Tag: crafts

BookNook!

Posted on | by cursingcats.com | 2 Comments on BookNook!

For Christmas this year, K gave K2 and I booknooks! And the gift of making them together. It took us 2 full days a month apart, but we did it, yall! Here’s the kit I was gifted:

The Rolife Booknook and Wonderland Garden House. I’ve seen it under two brands on Amazon and non-branded on Etsy. My little stickers even had “Rolife” printed on them so I think that’s the real brand. Plus it was on the box.

We started them on February 10th. It took us a month to be able to get together again and we finished them yesterday. March 10th.

I’m pretty sure my kit was by far the easiest of the kits. But dang, yall. Miniatures are hard. Here’s me questioning if my eye doctor was correct that I should start considering bifocals. Cause good GOD. That shit is so very tiny. Of course that’s what makes the book nooks awesome. The insane amount of details. And this kit was not short on the details. Look at my little shelves!

There are little wooden books wrapped with sticker labels and spines. Flower crates, pictures with frames, tiny flower pots (all 6 pots are different), the tiniest blue rose known to man… Look at it! The window even opens and closes!

Cause, I’m extra, I did do a few changes. Especially today. One, that chair is supposed to go inside and it is just not to scale. No. It is an outside chair now. I also added some extra “area rugs” to cover the marks on the floor where things were supposed to be placed. The basket of rolled papers goes in front of the stairs. Well, that blocks the stairs! How is that functional? And the chair fills the whole thing up. I like it much better less crowded and where I can imagine walking into it. And who doesn’t like an outside chair?

I also added and switched somethings around. Originally, all of the rolls of paper were stickers rolled together. Well, I apparently can’t do that without making them look like shit. So first, I got out some nice paper I had in my craft supplies and used it instead of the bright gingham colors that came with the kit. For the ones with the flower stickers, I put the sticker on the paper and gave it a good roll with the sticker ending up on the outside. Excellent. Oh, and speaking of stickers, I love that little detail of the tulip sticker that looks like it’s a poster that is just draped/fallen over the shelf there.

All of the pictures and intricate details are stickers. Much better than having to glue paper. But MAKE NO MISTAKE, you need glue for this bitch. It doesn’t come with glue, but it is required. Thankfully, I read a review about how you have to turn it over to wire it. Literally almost the very last step is turning it over to wire it up underneath. (Better pray those lights work when you connect the wires!) So everything needs to be glued the fuck down.

The first day, we had to make do with the gorilla glue I had in a junk drawer because only K2’s kit came with glue. For our next round, I ordered fast drying craft glue and tiny pinpoint dispenser bottles so we all had a bottle. PRICELESS. Absolute requirement for this. You think that door had that “glass” in it and trim on it? NO, it didn’t not. It had to be glued on. Parts of these kits expect you to glue a piece on the wall and then stand it up immediately. EXCUSE ME? No. Also, I ordered another pair of longer tweezers. Such a necessity here. I have gorilla fingers, or something. Who the hell can pick up those micro stickers on the drawer labels? They’re so tiny they didn’t even print 1, 2, 3, 4 — they’re all “No. 1.” So, be prepared.

In my extraness, I beefed up some of the plants with fake grass blades. I also added dried moss to all the planter boxes and pots. And do you see my Peacock Ore chips as rocks on display? I threw in a big clear quartz crystal too!

Then today, I saw some of the purple flowers I had dried in my collections of rose petals and it was ON. I ripped out a lot of the 1-dimensional paper flowers and replaced them with the real dried flowers. And where I left the paper flowers (like on top of the blue bookcase), I tucked them in various nooks. It adds so much texture! I even tucked a few petals in the boots with the sprig that is totally Wall-E vibes.

There’s actually a lot of depth in here too. There’s a whole second level balcony in the back with it’s own chest and flower box on top. And a cute railing all around. It’s the layers and layers of details that make it so cool.

Well, plus the lights. The little lamp works and there’s a utility light hanging from the ceiling.

Yesterday, we were exhausted. K2 was here until 9pm. So almost 9 hours straight or work to finish them. But yall, I kinda want to make another. I don’t need one or have a place to put it — but I really enjoyed putting it together! IT’S SO PRECIOUS!

I made dis.

Posted on | by cursingcats.com | 1 Comment on I made dis.

So Lumalee is my next project. He has two mushrooms with him. I bought Premiere Parfait Chunky Yarn ($4 US) for these Nintendo projects. And I special ordered the green from Istanbul. Why? Well, it’s damn hard to find baby blanket yarn in bright colors. So I asked the lady I bought the Mario and Luigi patterns from what green she used for her Luigi. Well, in Europe, Himalaya Dolphin Baby is the big cheap chenille yarn. USA doesn’t seem to have it. We have the Premiere Parfait. But we don’t have a bright green! So yes, I ordered this from Europe. It was $2 (US) a skein but shipping was going to be $50 for all the colors I needed. I was like, I can’t pay more for shipping than for the yarn! The seller said they just charge by the gram, sorry. So I ONLY ordered 4 skeins of this “grass green.”

They arrive vacuum packed which was funny. I wasn’t sure what the package was and thought my yarn hadn’t been delivered. Look at this:

This shit compacts. They also threw in some evil eyes. Thanks?

So yeah. I needed to see what crochet hook to use. Some people say 5mm and some say 4mm. I did this mushroom in a 5mm. I’m gonna go with that.

