Darth Vader amigurumi

The latest addition to my Star Wars Crochet family.

A bit closer on his chestplate and belt:

I'm holding him for size perspective, but putting him next to a ruler probably would have been more effective.

Overall, I'm pleased with how he turned out. The chestplate and belt details were a lot harder to embroider than I expected, and eventually I just gave up and settled for this. But the helmet turned out well, and I'm happy enough with the face. I kept notes this time, so I could do another one a little bit better if I want to. For example, the head ought to be another round or two taller, because the helmet needs to sit a bit higher off the shoulders. And I'm pleased with the cape, too.

R2D2 costume

Tom wanted to be Darth Vader and Anakin this Halloween, so we (I) decided Asher would be R2D2. Asher actually loved the idea, once he understood what I was talking about. We got the Darth Vader costume on sale at TJMaxx, and Tom's Nana provided the Anakin costume (which is actually what inspired Tom to be Anakin ... she'd bought it just as a dress-up thing).

But no way was I going to spend $30 for a toddler R2D2 costume.

First I needed a torso. I used his winter coat to make a sort of tank-top pattern, figuring that it would have to be able to fit over the coat in case we encountered a typical Minnesota Halloween. I made the torso out of white fleece.

The arms were also white fleece. I measured from the top of his shoulder to his wrist for height, then measured around his upper bicep and around his wrist for width. The photo below is sideways -- imagine his shoulder at the right, and his wrist at the left. It needs that funny two-humped curve for the shoulder. I fitted that middle section together and sewed it to create a curve to fit up and around the top of the shoulder.

A Velcro tab held the top of the arm to the torso at the shoulder, and some elastic held the forearm together with a toggle (I could never get Asher to hold still for a fitting, so I really had no idea how much elastic to use). You can see it fairly well below:

The hat was some stretchy silver stuff with a white fleece lining. By the time I got to the head, though, I was all out of wine and it was about midnight. So I just hot-glued on the details.

Halloween jellyfish costume

Make Magazine blog had a link to a guy's site. He'd made a jellyfish costume by bolting a skateboarding helmet to a very large plastic basin, then attached battery-powered LED rope lights. It was incredible.

And it sounded like a lot of work. So I went the lo-cal way -- I found 100 glowstick bracelets on eBay for $7, and got a plastic bowl that fit my head at the dollar store.

This is how it looked as I was setting it up. To make the bowl light up, I would snap several glowsticks, then hook them together with the included connectors. Then I spiraled it up and taped it into the bowl. The tentacles were just taped to the edges.



The bracelets were flexible when bent, but they weren't loosey goosey, which probably would have been much more comfortable, because the tentacles kept hitting my shoulders.

To keep the bowl on my head, I used packing tape to attach a circle of elastic in the middle. To put it on, I would pull the elastic apart and slide it onto my head. The elastic kept it more or less in place. After about 3 hours, the elastic had stretched out enough that it wasn't really secure on my head anymore. If I reuse it, I'll just reduce the diameter of that elastic loop.

This is how it looked in the dark, as modeled by my not-quite-able-to-hold-still toddler. It actually turned out really well.

And your little ruby slippers, too

My friend Karen loves the Wizard of Oz even more than I love Star Wars. For real. When Tom was born, she sent a very fancy edition of the book, referring to it in the enclosed note as "a service I provide for all new babies." I love her.

Anyhoo. Sometimes I think Karen decided to become a mother just so she would have someone to dress as Dorothy or the Tin Man. Last Halloween she had the BEST Dorothy costume EVER for her daughter (about 18 months old). But the red sparkly shoes at Target only started one size above her size. Tragedy! So I made these. They have a satin lining. No pattern, so I was delighted with how they turned out, and Karen said they fit perfectly. They actually looked much better in person, because the flash completely washes out the sparkliness.

Tom's birthday cake

Karyn's cake kicked ass!

$1.79 Stormtrooper mask

Tom really wanted a stormtrooper mask. Can't find them anywhere ... at least, not for under $40. Maybe when it gets closer to Halloween, but not in August, which is when we made this.

I found a photo of a stormtrooper helmet, then printed it out the size I wanted it. I used white foam (that Foamies stuff -- you get a big sheet of it for $.79 -- it's 2 or 3 mm thick) to make the background piece, then cut another to make the detail at the bottom and the forehead part. I used scrap black foam that I happened to have to make the black details. For the eyes, Tom and I went to a dollar store and got a pair of sunglasses. I trimmed one lens, to make it fit the pattern. If I had to do it over, I would have gotten the sunglasses first, then made the eye part of the pattern to accommodate the lenses. It's all hot-glued together.

