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!

Pullover and Vaporeon!

Might be a bit early for an update on things, but whatever! I haven't really updated on my pullover for a few days so I can do with an early update today now that I've got pictures to show for it.
SO! I've been working with the raglan for the pullover for quite a few days now. It takes forever and it doesn't feel like the amount of stitches are increasing really. I am also running out of yarn so I do hope I'll manage to finish up within the next two skeins...then I would have used 17 skeins in this thing...which isn't so bad for you 'Muricans out there. Each skein weighs only 50gr, that's about 1,7oz. But bamboo and cotton yarn are pretty heavy compared to wool and other materials, so you don't get that many meters and it feels heavier automaticly.

But it's starting to look like something now! Wish is was longer in the body, but then I wouldn't have enough yarn to finish it up.

It's a bit awkward to put on right now since I still have the stitches on the needles...but it does fit kinda, and it will be a tiny bit longer in the body when it's done.

Since I've now finished Fibi the fox, I've started my next crochet project. I'm gonna try and have one running all the time along with my normal knitting. And this one's gonna be a baby Vaporeon! Aphid777 on deviantART makes fantastic crochet amigurumis and several of these she writes up the pattern for and posts along with pictures of her creations. Recently, she's been making the Eevelutions and I died when Vaporeon was submitted. Ofcourse I had to try my hand on that one, expecially now that I've managed to actually follow a crochet pattern succesfully. So far I've managed to make the head without too much problems. I've stuck the green marker there to mark the nose tip.

So far I think it looks pretty neat! I'm using Silja from Gjestal for it, 80% wool and 20% nylon and 2,5mm hook if you were wondering.

Fibi the fox!

It's about time I finished up this one! Fibi the fox is a crochet amigurumi doll, designed by Lalylala that I started back in february.

Pickle gave me the pattern for the fox one for me to try out before I started buying all the other patterns that I wanted to make. I'm not a crochet person and I have huge problems reading crochet patterns and understanding the stitches, but I wanted to make one of these dolls so bad that I just had to try it out. With good help from Pickle, I did manage to work it out and make Fibi here though. Took me forever, but I did it! I am so danged proud of myself, you have no idea!

I wanted to do a photoshoot of it outside in the grass, but it's impossible for it to balance on its own, so I just had to give up on that part.

I used Senjagarn from Gjestal on this one, 75% wool and 25% nylon. The scarf is knitted while the rest of the doll is crochet.

The biggest erros on Fibi here though, is the fact that the tail ended up WAY to short and stubby compared to the pattern. The hood are also a bit too big for it, so it keeps falling down. Once I can dig up my felting needles, I'll stick it to its head.

The whole body's a bit wonkey and bulky, so it's far from perfect, but I still love it. I'm so impressed that I managed to make it.

I've bought the sheep pattern allready, so I will be making that one at some point too, but right now I'm currently trying to crochet a Vaporeon amigurumi, and after that I'll try and use this Lalylala body style and make a Honeydew dwarf doll...just because I'm SUPER into Yogscast at the moment...

Now, this does not mean that I'm all of a sudden a crochet expert, far from it! I'm still having great problems reading patterns and I need to relearn each stitch every time I pick up the project again... So it'll probably take years before I'll be comfortable enough to try something a bit more complicated...

BUT THIS IS AWESOME!!! SOOOO PROUD OF MYSELF!!!! *self five*

Fibi and the swing skirt!

Since I'm currently just waiting for the last skein for the retro Marius sweater to arrive, I'm at a bit of a loss what to work with. I'm always like this when I finish a new project and I don't have a backup or parallel project to go with it. I figured I could go back and work on some UFO's that's floating around here in my crafting corner.

Right after I ran out of yellow yarn, I worked up a tablet cover and then I moved on to Fibi, the Lalylala amigurumi doll I've been talking about countless of times. It took me a couple of days, but I managed to finish up the body and I also sewed on the arms, head and hood! I'm super proud of myself on this one! Never in my life did I think I could make something like this with crochet! It's far from perfect, I did run into several problems, but I'm dawg gone it proud! Imma brag this one till I die!

 I'm still missing the ears, tail and scarf though. The ears confused me a bit... I kinda understand how they're worked up, but I got problems understanding the stitches and that jazz. The tail I think wouldn't be too much of a problem, neither the scarf cause that's knit, but right now, I'm taking a break from it until Pickle can get some time to help me out, I'm in no hurry anyway. I might go on to the lamb, Lupo afterwards. That's the one I really wanted to do in the first place, but since Pickle was so nice to share this pattern with me to try out so I didn't have to buy one myself and maybe fail, I decided to wait on it.

And then we got the swing skirt! When I finished sewing up Fibi's body here, I moved back to the swing skirt I started in the beginning of march/end of february. Yesterday I decided to frog it all down. There was just a too big of a mess going on with five colors and too big of a leap to carry the yarn for each color switch, and I'm too dang lazy to cut the yarn for each switch and weave in ends...but I really loved the colors and the way I was working them up.

