A Wild Venonat Appeared!

After nearly a week of diligent work, I have finally completed my newest project! It took a while, and it was torture on the hands, but I worked diligently on it. I even made sure to take lots of pictures to show my progress. :)

It starts with this adorably fuzzy circle - one strand worsted weight, two strands of the purple fuzzy yarn. :) Luckily, because of the thickness of it all, I was able to work in a larger hook size - not that it felt much different on the hands at that point.

This is what it looked like as I was beginning my decreases - not so easy when the loops are a bit difficult to see. But, I managed! And it turned in to this fabulous ball.

Here is a very good lighting photo. My phone has been on the fritz with taking pictures. I might eventually invest in an actual camera. Anyway, as you can see, it's pretty big - bigger than the Ghastly I made ages ago, yet only the same amount of stitches I use in a Pokeball. :) I really need to find my measuring tape to see just how big this guy it - I'm not sure if I hid it on the cats or if they hid it on me. >.>

This was the next step, figuring out the face. It took a while, but I eventually got it. The teeth are sewn on with an actual needle and thread - I got annoyed at trying to do it with yarn on such a small piece!

And here we have the creation of the cute little arms - I know, they look nothing like they're supposed to, but I was trying my best! Besides, these look adorable. And claws just don't seem easy to make. :)

This was the fun part - making the antenna! I decided it would be a good idea to make them poseable, that and I don't think they would have stayed up without doing so.

Isn't it coming along nicely? Then we ran in to a problem, I really didn't like the eyes.

Even without eyes, he's still pretty darn cute!

There, now isn't that better? And guess what? I'm almost finished at this point! Just needed to make the feet and sew things on.

Surprisingly, I made the feet on my first attempted and they turned out pretty good! I had to write down the pattern so I wouldn't forget when I went to work on the other foot.

Last pose before he's finished!

Voila! Venonat lives in dark forests, in the underbrush, where very little light reaches. This is the best I could find, and it worked out perfectly!

As always, my works are for sale. However, I just haven't figured out a price for this guy yet. So, feel free to ask. :)

Also, be sure to check follow me on DeviantArt - sometimes I post teasers before I blog about them here. :) Also, somebody suggested to me that I start using Instagram..? What do you all think? I have no idea how to do it, though, so I'd have to look in to it.

And now my hands are in need of a serious break - I didn't realise a crochet hook could actually pierce skin, until I did it. >.> I also punctured my finger a couple of times with a yarn needle, even got under the nail once. So, that was an experience. Well worth it. :)

I also have some exciting news before I wrap this up. We get to find out the gender of the baby today! In five hours! I'm so excited!! We even have a friend coming from out of town to be there with us - she's really close to us. :) However, due to her coming down, she will be staying for a couple days. Which means I probably won't be doing much crafts. But, we shall see. She's the one I'm making the scarf for - you know, the scarf that totally got pushed to the farthest depths of my closet, yeah, that one.

Anyway, that is all for today!

Here I am! Exciting New Things!

Hey everyone, I know it's been a while since I've posted. But, I have a pretty good reason for that. We'll go in order.

First, that Thursday, I was out with a friend of mine all day, she was teaching me the torture of using a sewing machine. See, my boyfriend - Alex - and I have a bunch of nice, nerdy shirts we just don't wear anymore, so I figured, why not turn them into pillows?! It's a good idea. I didn't manage to get all of the shirts we had into pillows, but I can go back when she's free again!

These are the four shirts I did - out of the six I brought over.

These are the shirts Alex and I got at our first Fan Expo together. :) We never wear them, and we couldn't figure out what to do with them, since we didn't want to throw them out - sentimental value, and all. I didn't make these ones into pillows, my friend, Amy, did. I asked her to because I'd never used a sewing machine before and I really didn't want to mess them up. We decided to leave Alex's as almost the full shirt size - he's not a small man - and to scale mine down a bit so we know whose is whose. Though, the smaller one is still pretty much the size of the shirt. Haha

Here is my Fan Expo shirt stuffed, though it could use a bit more, I ran out - I had tried stuffing Alex's first, just because I wanted to surprise him when he got home, but there was not nearly enough! I didn't have too much left to begin with, but I didn't think it was so little. I used it all here - which puts a halt to any amigurumi ideas I've had running around my head - which were quite a few!

