I have completed my second (Woobles) penguin, Orville. Wilbur was the first penguin (I did the bats and pumpkin before him), and I gave him the Tiny Aviator Hat. I made Orville with the Tiny Bowler Hat.
These $5 tiny accessory kits are so worth it. In my opinion, these hats really take them from adorable to fantastic. They add so much more detail.
I saw a few people added feet to their Pierres so I might do that in the beak color. But really, Husband immediately claimed Wilbur to live in his office and I made Orville to pair with him and they tuck under his monitor so standing isn’t a problem.
I need more hats. They have a big summer hat, but it’s in a bundle and I don’t want to buy a whole bundle or another penguin, I just want the $5 hat. I didn’t buy another penguin kit. I bought some cheap easy yarn on the internet and made another. That’s why he’s a much lighter blue. This was the penguin I made with K and K2.
So I envision Wilbur is the suave pilot catching girls at the bar while Orville tries to fund their efforts to fly to business men at the bar. Orville also reminds me on Monty from Firefly for obvious reasons. But I’m so in love with the Wright Brothers as Penguins – It’s like a pun.
Note for any fellow Wooblers: If you notice that my bowler hat looks different, I tweaked it. The Tiny Bowler Hat pattern only goes up to 18 stitches around the top. It would have been a cute jaunty hat, but I wanted a full size hat like the Aviator Hat. So I kept circling the last row (row 4, I think? Before you start doing the sc rows to make the sides) and holding it up to him until I decided it was big enough. It ended up being 30 stitches in the edge rounds rather than the 18. This was fine, because I bought a large black skein of Woobles yarn when Amazon had them on sale (I got white and black). Other than that, I followed the pattern. I just had to do a lot more repeats to get all the way around on each row. I think it worked out great!
I’ve been tasting the telework life, and yall, it is sweet. I’ve been given permission to work two days a week from home. So I chose Monday and Tuesday. Then last week, we were iced in and had to work from home all week long. It was fucking amazing.
I can sleep super late because I don’t have to get dressed or drive in. I can wake up and be on a meeting in 5 minutes. Does that piss Louie off because he has to wait for his breakfast? Yes, it does piss him off.
Also, I can be comfortable. I have a foot rest under my desk. I fucking love having my feet up. And no ones gonna creep up and catch me talking to myself or fucking around or just looking like shit. Plus, I love my office! It’s the board game room. I added some shelves to move the books off of the game shelves and sprinkle in my own things. And I love my shelves of nick-knacks!
Today, I did some more obsessive tweaking of where everything goes. I wanted to make room for my yarn stash for crochet. I have a ton of yarn for the never-ending Christmas blanket, plus the leftovers from other projects. I moved around the books too. I rearranged the crappy mis-matched books by height and it looks much better. And I moved some shelves around that were stuff before and made them books so the stuff is more spread out. Don’t worry. If I need more space, I will not hesitate to buy another cheap Target shelf.
Yes, the pillow is on the floor so Louie has more room in the chair. He was crowded, OK?
I love my office. I love stuff. Stuff stuff stuff. I’m a stuff person. I mean do you SEE The Professional Leon-Mario crossover down there waiting to assassinate someone? Lord Concord, Star Trek Figures, my Mini Masters Jayne? All my Witcher books, that was an adventure! Notes from mom, photo booth photos of Husband and I. And my precious Penny Arcade Goombas I traded for at PAX! I got that little orange elephant keychain with mom when I took her to the chinese lantern festival at the Botanical Gardens! D & C were there and we ate at the Highway Kabbobery food truck while we watched a live martial arts play in the grass. Baby Yoda is wearing my wedding tiara that I’m wearing in that photo there — the famous texas hair photo of my momma.
There’s other stuff in there too. There’s the giant stuffed blue shell K2 gave me on the game shelf. And my desk has a sweet Bob Ross bobble head circled with the glass worry beads mom brought me back from Greece. Also the Goomba Fate sent and a special edition Funko Pop set of Crowley and Aziraphile. Plus a fake succulent with a tiny goomba tucked in the center. Like a wheres-waldo but with goombas.
I even have a light up cat ball that K gave me for Christmas. I had to plugged into the monitor and yall, I’m so stupid. So I have two huge new government issued monitors. I plugged the cat ball in to one. It happens to be the one that just won’t be turned on by the dock. The right monitor springs to life every time, but you have to turn the left one off and back on again for it to recognize it has a signal. The power button happens to be by the cat ball. So I noticed the cat ball turns itself off after a while — nice feature. Also, it appeared to detect motion to turn itself on as it would come on when I put my hand near it … to … turn on … the monitor … that it was … powered by … Ooooohhhhhhhhhh… I’m dumb.
Anyway. I have a JOB INTERVIEW Friday! It’s still government so it would just be a simple transfer with barely any paperwork. I could get away from my clusterfuck team! I bet I could be more than 2 days a week at home too! I HOPE I GET IT. And that it doesn’t suck if I do get it.
