No, sir, I did not see you playing with your dolls again!

Craftster has been absolutely terrible for my wallet and mountain of unfinished projects since I keep seeing cute crochet things (like these adorable little rice balls and these little Winnie the Pooh dolls for my imaginary nephew).  And I think I've shown everyone who be even vaguely interested these Star Wars amigurumis.

I absolutely love C-3PO in amigurumi form, although I don't think I actually like the character enough to actually buy the pattern and make him.

And I wouldn't say I'm a big Star Wars fan (is there a word for that?), but I would be willing to kick George Lucas squa' in the nuts.   And I know plenty of Star Wars fans (seriously, why isn't there a SW equivalent of Trekkie?)  And I needed a cheap and easy birthday present for this past weekend.



This is  Lucy Ravenscar/Angry Angel's Darth Vader pattern.  I think mine turned out a little bit bigger, so I think if I were to hypothetically do it again for some reason, I'd use 12mm eyes instead of 9mm.

The directions say to sew the cape on, but I had a lot of trouble with that.  And by "a lot of trouble" I mean "I used a hot glue gun".  Pretty much all problems can be solved by a hot glue gun.

I also felt that he needed a light saber.  If you would also like to crochet miniature light sabers:

Using grey yarn, ch 2.  5-6 sc in first chain.

I used the super precise technique of "holding it against the doll action figure to see if it looks right", but I think I did 4 rounds of sc in grey, then switched to red.  Leave a long tail of grey to sew it to the hand.

I used a little bit of black yarn to add the light saber details (some lines on the base and a black line around the "blade").

He stands up by himself, but I think if I were to make one of these again, I'd add something a bit heavier in the base.

Don't you dare use the word "party" as a verb in this shop

This is what happens when you leave cupcakes alone overnight.

This afternoon I used the traditional Simonsen frosting recipe.

How to make delicious frosting

1. Buy frosting (not Kroger brand because it sucks)
2. Open can

Do sprinkles go with red velvet cake?  Unfortunately I used up all my Wilton Cookies and Cream sprinkles on chocolate covered Peeps, and something tells me my peanut butter and chocolate sprinkles would be a poor choice.

I think some people have pointed out that sprinkles+frosting+cupcakes=diabetic coma, but I just want them to look nice.

This is one of the reasons why I needed to use a lint roller on my sekrit project.  Now to see if we actually have any manly wrapping paper or if I'm going to need to find some way to butch up Disney princesses.

I would wonder if we have any wrapping paper for people over 9, but I already know the answer to that.

Tipping the velvet

Awesome stuff somebody else makes: Geek Soap.  Why am I just regular-showering when I could be bat-showering with bat-soap?  Why has it taken me this long to realize I could alter my shampoo bottles with a Sharpie and then I can bat-wash my hair?


Tonight's project has been making cupcakes for Steve's birthday and working on a sekrit project.

I'm conflicted about my sekrit project, such as who to give it to and if it really looks awful or if I'm too hard on myself.

But these cupcakes are probably going to be super awesome because I'm using the traditional Simonsen cake recipe.  You insult these cupcakes, you are insulting generations of Simonsens.

Famous Simonsen Cake (Any Flavor)


Ingredients
Box of cake mix
What it says on the box

Directions
Do what it says on the back of the box

I originally bought red velvet cake mix so I could live my dream of making velvety chocolate balls.  But it's occurred to me that maybe I shouldn't ask people I've just met if they'd like my balls in their mouth.  Since they don't know me, they're probably unaware of how spectacular my balls are and how much they would enjoy tasting them.

Anyway, making red velvet cupcakes is like turning your kitchen into the opening credits of Sweeny Todd.

For whatever reason, the second batch came out more sublime than I would've liked.

I'm also conflicted on frosting.  I don't really like frosting that much, and I've been told that means I have no soul.  The sublimity of the cupcakes and the fact that I can't find my fancy frosting thing has probably made the decision for me.

