Half double steps

This right here is an awesome table my sister made in her props practicum class.

she went to school for theater design, and now that she's living the ex-pat life in Italy, her table has been adopted by the family, (as well as her espresso machine! ironically enough)

Well, as awesomely crafted as it is, I thought it looked a little lonely. So I decided I should pull out the thread and make a doily. This doily in fact:

which I got from free-crochet.com. I really like the pineapple look for a doily, and I decided to do it in red to match the curtains in my living room.

This is how far I've gotten:

I got to about round 10, when I realized, I messed up

I somehow ended up with too few bunches to make the pyramid things connecting the pineapples. I'm not quite sure how I did it, but the thing is, do I now pull all of what I had done past the boo-boo out and start from there or should I just improvise? Or start on a whole new one altogether!

I'm torn, and so is my doily if I don't figure out which method is better.

In other news, I've finished some of the accessories for the characters from the previous post. Will post pictures!

Character Development

Our heroes' journey continues:

Here are the characters a bit more put together. I still need to sew on the paladin's pauldrons and fashion weapons. I picked up some Sculpey and some acrylic paint. I have to tell you, the weapons that these guys thought up are pretty intense, so I've got my work cut out for me!

I'll go into some more detail with these guys. First off is the half demon mage.

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He's got a mithril shirt and cloth vest. I made the ring belt out of a loop bracelet closure and suede lace.

Since he's half demon, I gave him some horn stubs, mostly hidden in his hair haha:

Here is the gnome rogue. I actually didn't get a look at his character sheet so I didn't even know he was a rogue until we started playing. I went ahead and gave him plate armor. The pot is along story. Suffice it to say, gnomes are pretty cunning creatures.

Here is our half elf rogue. She's got a mithril shirt (well more like a bustier) and leather bodice. I gave her some leather pauldrons as well.

And of course you can't be a half elf without pointy ears.

And here's our human cleric. He's got a mithril shirt and leather armor. I gave him a nifty cape too.

The leather pauldrons I made out of crocheting beading cord and a size 4 steel crochet hook.

I really like the way it came out. I love the look of it so much I'm definitely using it again for another project. At least something small like coasters haha.

I have to say, making all of the little accessories by hand I can't help but feel something of a kinship to the artisans of old. Of course, I'm nowhere near a master worker of any craft, but someday I would hope to be so amazing at a craft I could be considered an artisan.

Even if you're not into fantasy or history for that matter, I would strongly suggest any crafter visit a Renaissance faire. They are overflowing with hand-crafted goodies that you can't help but admire. You can find just about everything there. I've picked up handmade leather goods, perfume, candles, books, honey. The list goes on.

And the best Renaissance faires will have demonstrations of crafts like glass blowing, black-smithing, and hand weaving. They're great places for inspiration and a little bit of education too!

Looking for Group

I managed to finish (well mostly) some of the unfinished's!

I say mostly because there are still some embelleshments I want to add on to these guys, as well as one more member of the group that still needs some putting together.

What you see are three of my friend's characters from our D&D campaign. A half-elf rogue, a gnome rogue, and a human paladin. The red guy with the pins in him is a half demon warlock. I'll be sure to post more detailed pictures once they are complete. I'm sad to say one of these characters has already died in our campain, so i'd better finish them before another looses a fight to a dragon (or rolls a 1 on perform breakdance).

I'm sure it's no surprise that i'm a huge dork who loves fantasy stuff. I've actually only been playing d&d for less than a year, but i've been a fantasy fan since I was a baby.

There are so many fantasy characters that I want to make I dont really know where to begin, haha. So when my boyfriend wanted to start his own D&D campaign, I took the opportunity to learn the game myself (which I still find a bit daunting and complicated sometimes). My friends came up with such awesome characters, I had to bring them to life in cute doll form.

The idea for the look of the dolls came from Christen Haden's Creepy Cute Crochet (ISBN-10 1594742324). Her book is essential reading for those amigurumi-ers who love fantasy. She even has "expansion pack" patterns on her blog and etsy shop (http://needlenoodles.com, http://www.etsy.com/shop/needlenoodles)

Oh how I hope someone will be blogging about patterns I've published one day haha!

Unfinished Business

Behold, my stash of unfinished 'gurumis:


There's probably more where that came from. If there's a type of ADD for crocheting, I definitely have it. I'm very eager to try new things, so I'm quick to jump on a new project before the one I was working is complete.

Looking back, I can see things in old projects that I would do differently. So I wonder if it would be better to ditch some of these and just start over, or go back to where I was and keep going?

After a little light redecorating today, I've already come up with a couple pieces I'd like to make to brighten things up. Maybe I should start a netflix-ish queue for projects!

Then again, I've got about 400 movies on my netflix queue, most of which I probably will never get to haha!

The solution: an eight movie at a time subscription?