Moving Sucks

So I am in the middle of a move right now so my crafting has come to a screeching halt. Now I just get to pack my yarn and all my tools into a box. While it is a good sized box I am still a little stunned and very pleased that I was about to get all my yarn in it. Or so I thought. Little balls of yarn are showing up everywhere as I pack. I found more then one in my office. Was I knitting by the computer? And even some on my bedroom. I did manage to keep one ball of red and one ball of white yarn out to work on my current project – Red Guy, friend of green guy. I really need to work on the naming of my toys.

Happy Earth Day!

Today is Earth Day. Frankly this is the first Earth Day that I have ever even thought about since I was 10 years old or so. I must admit a lot of this has to do with the incredible media attention this earth day has gotten. Not sure what the marketing force behind making “green” the hottest trend this year was but they should be proud of themselves. Anyway here are some “green” crafting links.

First off here is is one of my favorite crochet yarns, 2^nd Time Cotton, made by Knit One Crochet Too. I t is made from 75% of material that would be waste in the textile industry. Having worked in a factory for the last 2 years I can tell you that there is lots of waste in any factory. Good to see some of it being put to use. 75% cotton, 25% acrylic blend makes for a nice crocheting/knitting experience. I made a few flower washcloths from the Weekend Knitting book out of this stuff as gifts with rave revives.

Crochet Me just did a whole environmental issue that is out right now. I love the little Dodo Bird but I think my favorite pattern this time is the reduction tote bag. I have been striving to stat taking my own bag when I head to the store. I expected baggers not to be happy with me when I hand them my bag but yesterday my Kroger bagger thanked me.

If you do end up with some plastic bags around the house you can always make yarn out of them. Make sure to check out the rest of Helle Jorgensen’s Blog for works of art that no one will mind having stay around for 500 years.

Toot toot

The Pacman pattern seems to have really taken off. I has been on the first page of the crochet thread on Craftster.org for almost a month now. I think it did just get knocked down to the second page today. Anyway I also was mentioned in Crochetme.com’s blog and CRAFT magazines blog. The praise make me feel a little better after two mornings of froging trying to make something that looks like a goby fish that I am working on for A Month of Softies. Is that enough plugs? Ok I am done tooting my own horn for now.

Not my best work but I was sleepy.

Woke up Monday morning and did not want to get out of bed for anything. Then I had this idea for a softie and needless to say I was out of bed and crocheting. Completed in less then a day this little guy is only about 2 inches tall.

So long Lil Ugly!

You will be missed. I hope you have a great time in your new home in Texas. Now that I have been sentimental can I jump for joy because I made my first sale?

The blog is two weeks old…

Time for a redesign! Yep could not stand the look of the old blog so this morning I gave it a make over. And I got a new domain name just for my blog FullOfFluff.com. Hope you enjoy.

Green Guy

I had been working on a piece called sibling rivalry for about 2 weeks when I finally gave up. The piece was going to be two bunnies giving each other black eyes. After finishing the first bunny’s head and body I started to work on the face and I could not get it right. Then I realized that I did not even like the idea all that much. So the bunny got dumped into the UFO corner of my stash awaiting the day I can think of something to do with a faceless white bunny.

So I started drawing out this little guy that I had in my head. I had this cute image of a big overbite and huge white teeth forming a grin. I wanted to make the toy child safe so the eyes, toes and fingernails are safety eyes. Also this is my first time stuffing with shredded foam. For right now I am calling him Green Guy until I come up with something better or the child he is for gives him a better name.

Look at that grin!

Safety eye toes. Eyes are not just for the head any more.

I hope I am not the only one who gets excited about finishing their last crochet stitch only to realize that there is about 3 hours of finishing work left to do.

Original sketch and the start of the head.

Pac-Man!!!!

Around January this year a friend of mine hinted that he would like me to make him a Pac-Man toy. I ended up designing him not only packman but also a full set of ghost to go with it. After showing off on Craftster and Flickr many people begged for the pattern. So here is is at long last the Crocheted Pac-Man brought to you free thanks to the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- NoDerivs 2.5 License.

download pattern

Experimenting with joints

This year has been full of toys for me so far. I am also finding myself drawn to making toys with joints. I have found Dritz Doll Joints work well with crocheted toys. The axel of the joint makes slip’s easily between stitches. I used them in my Softie Awards entry Kitsune.

Now I have started work on a pair of bunnies and I wanted to have their joints be exposed so I started working on adapting traditional button joints to crochet. I decided it might be easiest for me to just make buttonholes and line them up rather then trying to sew the button thru the legs. While it did not occur to me at the time I really love how this gives me the ability to remove legs and arms at will. I think this will make attaching the head much simpler.

I really like the way the yellow buttons stand out with the blue thread.