My Heart Swells

Last night was probably one of the greatest nights of my life, at least compared to recently. The events that transpired probably doesn't even sound all that impressive either.

A bit of back story.

I am a person with depression and am not medicated. I was on them for a while and I hated it through and through. Sure, I may have no longer felt as sad and as negative, but I didn't even feel anything. I simply no longer cared about much even though all the pressure on my chest had been lifted. It took me a while to notice the change and even a little while longer to even care enough to stop the medication. After that things did get worse. Without getting into too much, it ended up with me spending all my time on my couch in the living room "watching tv." Since I also have ADD I couldn't sit still either. I had to physically DO something while sitting on the couch if it makes any sense. So I picked up crocheting. Okay okay, to be honest I had learned it a couple months back but I never touched it if only to move it from one spot to another. Having ADD I get bored pretty fast and move on to new projects. Thus learning many different things, like sewing (by hand as well as machine), knitting, and baking among other things. Yeah most of the things I learned probably are super domesticated sounding, they were just things easy to do that caught my interests. I just figure since this is my craft blog I'll just stick to craft things. At least to start out. Anyway, the only crochet techniques I learned were to make chains, ch1, turn, st to end, ch1 turn. Even something as simple as that I wasn't very good at it--had some trouble with the tension. For some reason, this time around, I randomly picked up my old box of yarn, a crochet hook, and a random hat pattern. Learned how to crochet 6 into a magic ring and off I went. My first hat took me 15 hours to finish. And that is basically the story of how I picked up crocheting.

Fast forward to today. I have been pretty tense and frustrated with how things are going and I had no tolerance for anything any longer. I was irritable at just about everything and anything and overall had a very negative mindset. Kept up with my crochet project though. This is the longest I have kept up with any kind of interest and it surprises me a little if not just amused. Made a couple of good looking hats (aka improved), scarves, amigurumi, the list goes on and on. Monday I stuffed a Jack and Sally amigurumi dolls, a small Cthulhu hat, and a couple of other things in a box and shipped it off to my friend in Florida, Jon. Now about this friend, he's a pretty good friend of mine and my boyfriend and I had helped him move to Florida a while back. In Florida I met his family who are a bunch of awesome people btw! In this family of his was this little girl.

This girl is the one who just made my day, if not my entire year. The Cthulhu hat I had made was for her, and according to Jon, she wore the hat "for a long time today." Today being yesterday, the day the box arrived. That simply just made everything better. It made me realize just HOW down I was about everything. The entire time I knew that, sure, I'm in a slump, but it'll be fine right? I just kept thinking it was nothing and I was just a little down. But hearing that it was worn all day? The fact that I was just THAT happy about something seemingly so small just showed me how far down I had to be feeling if I was just THAT happy. It was like being slapped into reality. Something had to change, and I am making that change now. Last night is not the end for me I'm sure. There'll still be down points but at least I now have a reference point.

I think I shall plan a trip back to Florida for a little bit.

These are some of the things I sent over.

I had only sent over the Yoda amigurumi, not the legos, just to be clear.

That Yoda is the first "complex" small item I've ever made and I am quite proud of it. The first small thing was the Yip Yip I had made back in September. The Yoda was originally for my friend Jon, him being a Star Wars nerd himself, but being a grown-up, he wasn't present during the middle of the day in order to receive the gift. His niece thought the Yoda was just too awesome and had to keep it for herself (which is another thing I love!). I just thought that was the cutest thing ever and she can probably expect more gifts in the future.

So this concludes my sappy post, and I am excited to find more projects to make and send over to Florida.... Just gotta hope it's okay with her mother that I am spoiling her kid... Hm... will this turn out okay?!

Yoda Hatttt

I am definitely going to make more of these hats.

I had started crocheting an ordinary beanie but a little bit larger around towards the end so that way I could pinch and make those ridges there. Originally this had did not have eyes until I stumbled upon a pattern  and it had eyes that I thought were pretty cool and added.

