Is it a bird?! Is it a plane?! Why, no! It’s….
SUPER GOTH KITTY OF DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!11!!!!1!
I know Krampus is part goat, but I think the official animal of Krampus time should be a cat. Just saying.
And no, still haven’t started on the second bird yet. I got waylaid by holiday planninand shopping this evening. Ugh!
We are a little further along!
Actually, I had hoped to have another 3-4 stripes done on this cowl, but I discovered I’d made a mistake… About 3-4 rows after I had made it. So I ended up tearing out an hour’s worth of work and starting over again for the day.
But that’s okay! Mistakes happen, things have to be torn out, and we all have to start all over again from time to time. At least that’s the lesson I try to teach Pixie and Princess whenever they work on a project. And we’ve been starting a lot of new projects lately, especially Pixie. She got a set of knitting looms two weeks ago and has been learning to use those. Then this week she got a new sewing machine! Not a kid’s sewing machine that uses glue or string to put fabric together, but an actual Singer sewing machine that uses actual thread, and has a bobbin and real needle. We set it up today and I watched while Pixie sewed a very basic pillow first and then started work on something a little more complicated. That’s probably about the time I made my mistake on the Krampus Cowl, but that’s okay. I got to watch my youngest figure out how to thread her sewing machine and set up the bobbin, figure out how to pin fabric and run it through the machine. There’s nothing like watching a kid catch fire over a new hobby.
But if she breaks into my yarn or fabric stashes, I will squish her like a bug. Just between you and me.
Okay, I lied. I did not start another Krampus Raven today. Instead, I started something just for me!
Oooooh! Stripes
I realize this doesn’t look like much, but it’s the start of a Krampus Cowl (or should that be Krampus Kowl?). Why am I making myself a cowl, you ask? Because every Christmas Eve, the Hubster and kids celebrate what we call “Drag Your Buddhist to Church” night. Yes, Christmas Eve is one of the three times of the year where I am obligated to show up at church. The other two are Easter Sunday and Scout Sunday. Scout Sunday is actually pretty funny, because I’m the one who has to organize the event for all the Catholic Girl Scouts at the girls’ school, and I’m the one who ends up standing with the priest as he blesses all the scouts. Yeah, funny.
Anyway, every Christmas Eve, I run into the same problem. I have nothing appropriate to wear. I don’t go out to a lot of fancy events, see, so I don’t have a big stock of nice clothes. Oh, I have tons of t-shirts and jeans! In fact, I think I may have a t-shirt for just about every occasion you can imagine! Zombie apocalypse? Check. Zombie invasion? Check. Zombie slumber party? Check and double-check!
Okay, so I mostly have t-shirts about zombies. And kawaii food. Which is kind of like zombies if you really, really think about it after having a few glasses of wine. Work with me here, people.
But back to the cowl. This year I have decided that I will have an outfit to wear for Christmas Eve. And because it’s always so bloody cold on Christmas Eve, that outfit is going to be something that will keep me warm. So I’m making this cowl. It will be alternating stripes of purple and black (the OFFICIAL colors of Krampus as declared by me) and run from the top of my neck to halfway down my arms. The pattern is from the December 2012 issue of Crochet World and it is made of nothing more than single crochet, half-double crochet, and double crochet stitches. I have tweaked the pattern a bit by making it in alternating stripes rather than one solid color. I like stripes. I especially like purple and black stripes.
To make this cowl truly Krampus-ish (Krampus-like? Krampus-ian?), I plan to crochet a small skull applique to stitch on the front. I may add crossed holly leaves or crossed bones. I haven’t decided yet.
But this is what I got done today. I will be doing more on it tomorrow, and hopefully, I will also get the other Krampus Raven going. Good night for now!
What a pretty bird!
So this is what the black hexagon eventually became! This is the Krampus Raven, my idea of a Christmas bird. I used the bower bird pattern by Attic 24, but chose appropriately gloomy colors and used black and red monster eyes. He’s a little too big for my small Krampus tree, so I plan to put him on our usual Christmas tree and make a second, smaller version for my smaller tree.
But for today, I’ve posed him with a zombie cupcake I made last year, so he can peck at the oozing frosting brains. Mmmmmmmm… I LOVE braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains!
