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.