Lupo the Lamb!

Just finished up this little fella!

So glad to have him finished, and in good time for the contest on dA as well.

He was quite the challenge for me and he took what seemed like forever to make. Doing the bobble stitch with such a small and crappy hook was not a good idea...
The pom-poms also gave me a bit of trouble... Seeing how small they actually were, my pom-pom makers didn't quite cut it. After several tries with a fork, I had to go to a different yarn to make them pretty and poofy, and they're also the only thing acrylic on this little fella.
You can get the pattern over at Lalylala!

The last couple of days

Sorry for no update people, but my internet has been gone for the last day and a half without any warning, so my planned blogging was suddently put on hold.
I got to admit that I'm addicted to internet, most of my inspiration and entertainment can be found online, so when I'm suddenly left without it for a longer period of time, it's almost claustrophobic. I haven't been the best crafter without my daily intake of Youtube, instead I've been replacing it with VHS Disney movies and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
When that's said, I can live without internet access just fine, I'd just prefer a bit of a warning/preperation time in advance. One of my favorite places on earth is my mother's mountain cabin where there's no water, no plumbing, no electricity, no phone signal or internet.

BUT! I digress... Let's do a crafting recap from the last blogentry I did!

Big Lupo got her body in one piece, I am however running out of yarn, so the hood will most likely end up being all pink and not multicoloured like the body. The body also turned out a bit loopsided, the decreasing got screwed up somehow... She's so soft and huggable though!

In the meanwhile, little Lupo has grown ears! Yeah! I ran out of grey yarn so I had to actually go and buy more. And after the hood, I ran out of white too! I do however got a few scraps of white that I'm trying to match up. The arms I did last night, but of course, I managed to do something wrong on the second one, so I had to frog it down, which then again made me lose interest in working on it.

So, I started the next sweater commission. During The Lion King and a few episodes of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, this is what I've got to show for before I fell asleep in my chair, not bad in my opinion. Bring on 20 more Disney movies and I'm done!

I'm doing this sweater in a yarn I've never worked with before; Smart from Sandnesgarn. Now,  I tend to choose the cheaper brands because I'm a greedy bastard and my economy is pretty dang low, but really, I can't feel too much difference in this yarn from brands I usually work with, even though it costs up to 3 times as much per skein. I've seen people swear to Sandnesgarn, which is all good, I'm not the one to judge that stuff, expecially since I've never really worked much with the brands they carry. So it'll be fun to see how I feel about this yarn when I'm done with this sweater. I'm planning on doing a Marius for myself later in a brand that's pretty much the same as this (same specs, feel and everything), so we'll see how they do against each other when worked up. I am hoping that there'll be some scraps left over so I can try and stress test it against my prefered "cheap" brands.

WIP: Lupo and...Lupo?

I've been working on Lupo ONLY for the last couple of days, and really, it takes forever! Crocheting is generally extra slow with me, but with such a small hook that's all kinds of crap, it really slows everything down further... But I've got his body done now! Finished up his head in the early mornings today. I'm not 100% happy with the result, but it looks good, I guess. I still feel that his head is way too big, but then again, Fibi's head turned out way too small. I've done a little comparison in the pattern between the two of them, and there's 24 stitches more in the round of Lupo's head!

  

I am however in love with the bobble stitch! I hated it's guts to begin with and it took forever and it killed my arm during the first few rounds, but I just love the texture and the feel of it... Call it Stockholm syndrome! All he's missing right now is the arms, hood, ears and the pompoms. All of that shouldn't be a problem at all! I am a bit scared that I might run out of the grey yarn though... Haven't confirmed with my stash if I got more leftovers (cause that it actually what this is, leftovers and scraps, call it a scrap project). 

Right now, I'm taking a little break from Lupo anyway, the head was just a bit too tedious for me, and I know the arms are boring and tedious too.

So I started a new project! Lupo! Wait wuuuut?