I’ll get started on the smaller bird to tomorrow, and hopefully have it done by the end of the weekend 🙂
I did a little more work on the Krampus challenge piece I started yesterday.
Frying pan? Is that you?
I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to, I’m afriad. Today just ended up being one of those days where I had a lot of OTHER things to do, like some volunteer work for the school and training for the upcoming Girl Scout cookie season. I’m actually excited about cookie season this year. We have a fantastic cookie team at the service unit level (that’s the level above troop level), and the program for this winter looks like it will run more smoothly than previous years. There’s been some nice changes the website for the online database, and a few other things have come up that I’m really looking forward to trying this year 🙂
But back to the Krampus challenge! I have nowhere I have to be tomorrow, so I intend to spend the morning finishing off this piece so I can hang it on my Krampus tree! And then I’m going to take pictures of the ornaments I made last year as well as the one I’m working on now, so you can get an idea of what I want to accomplish this month.
For now though, it’s late and I’m headed to bed. See you tomorrow!
Aaaaaaaah… After a month of drawing, I have picked up my crochet hook again and settled in with a nice skein of yarn. I love drawing and crocheting both, but trying to do both activities everyday can be difficult. I’m hoping to change that this month by doing some drawing as well as crafting each day, but we’ll see how it goes.
Anyway, I hit the local craft store today and bought 4 skeins of Vanna’s Choice for $10. Woohoo! I feel like a big spender today! And what am I going to do with those 4 skeins of lovely yarn? This, for starters…
Huzzah! I have made a hexagon… OF DOOOOOOOOOOM!!
Tomorrow, I hope to get much further on this so I can show you what it’s supposed to be. And if I’m not too busy tomorrow, I’ll take pictures of my Krampus tree to show you what I did last year and what I hope to do this year! Bye for now!
Ta-daa! Lovecraft Wine! Soothing but creepy 🙂
One interesting note about the Concepts drawing app – the eraser tool actually acts more like a masking tool. It doesn’t make a difference until you export the drawing in SVG format, then open it in another program. The strokes of the eraser tool then show up as white marks on the image. It takes a bit of work to remove these marks because each mark in the image is a separate object in the SVG file, and that totals up to hundreds, even thousands, of objects.
But it’s not an impossible problem to fix. Concepts uses layers, and those layers remain in the exported SVG. By going through the separate layers, I can remove the white marks of the eraser more easily and then fix the vector objects that the white marks were covering in the first place. I’d say it’s about another week of work, but I think it’ll be work it!
This is one creepy bottle of wine.
What charming little charms!
But now I’m dead so I’m going to bed. More drawing tomorrow, I promise!
So this is what I did last month…
October Crochet, in total.
You’ll notice, of course, that there are two tiny figures in there that weren’t done this month…
Meet Tom and Enid!
One other thing I’m supposed to mention – the missing day from October Crochet. What happened that one day that I couldn’t do even a few stitches? Well, this happened…
This is NOT crochet!
These are props from the Murder Mystery Party we held for our Girl Sout troop. I was very, very, veeeeeeeeeerrrrryyyyyy busy that day, finishing up props, cleaning the house, printing out scripts, and then pretending to be the director of the Rita Wright Museum for Girl Scouts. We had a lot of fun. And then I passed out.
But that’s what kept me so busy I couldn’t get any crochet done that day. So now you know. And honestly, I did crochet 30 out of 31 days last month, so I think I did pretty good!
This month just really spun out of control…
It’s just after midnight right now. There are 8 girls downstairs in my living room, screaming and giggling and challenging each other to “Truth or Dare.” Before I came upstairs, I told them the truth – I would get really scary if they keep me up all night. And then I dared them to do it. The girls have promised they will quiet down in an hour. If not, I did set up a graveyard in front of the house.
I’m going to come up with a new challenge for November. I’ll announce it tomorrow. And I’ll explain what happened to the missing day of October Crochet. But for now, I’m going to curl up with a collection of Lovecraft stories and read myself to sleep. Or maybe strangulate a bunch of girls. I haven’t decided which yet.
Good night.