Here is just a side/bottom picture of the pillow, just to show how the zipper looks - Amy called it a hidden zipper. I really love how it turned out, and I can't wait to get more stuffing - I was told of this place, it's a bit of a ride away - we don't drive, so we have to take the bus, and the bus we take, it's like the Lion King, everywhere the light touches is good, and the light doesn't touch this street. haha!

But, I've been buying my stuffing at Wal-Mart. 32 oz - I think - for $20. Apparently, this other place is a lot more for the same price, so I really want to check it out. I'm going to need a lot, with all the shirt-pillows we'll be making!

These are two shirts that I love, but I never really wear, a friend of mine that used to work at EB got them for me. :) I figure, why throw away perfectly awesome nerd shirts - I really love Batman and Assassin's Creed - when I can accessorize with them?! I did these two, as you can probably tell, before I've even posted the close ups.

This was my first attempt. Oh, and I forgot to mention, Amy had the brilliant idea of adding zippers to the bottoms, to make it easier to wash and if they get too flat - Alex likes to sit on things and not realize. XD - I can take out the stuffing and fix it. But, anyway, the top stitching going across the zipper was my very first try with the sewing machine. And then bottom part, I have no idea what happened. But, apparently I'm a pretty quick learner, as I didn't break the needle or even mess up too badly. :)

From there, we used her machine called a Serger. It was pretty scary at first, but it was so easy and so much more fun than the sewing machine - I still think their evil. >.>

This is the second shirt I did, it turned out pretty good at the zipper. :) I'm really happy with it, even if I was panicking a bit while doing these. In the end, I was getting the hang of it. I was sad, though, I had one of those pregnancy headaches kick in, and it wouldn't go away. So, I ended up having to go home, instead of finishing the other two shirts that I brought with me. But, next time! And I will bring Tylenol - it's the only thing for pain I can take during pregnancy, not that I take it very often to begin with.

I would also like to take a moment to let you all know that my friend Amy has her own Facebook page for her sewing - she usually makes corsets, but you can commission her for most anything. :) Check her out - Ravin Apparel.

And now, this was all on Thursday. On Saturday I was working on a bookmark with a Robin Williams quote, the first attempted didn't turn out so well.

I thought it would be easier to read once the background was filled in. Nope. Not only that, I forgot an E in bee. >.> So, I scrapped that pretty quick, however, I didn't start again until Tuesday. And this is why.

This cute little fellow is a kitten that we rescued from a not so good situation. There are a few areas in my city - as I'm sure there is with all cities - that have a very bad reputation. I follow this group on Facebook, a buy and sell group that I'm in for my crafts. Anyway, there was this guy, he only had the kitten for two months, and didn't want it anymore. So, you know, I decided to check out his profile, see what sort of person he appeared to be. Almost instantly I decided that we needed to go get the kitten. At first, I just knew that he was the "thug life" kind of guy, so that probably didn't bode well for the little kitten. Then, after I said I'd take the kitten and we found out the address, we had to rush over their immediately! It was in a very bad, bug infested area of the city.

We knew, before we even left to pick him up, that he didn't come with a carrier. And when we got there, he didn't come with anything. No bag of food, food dishes, toys, nothing. He was so shaky, and timid. When we got back to our apartment, before we even went back inside, we checked him for fleas, he had those. And we noticed he was quite under weight. So, I spent the night in the bathroom with this little guy, with a flea comb, making him clean. After first giving him a bath - the water didn't bother him at all, I hadn't cut his claws yet and they were long, but I got no scratches. :)

Anyway, I managed to get rid of all the fleas and eggs before we introduced him to my other cat, Dinah. This is her and I, in our usual morning snuggle pose - as soon as I wake up, she instantly goes to my chest and assumes the little spoon position, she always has.

Anyway, Dinah and the little kitten didn't really get along at first - but I don't think most cats do, initially. And Dinah has always been Mama's girl, so she was getting jealous of the kitten. From Sunday morning, until Tuesday night, we tried so hard to find the little kitten a forever home, but nobody wanted him - the prospect of kittens that are six to eight weeks seemed so much better to people than an almost four month old kitten - it actually pissed me off, the messed up priorities of people. "Oh, let's get a kitten, we can give it a home." Yet, when there is a kitten - he's only 14 weeks, according to the vet - in dire need of rescuing, nobody wants it. It's stupid.