Yes! I decided to start another Lupo! As I've said before, Lupo is the reason why I fell in love with Lalylala. It was the first amigurumi I saw and if you remember a blog entry from january, I showed off a picture of Lopu, saying how much I adored the Lalylala dolls. Shortly after, my good friend Pickle threw me the pattern for Fibi and offered to help me through it. And it didn't take long before I bought the pattern for Lupo. I love Lupo so much! I can't express it enough! And after working up little Lupo, I got the great idea of making a giant Lupo! A snuggle buddy! This idea has been in my head for several days now, and I've been so close to ordering yarn for it, but I just couldn't get myself to do it. I'm trying to save the little money I have, so when I'm buying yarn, I'd like to get bigger lots so the shipping won't be so hurtfull. In most cases, shipping is free when you reach a certain spending amount, and I am trying my best to hit that if I can...so buying yarn (even though it's on sale right now) doesn't feel right when I'll be spending the same amount on shipping...
Little did I know that the answer was right behind me...litterally! In the shelf behind me, there was two skeins of green bamboo yarn that Sarah sent me some time ago. It's thicker than what I usually work with and it's soft to the touch without feeling like icky acryllic. Patons Silk Bamboo, 70% bamboo and 30% Silk! Genious! I rushed to my yarn storage and pulled out two other skeins of bamboo... Sirdar Juicy DK, 80% bamboo, 20% cotton. They were of the same lenght and same thickness, just about the same silky texture as well.

Wow... Pepsi is photobombing me! But yeah! These skeins shall become a giant Lupo! OMG I'm so excited! The skin will be green while the wool will be striped light mint green/beige. A bit crazy, but who cares? He'll be super soft and so cuddly!

But as I pondered this giant Lupo plushie... I got the feeling that I'd most likely run out of yarn... I dug through my stash once more and pulled out one and a half skein of a weird cotton mix. These are Cotton Light from Drops,  60% cotton, 40% acryllic, the remainder of four full skeins I recieved in a giveaway two years ago. Cotton Light doesn't excist anymore from what I've come to understand, so I really don't know what to do with these skeins. Why not include them in the giant Lupo? It's body will be striped anyway, so I can plot some of this inbetween the other two colours.

GENIOUS! But I shouldn't get too caught up in all of this... I need to start another sweater commission soon! And by the look of things, another commission might pop up after that!

Lupo WIP!

I've finally gotten around to start my Lupo, the sheep amigurumi doll from Lalylala. When Knitting-and-Crochet over at dA announced their september contest, I knew that I had to make Lupo for it.

Ever since I bought the pattern for Lupo, I've been dying to try it out, but haven't found time for it until now. Being right between two commissions that's not in a hurry leaves a little time slot for me to do my own little thing, and with that contest I just couldn't say no.

With great support and help from my LAC crafter friends, expecially Pickle, I started it yesterday. I feel like I managed to get a great start on it, so even though it looks like nothing, there's a lot of work behind it.

First off, I had to relearn the magic circle...and later on, half double... Crochet stithces and methods don't stick in my brain, they was away as soon as I put my hook down...

 

Lupo was extra scary for me cause I had to crochet anti-clockwise...which I've never done before. Also the bobble stitch takes forever and a half to make, and with my tiny hook, it takes its toll on my arm. But it's fun! Can't wait to finish up this fella. Lupo is the reason why I first fell in love with Lalylala's designs. They're so adorable, yet simple! And little sheepie here is the cutest one of them all!

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*

Slow knitting

Now that I don't have any hasty projects going on...well, except for the cable bag...I'm doing really slow progress on everything. So let's do a round-up of the little I've done over the past few days...cause it's not really much...

The cable purse/bag thingy are going well. I need it done by the 16th since I'm going away, but it's really no rush as it works up fairly quick. I haven't done much on this bag yet, and I'm allready over halfway there. It's a quicky this one!

Not really knit, but I did manage to finish up the tail for Fibi the other day... It looks like crap since it's so short and stubby compared to the pattern itself, but it's one step closer to finishing off the doll! Now I only need the ears (which I need some help with) and the scarf, which is just knit so shouldn't be a problem for me!