I think this is one of my cooler projects I've done. But I think I say that with just about every project I've completed, and this was just one of the last ones I had worked on. So then expect to hear a lot of "my favorite one so far" from me =D

Millennium Falcon

So this is quite late, but this is what my boyfriend got me for my birthday back in September. It may not be the Ultimate Collector's one, but we're working on that. He got it for me to kind of "hold me over" until we have enough to get the Ultimate Collector's.

I pretty much sat down, opened the box, and began putting it all together and did not stop until it was completed. Took me perhaps ~10 hours or so? Yeah, I totally don't have a life and spent all night working on it while spending time with the boyfriend <3

This model only had a little over 1,000 pieces but it was a lot of fun. I can NOT wait until I can get my hands on the UC's MF!!! It has over 5,000 pieces (I expect to find myself blocking out an entire weekend) and the finished result will be 33" x 22" x 8". Just how exciting is that?!

This is what it looks like compared to the one I got

This is the one I currently have

Yip Yip Pattern

So I finally made a pattern to accompany my yip yip pattern. It's not the first pattern I've made, but certainly the first one I've typed up and wasn't too lazy to actually post.

I made the yip yip practically free-hand, winged it, without a pattern. The eyes I had help from a friend who knew the straw trick.

enjoy!

  

This one is different from the other yip yip I made. If you don't remember, the other one was blue and this one is also bigger.

Yip Yip Pattern

Materials

Any size hook and any size yarn (~3 colors: 1 for body, 2 for eyes (iris/pupil and white of eyes)

1 straw

Abbreviations

Ch: chain

Sl st: slip stitch

Sc: single crochet

St(s): stitch(es)

Body

ch 15 then join to beginning to chain with sl st

Round 1-5: sc evenly around 4x (or until the diameter of circle is about equal to the height)

Now you will be going back and forth making rows along one half of the circle. Rows will slowly decrease

Row 6: sc 7 sts

Row 7: turn, sc from 2^nd ch from hook (do not turn, ch1. Just turn). Sc evenly to end (1^st st in Row 5)

Row 8-10: turn, sc from 2^nd ch from hook. Sc evenly to end.

The edges of Row 6-10 will be sewn together, folding inwards towards center of circle rounds. But don’t sew them yet!

Eyes Make 2

Take the straw and cut off a length of about ¼” but any size you’re comfortable with is fine as well.

- Leave tail of yarn to be used later, ~2”. Take the white yarn threaded through yarn needed and loop in and out of straw so yarn will cover the straw.

- After covering straw, make sure to take the yarn and make it go across the top of the straw (the tail is sticking out the bottom of straw), then loop underneath opposite yarn on outside, close to bottom if possible, and tie off. (red: end of yarn; green: yarn already wrapped around straw. Red goes under green)

-Now swap to the iris/pupil color, and thread from bottom of straw to top of straw, and thread around the yarn that went across straw in previous step. Repeat until desired iris size and reached.

-(Assembly) Take each eye and place somewhere in Row 6-10, where when sides are sewn together, the eye placement is where you want it. Thread tail end of eye down through the “head” of the body and tie off. Sew sides of head together.

Tail end

This part is pretty much a bunch of fringe ends.

-Cut off several quite lengthy pieces of yarn, I believe I used about 10” or so.

-Grab center of single yarn length, pull through 1 st at bottom of circle round. There should now be a loop, now pull the two tail ends through the loop.

-Take each loop and crochet to end, tie off.

-Repeat until entire circle round is full of fringes.

Yip Yip

This here is a Yip Yip. I had gotten a request the other night to make one and I barely remembered what it was. Not sure if many of you even know what it is but a yip yip is from sesame street. They were the aliens that pretty much just said "yip yip" most of the time.

Here's a video for reference.

So yes, I made a teeny tiny little yip yip and in the photo I had it stand next to my Lego Han Solo as a size reference.