So, we decided to be that forever home for him. :) We just couldn't bear the idea of putting him in a shelter. And we wanted to know he'd go to a good home, he's been through so much already! We are a good home. Dinah is a good influence on him, and he's helped Dinah out a lot. Dinah has a mild case of Feline Hyperesthesia Syndrome. It's not bad, it's just had to deal with some times, especially when she starts twitching, or gets aggressively hyper. But, those episodes have really died down since we got the kitten.

We really weren't going to keep him. And then this happened.

The first happenings of attachment on Dinah's part - we knew it might be hard to separate them at this point. So, we took him to the vet yesterday to get him checked out. He's perfectly healthy, just underweight, which we've been trying to get him to eat - he won't really touch hard food, though, only soft, so we think that's all his last owners fed him, which would be why he's so skinny, there is no nutrients in soft food, really. Not enough to sustain life, at least. Anyway, the vet double checked that he didn't have ear mites or worms - though he did get a deworming just to be safe. I have been raising and rescuing animals most of my life - I lived in the country before moving to the city. I know how to nurse an animal that is only a few days old, to what to look for in terms of infections, bugs, parasites, mood problems. :) So, I was pretty dead on with this kitten - it even surprised Alex!

So, yesterday, he got his first booster shot and is scheduled for his next one in three weeks, and after that, a couple of weeks and we get him fixed - I don't want him spraying everywhere, that stuff smells so bad!

We had issues figuring out what to call him - before we decided to keep him, we didn't want to call him anything, because it creates attachment, so we had just been calling him buddy. Which turned in to Buddy. We tried calling him something else - Ash - but it just didn't seem right, Buddy did. Even though it's more common in dogs to be called that. haha.

Here is when we knew we couldn't let him go, at all. :)

He was sleeping next ti Dinah, went to get up, and she didn't let him. Put her paw on him and pinned him so she could clean him, and clean she did! It was the cutest thing ever!

Now, moving on, I have restarted the bookmark, and it's coming along pretty good now.

I outlined the B because I was trying different ways of making it, but how it is now is the best way. :)

I couldn't decide which colour to use, so I decided that the one on the left will be the inside background, and the one of the right will be the border. :)

Here is how it started to look after filling it in. I rather like it!

I ran into a minor set back here, I didn't realize that I had placed the E over one line, it was no big deal, I was able to fix it in a heartbeat.

Now, here I was left with a little bit of blank canvas, and I didn't want to just fill it in with blue, I don't think it would have looked good. So, I this, instead!

I've been told you can tell it's supposed to be a bumble bee, but, it just looks like a striped square to me. lol From here, all I did is fill in the rest and add the border - I had doing that part, so much. >.>

Voila! The lighting is kind of crap in the picture, but it's enough that you can see the difference in colour between the background and the border. :) I think I will be taking a better picture of this before I post it on my DeviantArt, though.

And I think that is all I have to post for now. Hopefully I'll be back in a few days with something new and exciting to post about! Until then, I leave you with this awesome picture my boyfriend took. :)

Just ignore the kitty litter and boxes - we're still not fully unpacked yet. Anyway, in this picture, I am 19 weeks and two days along. :) And I already feel the baby kick. It's magical. <3

We are Depression - A Robin Williams Monument

I had been planning on working on my friends boa scarf today. But, after the horrifying news last night, I don't think I want to.

The world lost a great and funny man. He brought tears of joy to our eyes for years. And now, tears of sorrow. He was a giant part of my childhood. From Aladdin to Death to Smoochy. He was an amazing man that made my childhood memorable, it is so sad that we lost him to depression.

Depression is one of the hardest battles to keep fighting, and he fought for years. Hiding his pain behind his boisterous personality, behind the smiles and laughs he always had and shared. I do not resent what he did, at all. Instead, I understand it. I, as well, suffer from severe depression. I know the pain it takes to get up every day and fake a smile, to pretend that everything is alright, even though it's not.

Depression isn't a choice, it just happens. Some people can't help it. Sometimes it's trauma induced, other times it's a chemical imbalance in the brain. I know he fought long and hard before he lost the battle, but he tried and with depression that is all you can do.

Sure, some people think it is curable with medication and/or therapy. But, sometimes it's not. Sometimes the damage is already done, even if the person wants to get help, wants to get better and feel better, sometimes it's just too late, some people never stood a chance.