 So I frogged it down to the waistband and decided to do it a different way, but still keep the colorway I started with. Instead of switching colors almost every row, I decided to take one increase step per row of color! That means that I would have to repeat the color work only once down the whole skirt instead of 18. It'll make for an interesting and unique skirt, and that's all that matters for me!

Since I had to frog down a whole lot, the first two stripes doesn't look too good and evenly. That'll fix itself after wash and blocking though, so I'm not worried! The sad thing though is that I won't be using this skirt at the time I was hoping to. The national day of Norway is the 17th of may, and I was kinda hoping to use this on that day, but as it stands now, I don't have plans that day, and therefor, this skirt lives to see another occation.

All kinds of updates!

For some reason, I forgot to keep this blog updated with my crafts while dyeing yarn like a maniac over the weekend and then some... So I figured I'd make a little catch up blogpost here...

First off, Pickle's scarf is pretty much DONE! I'm currently waiting for some more projects of some kind to get done so I can wash and block it. The edge are curling up and it drives me mad! But I'm SO darn glad to be finished with this stupid thing! NEVER EVER AGAIN will I make anything with swedish weave! It was HORRIBLE and BORING!

 

The Swing Skirt have stopped abruptly to make room for more important projects, but it's so pretty! I really love the colors and I hope to finish it before may so I can use it for our national day...if I can't find anything else to wear... I keep imagening it with a black west or a poofy black shirt...

And the elastic band for it came in the mail yesterday! Wohoo! I love it when eBay sellers ship out their items quickly. There's 1,82m (2 yards) here and I bought it for about 25NOK ($4), free shipping. It's amazing, I would never be able to find a elastic band to match that price, expecially considering it's a little over 3cm (1.20") wide.

I've so far made 16 granny squares for charity squares + one that needs an extra round, and I've got several more to make. I've almost busted ut all the boring colors in the wool bag! Yaaay!

And speaking of granny squares... I'm ALMOST DONE assembeling the second chair blanket for my mother! I took about a month off from these cause connecting the squares killed me! I've been plowing through the squares for the second blanket over the last 3-4 days now,a dn right now, I only got 9 more squares to connect before I connect the two halves and do the horisontal lines. Hopefully I'll have enough yarn after all that to do an extra boarder around both blankets! My parents are stopping by this weekend, so I was hoping to MAAAAYBE (just maybe) get them done by then so my mom can take them with her...and them remove them from my life...

 

More crochet! I'm surprised of how good I've done with the crocheting on this Lalylala doll. Thanks to Pickle, I've managed to understand and finish the head, the hood and both arms! I've also started a leg, so I got the first boot done! LOVE IT! I really hope I can manage to finish this thing, cause it's so darn cute!!!

But enough of crocheting! Back to knitting! Pickle's friend kinda commissioned me a headband, and I decided to start if when the cowl for Pickle was finished. So here I was, ready to start it off when BOOM! Pattern is finnish... DARN IT! You can find it here BTW... So yeah... Couldn't understand CRAP of the pattern, but lucky for me, there were charts for the cables and stuff! So I'm half winding it, half following the charts and I'm trying my best to make this work! I CAN DO THIS!!!

And one last thing. I'm in the middle of a yarn trade with Brooke, and she sent the package without telling me, so it arrived yesterday and mine are still lying here...waiting... But the yarn trade turned into a sock for cookies trade...so right now I'm just waiting to clear out some projects so I can get started on some Lizzy socks for my 'Murican friend and her daughter so I can get Girl Scout Cookies in return! BEST TRADE EVVAH! ANYWAY (I swear...I'm overtired...) her package arrived today, and she sent me two beautiful skeins from Knit Picks. See, we don't have Knit Picks over here, and they don't send to Norway... I see EVERYBODY gushing over Knit Picks...when they're not gushing over the cheap ass crap yarn from Wall Mart that is...and I've been wanting to see what kind of quality they can bring in their yarn. The skeins Brooke sent was one skein of Palette, which is100% Peruvian Highland wool. It's thin and pretty and soft and I love it! I haven't tried knitting with it, but I'd love to make an everyday jacket in this yarn. But I'm left with only one skein here, so who knows what I'll make of it. She also sent me a skein of Gloss which is 70% and 30%. It is crazy soft and crazy pretty! I want a sea of this yarn and make all kinds of things with it. But again, only one skein...sadly... Both of them are "cream" (aka natur for oss nordmenn) and she told me she thought I would enjoy dyeing them, and therefor she sent me these. HECK YES I WILL DYE THESE! That gurl knows me!

She also sent me a bag of buttons, 5-6 of which I will use for my Tanja jacket. When we started the trade, she asked me what I wanted for the yarn I was giving her, and I told her some buttons for this jacket would be nice cause I have none! So she whipped up some buttons in the size I needed and added a bunch of extra buttons. Thank you Brooke! You're awesome! You will not be dissapointed with what I'm sending you back! Promise!