all, it turned the yarn pig pink and really uneven...and also impossible to catch on camera... To add on with problems, this one here poofed out a little, so the tention didn't work out quite the same afterwards.

My second skein and third try on the other hand, I decided to be very careful with. Since black tea do have a warmer color to it, I decided to try ever so lightly to try dyeing with that this time around. With only one bag in the water, I started dyeing. The yarn sucked up all the pigments in the water as soon as I dumped it in there. Really didn't expect it to do that with tea, but the yarn still turned out too light. With another bag of tea, I dunked the skein back into the water. This time it worked perfectly. I got a good color, sitll a teeny bit too much on the yellow side, but it's the most perfect color I could ever make to resemble the color of skin.
This here picture underneath is pretty much spot on with the color.

And here you'll see all three of the colors side by side. Mind you, the colors aren't 100% here.

The one all to the right is clearly the best one for these amigurumis. So now I can finally continue with Simon and finish him up as soon as possible! BTW, here's the pants for him! I'm working off their Minecraft skins, and crocheting gives me little room for details since I'm still a n00b at it. You can also see the white yarn clashing with the rest. It doesn't look natural. British people do have pasty white skin, but not THIS white!

And there she goes again...

This time, I'll admit that the blog hiatus has just been my lazyness and upside down day rythm that has kept me from blogging every day.

Ofcourse, there is some progress on my projects. The pullover is done! Or...done knitting... Still need to weave in all the blasted ends and sew up the holes under the arms. That'll take forever so I'll get to that at some point or another in my life... But it looks good though. I wish the body was a bit longer, and after I finished it up, the sleeves got longer too, so it's not perfect. Welcome to my dirty bathroom BTW...

Watcha think? Does it look good? Or does it look crap?

Vaporeon got his legs and arms sewn on, same with the head and even the back spikes. I did screw up a bit when I sewed on the head though. It looks like he's flaceplanting on the ground ranter than flopping around on the ground.

Kinda bummed me out so I've put it aside for now. Not sure if I'm to continue with it or make a new one.

SO! To keep my thought off that one, I started my next crochet project! Cause now that I've gotten all of these stitches in my fingers, I need to make sure I use them before they're forgotten again. I promise I'm not a crochet junkie! But with my current obsession with the Yogscast (which has been building over the last couple of months and sky rocketed the last weeks) I've started my Lalylala based, Yogscast inspired amigurumi dolls! I've been wanting to do Simon for way too long now, so I just started with him the other day. I MIGHT go through all of them, atleast the dream team (Simon, Lewis and Duncan) as well as Sjin. I NEED to do Lewis and Sjin atleast, since they're my favorites in the whole of Yogscast, but Lewis' character is very complicated and detailed so I'm not sure if I dare jump to him first.
BUT SIMON! I did start him as I've allready said! I got the head (minus the beard and hair), the helmet and I've started the body.

Woop woop! I'm so excited about starting these dolls! So much fun!