More Dudes!

Silly me - I forgot to mention a whole set of Dudes! Forest Dwellers vol. 4 :) These were also made this spring, and if I remember correctly they were actually finished before the Alien Dudes. Yeah, I've had a lot on my mind lately, important things slip away...

The mallard and the bald eagle had been in progress since last summer, but the owl was made this spring to complete the set, which this time consists only of birds. The bald eagle was a request/challenge from a friend :)

Little buggies

Last summer my aunt who works in a kindergarten asked me to make her two little bugs, a bumblebee and a beetle. She liked my Great Big Bugs, but she wanted something smaller to illustrate a song or something, so I started these two. I didn't have time to finish them completely before the summer was over, so I brought them back to my apartment to give them eyes and legs and then mail them back up to my aunt. 

Well, that didn't happen... The bugs managed to get lost on the bottom of one of my yarn stash boxes, and I forgot all about them. I found them again when I was packing up my yarn to go home this summer, so I brought them along to finish so I could finally give them to my aunt.

I did it, but only just! I sewed the legs on the last one late at night the day before I was leaving again... But they were finished, and my aunt is very pleased. Haven't heard anything about what the kids think about them yet.

I wrote down the instructions as I went, but I've discovered that I didn't take very good pictures, so I'll need to make them again if I'm going to publish the patterns. For the new ones I want to use safety eyes, but I don't have the right colors (in the right size), so I'm waiting for a shipment of eyes before I start remaking them. Hopefully they're here by the end of this week :) I'm thinking about making these little bugs in sets of three, and so far I have ideas for four sets. Either that, or I'll publish a gazillion of single bugs, with a discount if you buy more of them. What do you think, would you be interested in the patterns?

Three Great Big Bugs at once :)

I finished three Bugs this summer, a wasp, an aphid and the male firefly. I started the firefly shortly after I finished the female last fall, and the other two I started some time around Christmas. The bodies and most of their body parts had been done for months when I finally sat down and finished them. You'd think that assembly is the easy part... :P

Anyway, here they are:

The wasp is modeled after the Common wasp (Vespula vulgaris), and it's my most complicated pattern so far, with all the color changes on the body. I tried to keep it as easy as possible, though, with the patterning and the decreases/increases on separate rounds :)

The aphid is modeled after the Rose aphid that I've seen on my grandmother's roses. They are mainly green, but they also come in red/pink or black, so feel free to experiment with the colors on this one :) There are a couple of rounds of front post single crochet on the body of this Bug, but apart from that, it's not a complicated pattern.

The firefly is the same species as the first one (the common glowworm), but the male and female look very different. The male is a fairly ordinary brown beetle with a glowing bum, while the female stays more like the larva her whole life, and never develops wings.

The patterns for the wasp and aphid are available on Ravelry, and I'll be adding them to Etsy soon. I'm still not quite finished with the firefly pattern, because I've been so busy with my exam lately. Things should calm down soon, so I hope to have it ready before the weekend :) I've thought about listing the two fireflies as a set, though I'm not really sure how this would work on Ravelry. Do they allow you to post the same patterns twice, in different combinations? I'll have to do a little research and get back to that. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the aphid and the wasp :)

Craft store sale!

The craft store had a sale today, 70% off on lots of stuff, and I got a whole lot of different beads for less than a dollar per pack! :D I bought five boxes of 15mm wood beads in all the colors they had:

Wax beads in two sizes:

These really heavy long beads, one in lead gray and one in black:

This awesome bug pendant that I intend to make into a necklace:

And a set of small plastic containers for odd beads or other small things:

Yay for sales! :)

Alien Dudes

In May I released a new set of Cute Little Dudes: Alien Invaders!

It all started when I heard the song "Purple People Eater", and I immediately needed to crochet one :) I then thought I'd make two other alien dudes, and my next choice was fairly easy: Cthulhu! I also considered an alien from the Alien movies, but that's a trademarked character, and I don't want to get onto trouble, so I had to do something else. Then, suddenly it occurred to me that I should make an alien with three eyes, so that I wouldn't end up with singles from the People Eater. Clever, huh? :p

The pattern is available both on Ravelry and Etsy :)

Nesting lovebirds

This is a quick and cute little pattern I designed for Valentine's Day. I had originally planned something else, but halfway through that project I realized it needed some serious changes, and time was running out, so I decided to make something simpler that could be done in an evening.

In different colors these little birdies could be made for any season or holiday, and not just Valentine :) The pattern is available for free on my pattern blog. Enjoy!

Sorry!

I didn't mean to be gone this long! Had several posts planned, because I have quite a few new patterns to show you, but somehow that didn't happen... But I'm back now, after a much too long struggle with a math course. Took the final exam again just this Friday, and I have a good feeling about the result. I don't expect a brilliant grade, but I do expect to pass. What this means is that I can finally start my degree in biology! :)

Other good news: I've finally found a Blogger app for my phone that works the way I want it to. This means that I can write blog posts whenever I feel like it, and publish them whenever I'm online. This way I don't have to spend the evening by the computer, when I can crochet instead :D It also allows me to upload pictures directly from my phone, which is very practical. I don't really use my camera for pattern photos anymore because the flash tends to ruin the colors, which my phone camera doesn't. Huge plus :)

Reclaiming my craft space & new blog

Wow! Can't believe I've been gone this long, it sure wasn't planned. If I remember correctly I haven't posted anything here since January! I guess I warned you that I would be busy with school this semester, but I believe I've lost a couple of followers anyway. Oh, well.

Anyway, what I'm here to tell you is that from now on I will try to stick to craft related stuff on this blog, the way I meant it to be when I first created it. It all started a few weeks ago when I got a new phone. It's one of those fancy ones that let you go online and stuff (and not to mention play Angry Birds!), so I thought I'd try some mobile blogging. As it turned out, the Blogger app refused to accept the ymail address that's connected to this blog, so I'd have to register a new blog with a gmail address to make it work... I tried that, but after a while I decided that I wasn't happy with the Blogger app, and wanted to try something completely different. Like WordPress. It seems more complicated than Blogger, but once you get used to it, it really isn't. You can't customize everything, like you can with Blogger, but hopefully it'll come soon. So HERE is my new personal blog, where I post whatever crosses my mind - good or bad. I won't put up a permanent link on this blog because it's personal (and I don't have my name on there), so this is the only time you'll get the link. Hope I'll see you there :)

Despite being busy with school (and exams, the first of which is only days away!) I have managed to make some new crochet patterns. The next post will be about them, I promise :D