Last time I checked in with my new crochet hobby, I had made the woobles bat and penguin and started the blanket that never ends. So let’s check in. I gave everyone a fuck ton of Woobles for Christmas. This included my besties K and K2. I figured K is killer at crafts, so she’d be good with an intermediate kit — also it was a purple dragon and what is more K than that? So, I was wrong. The dragon is kinda hard. And the tutorials assume you know the basics. So fun twist, I ordered a bunch of easy yarn and now all three of us are going through the Penguin tutorial together. I think K has finished her potato and K2 and I are about to start closing ours up. K has the itch though and she sent us a text tonight with her progress on the dragon.
So what have I made? Well, I got a Michael’s gift card for Christmas. So I was like yeah, I’m making a big ass dragon. I got the code for the tutorial from K. We went to Michael’s and I picked up some velvet yarn. I dont love it itself — but the colors were just spectacular. I wont work with it again because it is MESSY A F. It’s also overly heavy and I actually like the feel of the baby blanket yarn better. But I made the dragon! I took three skeins of dark purple and one of gold. Here he is:
I like working with the bigger yarns way better than the tiny stuff. It’s fun seeing your project build faster. Also the fuzzy yarn is so forgiving in how visible the stitches are. This one was a PAIN though. I am not intermediate as much as I want to tell myself I am. And this one just had so many steps. So many. And I ran out of yarn (originally only bought two skeins of purple) and had to wait for more to come in the mail because no local Michaels had it in stock. Even though the one across town told me they did and I drove all the way over there — they couldn’t find it. Fuck that Michaels. FUCK THEM.
Anyway, damn it was a lot of steps. I got through about 8ish rows before I realized that the recommended hook size of 19 was far too big. So I went back and got a size 10 hook. Then frogged it and started over, Here’s an action shot:
So I felt so accomplished when I finished the body and head. I figured I was close to my dragon! I added the ears which are freaking adorable. I added horns. I took a break. Then I added a tail. But fuck — I sewed that shit on so damn crooked. But it was on there now. So I just rolled with it, like his tail is swooping. It looks better this way — totally my end goal all along. I added the spikes but they just looked so wrong. So I frogged them and redid them 3 times before deciding that’s just how they looked. Then I had to wait on my mail ordered yarn.
In the mean time, I added wire to the spikes. This velvet yarn is heavy so they weren’t standing up by themselves very well. When the third purple skein got here, I could do my wings! I got those done, Wired up the top ridge and jammed those babies in. The great news was that I had enough gold and purple left to wrap all the edges that had wire so it’s completely hidden. It looks fucking AMAZING! I’m so proud of my dragon! I had to rearrange my office shelves to accommodate him.
I thought his colors were very regal, but K2 can’t see anything but peanut butter and jelly. So his name is Lord Concord (like grape jelly).
So did I finish my Christmas blanket? Oh fuck no. I did travel with it over Christmas and worked on it the entire travel time and on and off while I was at my in-laws. Flying is much more pleasant when focusing on a craft. Really. And even the flight attendants were interested in what I was making. See: Here’s my bald ass crocheting at the airport on a layover:
So this blanket is going to take fucking forever. I’m going to TRY to budget time so that it’s done for next Christmas but that might even be tight. It’s supposed to be six rows of 15 repeats. That should be a 60″ x 40″ blanket. I was working on the 12th repeat this weekend and measured… I’m at 80″. Fuck.
So I wrapped up my 12th repeat and started the second strip. But my strips are also barely over 5 inches wide so 6 would only give me a 30″ blanket. Ugh. So I’m looking at at least 8 strips. Yes, I ordered more yarn so I should have enough. This blanket will never end. I’ve decided I will try to hold to a rough schedule of how much I need to have done each month or quarter or so and sprinkle in projects I’m more excited about. Having a row finished though is very exciting!
It’s so soft. Also, it’s funny to see my evolution into settling in to being comfortable with this yarn. My first three color rows were actually so bad that I cut them off and redid them. It had to be done. Then at maybe the 3rd repeat, I decided to hold the yarn with my fingers and crochet super slow so it wouldn’t be stretching and wiggling all over the place (it’s super thin and moves like crazy). You can really see where the row gets really thin there because my stitches were too tight. Then I got better and settled into a good rhythm. I’m doing really well now with my tension. I’m using a tension regulator that I made though. Got the tutorial off Youtube. You can actually see it on my finger in the airport photo — it’s a white crocheted ring.
I’m going to leave the rest of the imperfections of row one in there. It’s my first big project so it’s a good showing of how I evolved. I’m going to try to keep them in order when I stitch it all together.
So next up: I have the Woobles kit for the pig — plus the tiny wings kit so I can make him a pig with wings! I can’t wait to finish up the penguin I’m doing with K and K2. I’m going to make him a tiny bowler hat and pair him with the other penguin with the flying ace hat — they’re going to be Wilbur and Orville! I also bought a pattern for Lumalee and some Mario mushrooms off Etsy. I want to make it in the baby yarn like the grey bat, but I can only find very muted colors for baby blankets. So I’m waiting until I find a good yarn to buy for that.
