Snowflake the Ninth

[donutsweeper]

Snowflake the Ninth
In your own space, brag about yourself. Tell us what things you've done that you're proud of; the things that make you the wonderful person you are. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

crochet babble

The Background: I've been crocheting on and off for decades but mostly stuck to afghans and scarves until last year's EAD Birthday Bash which had seals as a sort of theme and, specifically, a "Seal of Approval" which a few people requested and it gave me the idea of crocheting a seal and putting a crown on its head and posting a picture of that as a fill--the exchange is very much a tongue-in-cheek silly one so this would be a valid fill--and then did a few more animals and posed them a bunch of different ways for different fills.

I have a lot of random leftover yarn in my stash and my rug making (Amish knot rugs made with old sheets or t-shirts) results in having a box of random bits of cotton schmutz that can be used as filler so I bought some plastic safety eyes in case I wanted to do more animals and then the Battleship exchange started and decided to do some for it because tentacles +sea monsters +knitting gave me the idea of an octopus knitting (I don't knit, but I can do Tunisian crochet which can be threaded onto knitting needles and looks like knitting) and that morphed into doing three different octopus fills. Later a friend was talking about her love of mola molas and I offered that if she found a pattern I'd make her some. Then daughter asked for some animals and I also sent the big octopus and some tiny ones off to a different friend and before long I'd made probably two dozen different animals.

I always used patterns though and often had problems following them (or couldn't follow them at all) but I was getting better.

Then came 2021's EAD Birthday Bash. And "Moss Covered Unicorn" was a theme/prompt (in exchange tagsets sometimes tags wander so mods have to disambiguate them, often by adding something to the name but it needs to be distinct so 'Steve Rogers (MCU)' doesn't work but years ago one mod used 'Steve Rogers (Moss Covered Unicorn)' which does and its usage stuck) so I thought I'd try making a unicorn with green hooves, mane and tail. But none of the unicorn patterns worked (either the pattern failed or the shape wasn't right.) But one was close:



The pattern, as you can see, was for a sitting unicorn though, not standing, and I didn't like its mane or tail. So first I did two sets of the pattern for the rear legs and once attached it could stand the way I wanted it to, but then the head couldn't attach properly so I added a bit of a neck based off a way I'd seen it done in a different pattern and then messed around until the mane and tail came out right. Result:



I've never futzed with patterns on purpose before and have it work! And it emboldened me to totally come up with my own pattern for a cobra (for the idea of filling 'cobra kai osmosed' prompt) and crocheted a tube, filled it with the hard-fold-press-closed-thing coffee bags use to keep them closed for the poseability and then tweaked the bird wing pattern to create the look of the cobra's hood. Result (not a great pic but it shows it sort of):



I did well over a dozen different crochet projects for Birthday Bash, including tweaking a possum pattern to work better and then shrink it to have a baby for the 'mom' from the original pattern, but these are the two I'm really proud of and wanted to brag about.

Comments

[sjh2009]

Your unicorn is adorable, that worked out so well, I love the cobra too! How clever of you to manipulate and create your own patterns. The Birthday Bash idea sounds like such fun. I can see why you are proud of yourself, you certainly have good reason to be!

I admire people who can crochet so much! It's something I've tried to do so many times but somehow I've never managed to get the hand of it. Everything I try to create turns out to be a strange shape.

Thank you for sharing :)

[donutsweeper]

Thank you!!! I'm that way with knitting- sometimes certain crafts or skills just skip some of us by :)

[panisdead]

These are fab. :D

[donutsweeper]

Thanks so much!! :)

[hamsterwoman]

Ooh, these are really fun! (my daughter got into crochet over the lockdown, so I'm beginning to have some sense of the work that goes into tweaking patterns and having them work out)

[donutsweeper]

Thank you!! I hope your daughter's having fun with her crochet :)

[hamsterwoman]

Thank you -- she is! :) (Also, our living room has been taken over by Joann's boxes, but I gather that's the normal way of things? XD)

[pronker]

I spot the cobra hood - excellent tweaking! :)

[donutsweeper]

Thank you! :)

[sevilemar]

Tweaking a pattern is difficult, I can't imagine how long it takes to get your own pattern right. Well done! And the unicorn looks adorable^^

[donutsweeper]

Thank you!!:)

[deerna]

oh these are so cute! good job! altering patterns is no easy job!

[donutsweeper]

Altering patterns is very daunting indeed! Thanks! :)