There are two slits in the black nose piece because Tom specifically requested "breathing holes."

Then the back was just a scrap of elastic and two toggles. I reinforced the slot with another little square of foam, because this stuff isn't all that durable by itself.

The toggles let it be adjustable (it's got to be a bit more snug for Asher to have a turn). Plus, it's hard as hell to size an elastic headband on an active kid, so I didn't want to have to sew it.

Star Wars birthday party

Tom is turning four next week. When he was two, he was obsessed with trains, so we decided on a train party for him. When he was three, he liked race cars, but then a musician friend was able to come, so we had a music party. Now that he's four, we figure he can start being part of the decision-making process. Last month I asked Tom what kind of party he'd like.

He said, "A Star Wars party."

I didn't influence this in any way -- I swear to GOD.

The Star Wars stuff at the party store (and online) is mostly crap. Or expensive. I demand cheap crap! T-shirts were on sale at Michaels ($2 each), so I made another freezer paper stencil. Each guest gets a T-shirt.

The first stencil lasted for five shirts, which was just fantastic. Several of the smaller holes were closed up by all the paint, so I made a second stencil for the last two shirts. But it totally ripped to shreds while trying to iron it to the second one (I was in a hurry and not paying attention to how wet the paint still was). I didn't really want to make another stencil, so I fished the first one out of the recycling, and it agreed to one more shirt. I'm glad I didn't have to cut another one!

We're going to play games with lightsabers, so we needed, well, lightsabers. I used paper towel cardboard tubes, silver paint (which kept rubbing off, so I put a clear coat on top), and self-adhesive foam.

The blades are going to be those really long 2" balloons you can use to make animals with (which we had). This way they can pick out what color of blade they want, too. (Tom knows which character has which color -- a little spooky and totally makes me well up.) The balloons snug into these tubes perfectly. I know we'll have several pop over the course of the morning, but I've got a whole bag, so we should be okay.

Karyn is still deciding about cake. I'll post that when she's done.

X-wing fighter shoes

My son needed new tennis shoes. He really wanted some with Star Wars on them. But they haven't made those in years, and eBay has been really hit and miss (mostly miss) for me.

So I got these $6 shoes and made a freezer paper stencil, and this is what I ended up with.

I've only made a freezer paper stencil once before (for, um, an interesting T-shirt experiment), so I was pleased that careful cutting really did pay off here. The biggest problem is that it was difficult to center the stencil on the shoes; if I divided the stencil where I had originally wanted to, I would have created many unattached bits that would have been a nightmare to realign. Overall, though, it was pretty cool.

Tom's response: "Do they have lights?"

Rocky Balboa

I made this for a friend who is a big Rocky fan. It was very early in my crocheting career. I didn't have a pattern, just made it up as I went along. Which is why he has, well, child-bearing hips. Everyone sort of chuckled at that, and I never saw what was so funny, but now as I'm uploading this photo, I see that his whole body is hilarious.

I was most excited about doing his head. The hair? Meh, that was hard. But the bloody eye! I love it!

I guess Rocky boxes with oven mitts. Remember, I didn't have a pattern! Or a photo, because I was working on this in the car, and I'd left my photos at home. D'oh!

Let's all go to the movies

January, 2005. Tom was 15 months old. We made Tomzilla one afternoon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObVEska2Ga0


May, 2006. Asher was napping, so Tom (now 2 years, 7 months old) and I started making Play Doh-a Constrictor. It took about two days to finish all the shots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9psEhowEmk


We have another script all finished and ready to go ... but it's been tough to find a time for all four of us to work on it. This one will mark Asher's debut.

Firefly, Lego style

I loved Firefly. Loved it.

I love Lego. Love it.

You can probably guess where this is going.

I used parts I had on hand, which is why the two characters of color are, blasphemously, yellow. (The only darker heads I had were from NBA minifigs. The facial hair would have been inappropriate, especially on Zoe.) On the other hand, it's rather ethnocentric of me to assume that the yellow heads are any more representative of one race than any other.

Malcolm. This is a surprisingly accurate Lego version of his outfit.