I will also note, the Himalaya Dolphin is WAY BETTER than the Chunky Parfait. They look the same, but working with them is very different. The Dolphin barely sheds at all. Only when cutting. The Parfait sheds a lot and you have to be very careful frogging and stitching is a pain. Shedding all over. LAME. I was easily able to do my magic circle in the Himalaya Dolphin, didn’t even question it. It was IMPOSSIBLE in the Parfait. I had to get out another yarn and do my 6 stitches on that yarn and then tie it tight to make the circle. Cause Chunky was NOT going to do it.

So someone start selling this shit for cheap in the US. Here’s what those 4 cost me. I better get Luigi plus a few 1 Ups. Maybe I should have ordered more? But no, because the shipping went up with every single one. Ugh. Glad I got the 4 though.

  • Item Total $10.60
  • Shipping $17.92
  • Sales Tax $0.85
  • Order Total $29.37

He very cute. OH, I got the pattern for Lumalee plus two mushrooms from AzeliaCrochet on Etsy. The pattern is well written with lots of pictures.

UPDATE! Shit, I forgot. Louie totally helped:

The Wright Brothers

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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!

Crochet Check-In

Posted on | by cursingcats.com | 1 Comment on Crochet Check-In

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.

I’ve Been Crocheting.

Posted on | by cursingcats.com | 1 Comment on I’ve Been Crocheting.

Where have I been for over a month? Crocheting. Stressing and crocheting. And sure, crocheting actually sounds like something I’d do. However, until like last month, I didn’t even know the difference between crocheting and knitting. I knew there was a difference, but not exactly what and which was which. Then Facebook got me.

How? Ads. Facebook kills me with ads. It’s like “you want this?” And I do. So, I don’t know how long ago, it started showing me The Woobles. The Woobles intrigued me. Not only is it a craft — it’s all in one. It includes EVERYTHING you need. So you can try out crochet without buying anything but this one kit. Look at this:

Yes, when the Halloween collection came out and I saw pumpkins and bats, I caved. That picture is for Luna the bat. It comes with beginner “easy” yarn that HAS ALREADY BEEN STARTED FOR YOU, all the colors you need, the stuffing, eyes, and crochet needle. But it also has step by step videos. In the reviews on Amazon, one of the only negative ones was that they videos were too slow and aimed at kindergartners. Bitch, some of us are LEARNING. We need crochet kindergarten.

It took until about row four before I even figured out the “yarn under” thing. Well, the second row four. I had to unravel the first attempt. But I did it! I created a bat! I MADE THIS. I had also ordered the mini pumpkin kit so I made that shit too. I was hooked (no pun intended). I wanted to do more, but all I knew how to make was that bat. But I had some yarn from a previous craft! So I bought a hook sized for the chenille baby blanket yarn and made en even BIGGER bat (stuffing from an old pillow). Holy shit, I’m amazing.

So then, I was like… I like this. I’ve been crocheting every evening while watching the old 90’s TV show “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.” It’s simple to follow and doesn’t require a lot of attention. It’s also a cheesy throw back I enjoy. And I’ve been loving it. It’s relaxing. Instead of feeling like I’m wasting my evenings (and therefore my life) away aimlessly clicking on Reddit and waiting to retire — I’m enjoying my evenings. I’m making things again. So I ordered a kit to make a blanket, because what am I gonna do with all these bats?

Then I got antsy and made the penguin kit with his tiny aviator hat. Yall, these tiny kits (the pumpkin and the hat) are only $5 each. SO WORTH IT. Look how stinking cute he is! I’m so fucking good at this! I LOVE CROCHET. Look how fucking adorable that penguin with his hat is! He’s got stubby little wings yall! And a hat! Husband likes him so much it’s on his desk.

Then I started the blanket because I’m gonna knock this right on out.

Yeah… no. This shit is hard. One, that easy yarn TRICKED ME. It was so easy! I thought the chenille yarn was super hard because I couldn’t see my stitches, but I was wrong. This “afghan yarn” is 2 ply and slippery as FUCK. The stitches are sliding all over the place. And it barely holds together. It’s so hard to not stab right through it every stitch. So it’s slooooowwwwww going.

I’m not gonna lie. I thought about giving up on this shit. But NO. I’m gonna finish. This is my first big project and dammit, I’m gonna do it. And yes, I’m gonna fix that first dark green row because jesus, that’s terrible.

I’ve got the five color sequence done two and a half times now. I’ve figured out the yarn — that being that it’s going to stretch out and pull everywhere, just go with it. I’m not having to look at the pattern. And I can see why the pattern is the way it is. It took about 6 rows before the chevrons really started to stand out. I also thought the single crochet rows were worthless (each color is 4 rows) — but now I see. By doing the single crochet row and back stitching everything, the single row ends up completely on the back of the blanket and invisible from the front. This leaves only the two double crochet stitch rows showing on the front. It also makes them look like they’ve overlapping like fish scales. Nice. And this yarn may suck to work with, but god damn is it soft.

So yeah, Woobles. 100% recommend that shit. They were even on Shark Tank! Sure, if you already have the stuff to knit or crochet, it’s over priced. The people saying that already have hooks and shit and know yarn is cheap. But if you just wanna give it a go, this lets you do a whole project with everything. Even the little plastic eye balls! An yeah, I can look up stitches on youtube, but this is the stitches plus a slow step by step guide.

Everybody’s getting Woobles for Christmas!

Here’s my old lady ass crocheting with my cat. I love it!