The direwolve is back

My friend Steph is going a long long way away - whole continents and time zones! - so I made a going-away direwolf, because I express affection best through food and material goods, and I'm pretty sure U.S. customs are fussy about letting food in. It also means that if she starts to forget me, at least my image will be replaced by that of this wolf.

The tiny animals and creepy dog oven mitt are courtesy of Steph for my birthday. The tiny animals are actually rubbers, but who could ruin their tiny adorableness?

Please enjoy also the pre-detail "I have no mouth, and I must scream" version. Things which should have faces but don't are one of my favourite kinds of creepy.

The pattern is the Direwolf/Wolf Pattern, so it can be read either way, and if Game of Thrones or all of fantasy ever becomes annoying it can go back to being a standard wolf. It's very straightforward (while I was crocheting I didn't think some things would end up looking right, but I had faith, and I think they did) and I like how it turned out. I used DK cotton with a 3.75mm hook instead of a bulky yarn, and given the size this turned out I think a bulky one would have been quite huge. I sort of wish I'd measured its dimensions before I gave it away, so that I could make it seasonally appropriate costumes. Tiny Santa hat, tiny St. Patrick's mitre, tiny pumpkin... something... I just like dressing things up as other things. I'm not well, Harry.

FO: What immortal hand or eye/ could frame thy fearful symmetry?

I have been rubbish at posting things lately!  I've had quite little time to craft due to unexpectedly getting a job (good at the best of times, but I'm starting an unpaid internship in September, so double-yay!). I'm also trying to purge my room of clutter, so my commute-crafting has mainly been crocheting squares for the Henry Bear Blanketeers. The bag of yarn I won't use is nearly empty, the bag of squares is nearly full, everyone's a winner!

So the completion of my secret project is exciting not just because it's amazing and I've wanted to make it since I first laid eyes on the pattern, oh wow, but also because it's the first big project I've finished in quite a while, and that's a nice fuzzy feeling.

Which is fitting, because Hobbes is also fuzzy.

This pattern (available here) is honestly just the best. It combines the joy of crafting with the unadulterated childish delight that was Calvin and Hobbes. I'm pretty sure that strip is the reason that a part of me will always want to be a child growing up in rural North America.

Another reason this pattern is wonderful is that I learned new techniques! I usually learn techniques by picking a project that incorporates them, so it's nice to have it go the other way around. Intarsia in the round is the biggest new skill I took away from this project (though I sometimes substituted my own sloppy version, as you can see on the right of his face), and the pattern also uses loop stitch, and toe-up cast on.  None of them were daunting, but I wouldn't have gone out of my way to learn then just 'cause.

ALSO, if you are knitting stripes in the round, you should move in one stitch each time you start a new stripe for a more seamless jog. Never knew that, though it makes a lot of sense. (And, of course, I forgot to do it for the tail, because I'm just not that bright.)

I didn't follow the pattern exactly, though that was partly accidental. I was knitting four rows of orange rather than five in the torso stripes, so knit one less orange and black repeat so that he wouldn't look too long.  I also knit seven stripes on the tail rather than nine, as it was starting to look a little bit long as it was.

I used James C. Brett Kool Kotton for the orange. I got about four skeins in a bargain bin, and only used about half of one. I don't know if it's a weirdly specific phase, but I really like working with cotton at the moment, so I have to decide something worthy of the other skeins.  the black and white are Cygnet DK acrylic. I used 3mm needles as I didn't want to hold the yarn double, as the pattern suggest, so he might be a little short, but I'm delighted with how he turned out regardless.

Last night I was happy with having finished, but a little disappointed that it looked different to the pattern photos. It took me longer than I care to admit to put my finger on what was missing.

Not even joking. I wish I were.

I also posted some pictures on Twitter of him working up! (I can't use 'tweeted' as an internet-related verb yet. I'm a grumpy old man.)

FO: TARDIS: I couldn't choose a witty title.

Do I make a joke about how it took way more stuffing than I thought it would, because it's bigger on the inside? Or the fact that it took way longer than it should have, and something something time?  Do I go with a quote?  I don't know how I'm expected to make that kind of decision.

Pattern

The thumbnails on my camera led me to believe this wasn't so blurry, and I've already given it away.  Oh well!