Wash. This was the closest I could get to a Hawaiian shirt. But I love that I did find blonde hair.

Inara. (I didn't realize she was this blurry until I put all the stuff away. Hmph.) She's wearing Mary Jane’s dress from a Spidey set. :-) It’s not a full-on dress, because either I couldn’t find a brick to make the bottom half, or maybe I thought she was actually wearing pants.

Zoe. Love the shotgun. Another fairly faithful version of the outfit, but a yellow head seems so wrong.

Simon. This is another really good Lego rendition of the outfit. And his doctor bag, of course.

Jayne. This is probably the most accurate costume. Here he’s holding Vera, his “very favorite gun.” Heh heh heh.

Kaylee. Cool how the shirt actually looks like something she’d wear.

Book. This was the smallest book I could find, and it’s from a Harry Potter set, which means it’s probably an evil spell book. Again, no dark brown head -- but at least he’s got the 'stache.

I could never come up with anything that looked right for River. She bugged me until the movie came out, anyway. But maybe I'll try now. I’d like to make some Blue Hand guys. And of course the ship herself. That will take a while ...

Jimmy Neutron

Tom (my older son, 3 1/2 at the time) went through a Jimmy Neutron phase. I was trying to introduce him into the world of science fiction, and this seemed like an easy entry. Hard to find JN toys, so I made him this.

I worked on his hair a lot and eventually stopped trying to get it just right. You get the idea, if you've ever seen the movie or show.

Jimmy gets around in a rocketship. (At least he does in the movie.)

I wanted the rocket to have some structure and not sag, so I gave it a sort of skeleton made of plastic canvas. That made the inside look terrible, so I made a sort of upholstery cover for the inside.

Ready for blast-off.

And what did Tom think? He seemed to like it, but the first thing he said was, "Where's the robot dog?"

Bob the Builder

Remember when you could edit the time and date of your post? If I could do that, there wouldn't be this weird little flurry of posts now as I enter a couple things I've been doing over the past few months.

Anyhoo. In January learned to crochet. I saw this unbelievably cute thing (okay, fine-- it was an Ewok) on a website (http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=130572.0). The woman had made it by crocheting, and I thought, "How hard can it be?"

Um. Well.

As it turns out, it's not "hard," just "occasionally maddening." In any case, I signed up for this class in January. (It was supposed to be three classes, but I found the teacher so irritating that I didn't return. Long story -- let me just tell you that if you're trying to teach someone to crochet, and if they have a question, it's not very helpful to come over and literally TAKE the yarn and hook OUT of the student's hands, without asking or anything. I'm guessing I wasn't the only one who bailed after the first night.) But that one class was enough to learn the one stitch (the single crochet) I needed to get started. I made about four inches of a dishrag, then I made Karyn a scarf, and then I made this Bob the Builder doll, which took about three weeks of all my TV time. Asher had really gotten into Bob the Builder since an excursion to the Children's Museum, which was hosting a BtheB exhibit.

Asher really likes stuffed animals and is adorably cuddly with dolls, but it's impossible to find a nice Bob doll. I did find one online, but half of it was hard plastic, and it had a built-in nightlight. Not what I was looking for. I didn't have a pattern for this doll, but I found some helpful examples online of how to increase and decrease (which creates curves) and how to change colors (which -- and I counted -- I did incorrectly 15 of 20 times). It was all trial and error, and if I didn't like how something turned out, I just ripped it out and started again. (Which is heartbreaking -- it takes 30 seconds to undo an hour of crocheting.) So I ended up making 1 1/2 heads, 2 torsos, 3 arms, 3 legs, and 5 shoes. I also eventually figured out that a straight line on a curve IS a curve -- which is why the straps on the overalls turned out so wonky. Oh well. I started at the head and worked down, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger. I realized this morning that it would have been smart to make like a crime scene chalk outline of what I hoped it would look like, and then I could just lay the emerging doll down on the outline. That would have been brilliant. As it was, I just kept reminding myself of what Woody says to Buzz in Toy Story: "YOU are a CHILD'S PLAYTHING!" I figured it didn't have to be _good_ ; it was just good _practice_.

I used a yarn needle to embroider on the eyes, hair, mouth, and belt buckle, which are all just yarn. The tools in the belt are buttons that I found at Michaels. I know, I shouldn't put buttons on something for a child under three, but I've taken Infant CPR and have great confidence in my Heimlich technique.