I think, instead of judging him for what he did and resenting him for it, we instead accept it and learn from it. We were blessed to have him in our lives for over forty years, isn't that enough? And in all of those years, he tried to make all of us happy while he himself was suffering. And I think that it honourable.

This is a sensitive subject for me, especially right now, with being pregnant. I will openly admit that this pregnancy has made things harder for me. I have suffered from depression and anxiety for almost 15 years, off and on. Surviving. Trying to get help in all the ways I can. I know what it's like to lose hope, faith, to feel there is nothing left. That, despite all the people around you that you love, you still don't feel good enough for this life, like you don't deserve the love these people have for you. If I feel that, and I am a nobody in this world, how must he have felt? To think, he made the world laugh, but he might not have felt he deserved all the love we had for him. It's a giant burden to bear, and I understand that.

It hurts, just writing this out I'm getting emotional and teary-eyed. But, I continue on. Because in death, as in life, he has inspired me to keep going. If this man can spend so many years suffering and in pain, yet still make the world a better place, then why can't I? Why can't I learn from him? To try and get as well as I can, especially for my baby? Seeing him lose the battle with depression scares me, yes, but it makes me want to be strong, for him, for myself, for my baby and boyfriend, for all those people who suffer from this curse, this endless cycle of despair and self-hate.

There is hope. As small and invisible as it may be, it is there. It is within us all. Ourselves, our friends, our loved ones. There will always be at least one person there to help you when you fall. To just hold you. They may not tell you everything will be all right, because it's not true. Everything will never be all right. But, some things will be fine, some of the time. Life has its ups and its downs. And we just have to learn to roll with the punches. To talk about it, to let it out, to cry or scream if we need to. The worst things we can do for ourselves is to hold it all in, to let it fester and consume us.

It took me years to learn how to let it out, to talk about it. And it's still hard. It's so hard, but we have to try. I still have trouble opening up to my boyfriend, and I know he has the same problems opening up to me. But, we try where we can, even if it hurts, even if it takes days to say. Because, if it's important enough, it will always come out in the end.

Just, never give up hope. We are worth it, even when we don't feel like we are. We are worth it because there is a least one person in the world that thinks so. We deserve to be happy, as much as we don't think we do. We CAN be happy, even though it may feel like we never will be again. We can break this cycle, together. We are worth it, we are important, we are the voices of depression that need to make a stand.

I may not know any of you, I may not know what, exactly, it is you've gone through. But, I do understand the pain. It may be caused from different things, but I still understand, because we all hurt, and that is something we have to remember, even when it feels like nobody understands. There is always somebody who is feeling what you feel. Who has felt what it's like to have their heart break, to feel that happening, to feel the despair and pain consume you whole, to want to rip it out and make it all stop, who has contemplated taking that bottle of pills in the bathroom, or that kitchen knife to their wrists, that one step extra step off the ledge of a fifteen story building.

You are not alone.

Remember that. You are not alone. We are not alone. Let us learn from all of this. From Robin Williams. Think of this as his final lesson to us "Be strong, live on, and always keep fighting!"

Please, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wESAPVUdSI

It is a review on Aladdin and a small part of Robin Williams.

Watch it. Share it. Reblog it. All revenue earned from this video will be donated to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA). 

 In honour of all of this. I would like to challenge all who have read this to share it with everybody they know, depressed or not. Spread the word, the awareness. Be the helping hand, be somebody's hope, even if it's your own hope. Be the light at the end of the tunnel, or at least help somebody else find it. Be strong, help fight depression. We all have it in us to fight, but it's a choice to do so. Make it so. Be strong, for yourself, for me, for Robin, for all the people in the world suffering. I know you have it in you.

And in memory of Robin, I will be making bookmarks with some of his most memorable quotes - from movies and in his speeches. So, please, if there is anything you'd like to see as a bookmark, don't hesitate to comment. Show me the support, show the world the support! Reblog this, share this, do whatever. And remember, it's not your fault. <3

( Picture courtesy of http://8viii.deviantart.com/ )

Ruffle Scarf Collection

Hey all! After a few days of working of my scarves, I've finally finished them all! I've waited until I finished them all before blogging about it, even though I've been posting them one by one to my Deviantart. If anyone follows me on my Deviantart, you've probably already seen these, but I'm going to post them in my blog anyway!

