Nerdy Adventures: 27 October 2013

Crochet...

It was a productive crochet week this week! I finished the tiny ghost pattern by A Morning Cup of Jo and made up my own pattern for a baby Squirtle. Here are a few pictures. I even made a Pokeball to brighten up the pictures.

Finished Object Friday: Tiny Crochet Ghost

I don't normally pay a lot of attention to Halloween; it's not really celebrated by anyone over the age of seven in Australia. For me it's an excuse to buy chocolate and lollies "just in case" someone in costume shows up... but more often than not I end up eating the whole lot myself and that is perfectly OK with me :-P This little ghost pattern from A Morning Cup of Jo is starting to change my mind about Halloween. I found the pattern yesterday and couldn't resist making it that evening. 

It's a great pattern; so cute and SO quick to make. I don't think I've ever finished a crochet project in one sitting before. It took me just over an hour from start to finish while watching TV. The best part of the design are the tiny arms which are created with a chain. That means the whole ghost is crocheted in one piece and there's no sewing required (aside from the mouth). It's also a great pattern for using up leftover white or cream yarn, which, for some reason, I seem to have a lot of! I will definitely be crocheting more tiny ghosts in the future. I'd like to make a garland of them in different sizes... maybe they could even have little hats!! Hmm.

The pattern suggests that you use pink fabric paint for the cheeks. I didn't have any so I used some felt instead. Luckily I had some ribbon lying around that I could use to turn the ghost into an ornament. (This might sound strange but a lot of the ribbon I collect comes from those weird little loops you get in dresses and shirts that are supposed to help your clothes stay on the hanger but end up annoying you by sticking out or making you itch. I've been cutting them out for years and one day decided I might as well keep them and put them to use... that's not that weird right?). 

I forgot to mention this is a free pattern. I recommend that you grab yourself a copy and whip up your own little ghost to decorate your house this Halloween!

Thanks for stopping by. If you'd like to see more finished objects, check out the blog Tami's Amis :-)

Crochet Monkey and Experimenting with a Light Box

I find that the hardest part of blogging is taking nice photos! I don't have a lot of opportunity for taking pictures in natural light and end up taking most of my photos inside, during the evening. This has led to a lot of yellow photos. I've been on a quest to create perfectly white backgrounds in pictures of my crochet projects for almost as long as I've been crocheting (about two years). Finally, I think I might have discovered the secret.

When I was complaining about the poor quality of my photos to a friend, she suggested that I make a light box. I had no idea what that was so I had to look it up. Luckily a light box is very simple to make at home. I found this tutorial online. I used a cardboard box, white bin liners and a large piece of white card to make my light box. It took less than an hour to make.

Unfortuntely a light box isn't all you need for taking pictures with a nice white background. Unless you are lucky enough to have the perfect conditions, the pictures will require editing in a photo editing program. I used a combination of picasa and gimp. Both are free programs that you can download. I used picasa for altering the lighting in the image and gimp for erasing any unwanted shadows around the edges. After uploading the pictures into this blog post I can see that I didn't put enough time into editing the photos... you can see where I've erased the darker blue colour from the background. Ugh, not very pretty. The photos below are a lot better.

Even though I clearly need to work on editing the images I'm really happy with how they came out. They are a big improvement on the pictures I have taken in the past! The white background really helps to show off my crocheted monkey. The pattern is from zooimgurumi which is a lovely collection of animal patterns. I had to buy the book after seeing the adorable monkey pattern on the front cover. He's just so cute! The pattern is well written and easy to follow. I decided to make my monkey green because I didn't have any brown yarn when I bought the pattern book and I had to make him straight away :-P I don't think it detracts from he's cuteness though!

Crochet Catbug from Bravest Warriors

Have you heard of the YouTube series Bravest Warriors? I discovered it a few months ago and was instantly hooked. The series was created by Pendleton Ward who also created Adventure Time and it has the same wacky humour as the earlier show. For me the best part of the show is Catbug, a hyper adorable ladybrid who's voiced by a six-year-old (or there abouts).

Here is a picture of Catbug from the show. He's the cutest!

As soon as I saw him I decided that I wanted to crochet my own Catbug. After Googling "crocheted catbug" I found that there were already a few examples out there and even a couple of patterns, but none of them were exactly what I wanted. So I made up my own crochet Catbug!

I'm Catbug!

I'm really happy with how he turned out! I tried to reproduce this picture:

In one of the episodes of Bravest Warriors Catbug brings freshly baked peanut butter squares from another dimension and wears these cute pink gloves to carry them. The gloves are removable. 

I used felt to make the ladybird spots on Catbug's back, only I think I went overboard and added too many spots! Next time I will crochet spots and sew them on to avoid the raised edges on the felt circles.

The most difficult part of the whole design was embroidering the face. I usually use safety eyes for my amigurumi, but I'm glad that I gave stitching a go for this project.

I'm going to attempt to recreate my Catbug pattern and share it on this blog because the world needs more Catbugs! Aww, Catbug always makes me smile :-)