Other than those two, I've pulled out the mindless knitted shawl that I started during the Christmas holiday last year. Thanks to Pickle, I now can't unsee it as a watermelon! So it now has a name, "watermelon shawl"! BUT, I've managed to misplace the last skein somewhere, so I can't continue it until I find it... Oh well...

I got two other colors in this yarn so I might just make another one that's a big more complex instead.

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.

How are things in the crafting section?

Time for an update! I've actually been doing some progress this time, not on one, but several projects! And seeing as I now got actual stuff to show off, I figured I'd blog about it!

First off, let's do a WIP on the Marius sweater... I ran out of yarn...not a surprise really, ever since I started the yoke, I noticed that I was short on yarn. Mind you, I ordered an extra skein of yellow just in case, even after the extra skein my friend told me to get, so with two skeins over, I'm still 10 rounds short and had to order yet another skein extra. Right now, I'm just waiting for it to arrive so I can finish this thing up.

 

That didn't stop me from working Marius though, no sir! Right after I finished cried over the loss of yarn and had ordered a new skein, I started a long dreaded cover for my tablet! Took me about a day to finish this thing up. Nothing big, just plain and simple Marius, minus a few rows on 4,5mm needles. I used the leftover yarn from this thing and wouldn't you know, I had just enough for it! It was like destiny! It's not my first pick in colors, but who cares? It's better than my old cover anyway...though I got a more sentimental connection to this traditional pattern than Marius...so in retrospect, I kinda regret that... But I can always make more covers in the future! And for the record, my tables is a Asus Eee Transformer with a detachable keyboard, an old son of a bulldog in tablet years...

After I finished that thing up, I dug out my eternity scrap blanket again and worked in a good bunch of scraps. My little bag of scraps was starting to get really full, so I almost emptied it and got in a good 5cm (2") on the blanket! That's half a years work in eternity scrap blanket years! The good thing about this though, it's now big enough to cover and warm my cold and hurting knees while working on it!

After I cleared out just about all of my scraps, I figured I'd continue on the Lalylala doll. The last thing I did on this thing was the first boot, but since it's been forever since I worked on this thing the last time, I figured that I'd redo the boot just in case. Gonna start the second boot as soon as I'm done with this blogpost!

And as a last note, I got these adorable PBJ felted pieces that Drunk Uncle June sent me. Ever since I got these in the mail (along with a bunch of other amazing items and candy), I've been wanting to put them up on my fridge, but I has no magnets! I ordered a bunch of tiny super magnet for a buck off eBay right after I got these, and today they arrived! Didn't take me long before I glued some on the back and smacked them up on the fridge!

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!

Boring projects and crochet!

For some time now, I've been slowly working on this cowl in the swedish weave techique for dearest Pickle. But it's so slow and so boring and so tedious, that I can't help myself wanting to work with everything else, even though I promised myself not to start a new project until this cowl was finished.
I'm now at 16,5cm (6,5") so a little under 10cm (4") is left before I'm finished.

Last night when I just couldn't work on it anylonger, I picked up the Quatrefoil mittens I worked on in january and finished up the hand on the first one.

But tonight I didn't feel like either of the two projects, so I decided to start Fibi, the fox doll from Lalylala! Pickle sent me this pattern right after I talked about it previously on my blog. She had purchased the pattern for the fox some time ago, but it turned out too big for her taste, so she sent it to me so I could try it out. So I started it tonight! Got my yarn out, Senjagarn if you were wondering and my 2,5mm hook! It took me 4 failed attempts to get the magic loop method to work, but I am currently on round 4 (hopefully) without fail! Too proud of myself right now! I still got a hard time understanding the stitches, where each and every one of them are, where the end and the start of a round is and so on... so confusing and much more complicated than knitting...

 

But I really hope that I can do this doll! I've been drooling on several of the Lalylala dolls, expecially the sheep one...want it so bad...so if I can do this one, then I'll for sure purchase the sheep pattern! (their page is currently under construction, so the links to Lalylala might not work at the time this blogpost is posted).