These colors may run

My grandparents love America, so I picked up a ball of Sugar'n Cream Stripes (which the Ben Franklin cashier thought was 99 cents like my other two balls of cotton yarn.  Jackpot!) and grabbed a pattern off LionBrand.com.  The pattern says it's a washcloth, but I figure it could maybe be a pot holder (which they have way too many of already).  Or a dish cloth (of which they seem to have zero).  Or maybe just two big ass fucking doilies.  Big like America's love of liberty.

(The fabric changes color by itself, so I'm not just really bad at stripes.)

It's a pretty quick pattern once you get it started, and if you're lazy and happen to have already made one, you don't really need to do a lot of counting or obsessively keep track of the rounds.

I've also finished my first tribute to Pokemon Red/Blue starter Pokemon.  I very obviously need to iron it, and then decide if I'm going to keep it or put it up on Etsy.

When I discovered that Heart Gold/Soul Silver had overworld sprites for all the Pokemon, my first thought was "more patterns".  Sky's the limit, except trying to backstitch the curl in Squirtle's tail or the details of his shell looks absolutely terrible.  Especially when you try to do it freehand on 18ct.

Charmander is in progress.  If I would actually sit down and work on it (instead of writing all these stupid papers and crocheting washcloths/towels/huge-ass doilies), I could probably get the letters done in about 20 minutes.

I'm also still working on a project from Michelle.  All the letters you see are finished, and once I get more of E-bear's head done, I'm going to start the Y.  I haven't got the furthest part of the bear finished yet, so it'll be easier to do the counting once that's there.

Since the bears are so dark, I may not be able to do the eyes in black backstitch.  I'm leaning towards pale blue, but I'm open to suggestions.

On less dainty and ladylike fronts, I'm still hoping to be ready to test for blue belt at the end of this month (but I may have to postpone the test if we all go out after the last Goth class).

HOW DO I ART

Michaels had Fanboy Comic and Manga trading cards on clearance, so I immediately saw them and thought: "Mischief."

This is 1 of 20 Kollectable Kards, all of them most likely featuring the same artistic awesomeness.  Seriously, look at those speed lines.  That guy is totally about to do some awesome manga thing.

You can learn a lot of things from the flowers

Craft Hope has started their 7th project: educational bean bags for kids in Liberia.  I can't really sew, even by the standards of educational bean bags for under-served students, but we do have a whole lot of fabric lying around.

What's really unfortunate is that I probably won't be able to get down to my grandparents' before the deadline since there's at least one closet full of all the vintage fabric you could possibly want to haul away.

Also, I assume nobody has both the time and skill set to help me make a set of these?

***

One of my cousins is getting married.  Using my Batman-like detective skills, I determined that her kitchen is peach and green with some sort of apple motif (look, as the World's Greatest Detective, Batman would send somebody's mom a Facebook message if that was the best way to gather information)

So, I made these apple dish scrubbers to throw into the kitchen stuff my mother, sister, and I are giving.  In theory they're eco-friendly, but Kristen says no one would even be willing to use their little apple scrubbers to clean anything.  Apparently I need to start making crappier looking household items.

For some reason one of my spirals didn't come out as well as the other one.  The pattern's from Lion Brand, and they've got both this version and little apple wedges.  I skipped the hanging hook out of...well, mostly laziness, and I didn't have a good brown in acrylic or cotton, and it seemed completely pointless to make the whole thing harder to wash and dry just because of a wool "stem".





***

My honest toil of the past winter has turned into flowers.  The crocuses have come and gone, but the daffodils have come out, and people are apparently quite impressed by whatever those puffy blue ones are.

Unfortunately my goth tulips seem to have been influenced by the Laziest Little Dogwood and are taking their good sweet time actually blooming.

More recently in the world of honest toil, my money plant has started to sprout, so it's only a matter of time before all my troubles are over.  No more generic cereal and California wines for your pal Kate!