In order they are: Cheetah, Red Lava, Sea Storm, Vineyard and White Sand. I have also taken some picture of them together on hangers.

I just absolutely love how they look, and they're so soft. I had so much fun making these!

Anyway, this is the picture that I'll be posting on my Deviantart as a "for sale" post!

Mario Themed Bookends and Ruffle Scarfs!

Hey there. So, I finished my bookend yesterday, but I had such a busy day that I didn't really feel like sitting down and blogging.

Anyway, here is the finished masterpiece!

Pretty neat, yeah? If you couldn't tell, I like Harry Potter. A lot. I spent all of my teenhood utterly obsessed with it. But, that is probably a story for another time.

Anyway, last night, I did manage to take a picture of one of my new scarves in a cool pose!

I just think Polar looks so cute in it. I took this rather late in the evening, but there was still enough light out for the picture to turn out good. I did post this to my Deviantart last night, but that's about it.

And I did manage to get this finished.

Now to just work on a nice picture for it. And to make the last two in the collection!! Slow and steady, I suppose.

Anyway, that's all I really have to post for now.

Until next time!

One Bookend and One Scarf

I shall start off by openly admitting that I've been slacking the last day or so in finishing these Mario Stairs. However, I have gotten far enough to say that I only need to add the bottom panel to one of the two. :)

Here are both stairs nearly complete. It took a while, but it's slowly getting there. 

I found it much easier to connect all the stair pieces the second time around with the method I used of attaching to both side panels at the same time. The only thing that took a while was human error on my part - I cut out a piece, stitched everything on and attached it half way before I realized that it wasn't the right size. I ended up putting down the project for half a day, deciding I just needed a break from it.

However, at that point, I was nearly finished anyway. Today all I had to do was make this:

This took me a while to do, it wasn't difficult at all, just time consuming. About an hour and a half, two hours to complete - given, I was texting with a friend while I was doing it. I decided - once again - to use a new stitch I learned from the wonderful book I purchased from Etsy. This is called the "double brick" stitch, I don't think I need to explain why. 

I decided to make the entire panel brown - I was originally thinking of making the last ten rows green, to match the pipe - because after looking back at my picture of reference (a screenshot of the end of level) I noticed that the pipe doesn't down underground as it does in some of the newer games. 

Anyway, from finishing that, it lead to me this:

This is what it looks like from the back. I rather like it.

Here is a bit of an angled side view - sorry for the dimness of the picture, it's dark out and that's the best light my bedroom had, I was too lazy to go somewhere else.

A very nice side view of the completed bookend. 

So, hopefully tomorrow I will get my butt in gear and finish the bottom panel and attach it to the other set of stairs, then I can take good pictures of it holding up books! 

Moving on.

Today has been pretty busy for me - I had a bunch of running around to do, which led to me popping into the craft store again. I didn't get much. However, I did stumble across this:

I just couldn't resist, I had to have it! So, I did. I'm excited to get to making it. However, the pattern calls for knitting, but, it's nothing fancy, just basic, simple, straightforward knitting. I think I can manage that - I hope. 

But, this is a project that I'm going to have to show some self-restraint on and wait. I still need to finish the other bookend. And I'm still slowly working on that scarf for my friend - I've let her know I've been neglectful of it. I think I'll be able to work on it easier when she comes to visit me - we live in different cities. 

Also, I want to work with the yarn that I purchased the other day, in fact, I have already started!

I worked on this on the bus ride to and from the comic book store - and at it! The slip says the colour is Lava Red. 

I don't know why, but I'm absolutely in love with these scarves and I can't wait to make the rest of them! I'm just glad that it doesn't take too, too long to make.

Once again, these awesome fellas shall be for sale - $15 each (plus shipping!) - for anybody that is interested. I will also be posting them on my DeviantArt.

http://wykked-as-syn.deviantart.com/

Feel free to peruse my account - there is so much more posted there that isn't on here, mostly because a lot of it was posted long before I even started this. I think eventually I might make a couple of posts containing stuff I've already made, either has a reference to something I want to do, a comparison, or just straight-up a "flashback" post.

Oh well, we'll see what the future holds.

I'm hoping that by the end of tomorrow I will have finished the bookend, and maybe another scarf - or two!!

Until then.