Blurrier and before I managed to punch it into some sort of rectangular shape.  Wibbly-wobbly etc.

This taken a ridiculous and kind of shameful length of time to finish.  The extent to which I was relieved when I sewed up the last seam is kind of silly.  Mostly Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted, and the white is Cygnet DK, which is probably why the light is a bit small.

But it's done, and now I can get back to gloves!  I've also been making speedy neckwarmers in lectures and while out and about, but I don't have the light in my room in college to take nice photos, or the confidence to stand around campus taking photos of myself.

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Dublin Zoo's youngest elephant learning not to grab.  But she got bored
and left to eat different food and probably did not benefit from the lesson.

In unrelated news, on Thursday I got to go to the zoo, and go into the elephant house, nominally as part of my course.  (I don't do the module to which the trip was connected, but the lecturer got tickets for everyone in the class anyway.)  I think zoos are ethically problematic, and their nature puts them in a bind (have to have animals that'll draw people so they can fund breeding and conservation programmes for the animals in need of them, even if there's no conservational merit to holding them), but I do like the route that Dublin Zoo is taking with the new elephant enclosure, and now the new gorilla area.

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Also also, my thesis is due in less than a month.  Um.

Christmas knitting.

My much lamented circle scarf for my brother's girlfriend, over from Boston this weekend:

She hasn't opened it yet and I'm not sure if it's rude to suggest that she does before she leaves.  Seeing people's reactions is the fun of presents!

I think seed stitch is the third bowl of porridge of basic stitches.  Not as plain as garter stitch, not as rolly as stockinette or ribbing.   Just right!

The yarn is leftover Tupa from a shrug I made when a colleague of my mum's was retiring.  It is fifty percent merino and fifty percent silk and just wow.

Owl hat for the sister of a friend of a friend!  (The friend-of-friend was the recipient of the unicorn hat.)  The hat is made with Freedom Purity, which is a mix of wool and alpaca, because it was the most owlish colour scheme in the shop.  The eyes and beak were hanging around from other projects, all acrylic, I think.

I wish the bags under my eyes were filled with TIME.

Seed stitch brim because I'm only mad for it these days.

Yet another brainmonster!  I took quite a lot of pictures, but is too big for my head - it's for a friend's brother-in-law - so they all look silly and make the hat look bad.  I'm not sure if I managed to make the eyes look wacky and googly, rather than just clumsily made, but said friend is happy with it!

This was waiting for me when I came home for the weekend.  Never too old.

Tiny hamsters and face-painting.

I made these about a week and a half ago, but didn't get around to taking photos.

More OpWall crafting, also from Knitting Mochimochi.  My sister saw the pattern for tiny hamsters and picked out scrap yarn from my box.  Coming soon: the tiny mountains I made the same weekend.

I spent Saint Patrick's Day face-painting with the fund-raising group.  It was a nice way to spend the day.  I only have this very awkward photo of my handiwork on myself though.

The swirly thing was by me, the shamrock was not.

I also went on this!

I used to use this for crafts I think.

First of my OpWall Crafting projects: a squirrel on wheels.

One of these days I will have to start taking proper photos of things I make, or at least take them somewhere other than my bed.

The pattern is from Knitting Mochimochi by Anna Hrachovec.  Amigurimi can be knit these days. Who knew?  The wool is some Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride that I have left over for another project.

I've doing quite well with OpWall crafting orders, and really should try and make headway into the list, but after a rather stressful week I'm being decadent and finishing off the socks I started for myself over the Christmas holidays.  First proper socks!  (These were knit flat and then sewn up, so they don't feel like 'real' socks.  Is that snobbish?)  Very exciting times.  One of these days I will have me some free time.  It will be a very good day.

A trilobite which is kind of cute.

Made for my oldest brother for Christmas using this pattern and some leftover Lamb's Pride worsted I had left over from another brother's hat last Christmas.

Juggling pigs.

My little brother turned eighteen at the beginning of this month. He's liked pigs since he was a wee little thing, and goes through phases of liking various forms of juggling, so I made him a set of juggling pigs.

The pattern is great, it's simple and takes no time to make. that said, I did have to fudge it a little. It requires felting for the snout and ears, which I don't know how to do and hadn't allowed time to learn. My improvised ears look passable though. I also stuffed them with intact juggling balls rather than beans, for fear they'd leak.