Crochet Mario Blanket Part 3- Yoshi

If you have ever attempted to crochet a cartoon with any stich other than Tunisian Simple Stitch (TSS), then you know just how annoying it can be to change colors!!

After much debate, I decided to continue my Mario Blanket in TSS.  I haven't decided if I'm going to use all of the characters I have already made even though they're in different stitches or if I'm going to scrap the 2 mushrooms and piranha plant and redo them in TSS.... we'll see!!  Maybe I can just use the mushrooms and piranha for some pillows instead?  I dunno... i gotta sleep on it..

Anywho, I finished Yoshi!!  I was super motivated so it only took me like 3 nights to do it, 2.5 hours at a time so around 7.5 hours GEEZ!!  I was also watching TV aaaannnnd I must have checked the stitch chart like a million times before each row just to make sure I didn't fudge anything up.

What do you think?! I was so excited to finish! But now that I've stared at it for a while, there are definitely some things I would change if I had to do it again.  For all of the Mario projects, I took a really small pixelated picture and made a small stitch chart on graph paper (each box = 1 stitch)  Then to make it bigger, I just made 1 box = 4 boxes (2x2) and that kept it proportional and made the picture bigger.  BUT the downfall is that it looks terribly pixelated when you blow it up like that!! I should have definitely "smoothed" the edges out a bit instead of doing the black outline so abruptly.  It does look pretty good from far away though and I think  it definitely preserves the true age of the mario nintendo game!  Remember back in the day when the characters were actually this pixelated??

Here's a close-up:

And an even closer close-up: (Please ignore my shoe holding it flat in the top left corner :-)

I used Vanna's Choice yarn for all the colors except the outside gray.  For the gray, I used Caron Simply Soft just because I had like 5 skeins to burn through!  Even though the Vanna's Choice and the Caron are both classified as Worsted weight, they're not exactly the same weight.  Vanna's Choice is definitely a bit fluffier and so the stitches that make up Yoshi came out a little bigger than the gray ones.  The only thing this really affects is that it makes my work curl up a bit more than TSS normally does but that's nothing a good blocking won't fix!! Before I put everything together, I will be sure to block the crap out of it!

Sometime in the next week, I'm going to put up a new little tab on my home page with all the posts for this blanket and stitch charts so that you can make it too if you want!  I would love L.O.V.E to see fellow yoshis and mushrooms that are roaming cyberspace out there!!

Next on my list is Bob-Omb and the Goombas!!

Check out Mario Blanket Part 1- Mushrooms

Check out Mario Blanket Part 2- Piranha Plant

Edit:
I FINALLY finished the stitch chart for Yoshi!  Enjoy and please post whatever you make on here, I would love to see :-)
In my project above, I made each sqaure in the stitch in the chart below actually equal to 4 stitches (2 stitches tall by 2 stitches wide).  This just made the yoshi bigger in size but still proportional.  Beware though that by doing this, I simply made each "pixel" larger which is why my yoshi looks so pixelated.  You should "smooth out" some of the edges once you make your chart larger which is what i should have done... oh well.  This is why this will most likely end up as a pillow and not as part of my final blanket.  Happy stitching!

Yoshi Pixel Picture
Colors:
- red
-light green
- dark green
- white (the x is supposed to be a white stitch)
- black
- background color (empty square, I used grey for my yoshi)

Celtic Knot Beanie for the bf

Hello!! Thanks for stopping by!!

I finally finished the super secret project I was working on for the bf... whaddaya think?
I've always wanted to crochet him something but could never find anything that was "manly" enough... I always saw patterns that he said were cool but wouldn't actually wear.... *sigh*

I was looking through Debbie Stoller's "Son of Stitch N' Bitch" and saw this awesome design for a hat:

But it was a knitting pattern!! BAAAH!  It's times like these that make me so jealous of knitters! There's so many more knitting patterns and books out there than crochet.... oh well!!

This only made it a bit more of a challenge.... NO, I didn't learn how to knit to do this pattern but instead I converted it into a Tunisian Crochet project :-)
I made it from a bunch of wedges starting from the top center of the hat to the rim.  Then I stitched up the sides and voila!!

For the yarn, I used all Vanna's Choice in colors: White (don't remember the label name for white) and "Charcoal Print"

At the rim of the hat, I went around and did 1 round of front post single crochet and then another round of normal single crochet, this pulled it all together and gave it a nice rim.

I love love L.O.V.E this hat!! As soon as I finished it, the bf said "Awesome, this is perfect"  What better words could a mad crocheter hear after finishing a masterpiece!!  I love that he loves it so much but I'm thinking I might just have to make another one in pink for me!!! How cute would that beee?!??!

tempting, very tempting.... but I have so many other projects flowing through my head that I think I will do those before repeating a pattern :-)

I have oodles of other projects to share I just haven't gotten a chance to post them... Also I realized that I really hate the quality of my pictures on this blog! GAH!! I always take them with my phone and well they just don't come out so good :-/

This black friday I will make it my mission to find a sweet camera so i can take some better pics... until then, you're stuck with pics like these

Making Labels for Homemade Crafts

I love making new projects, especially for gifts...  I mean what am I going to do with 10 pillows? But I also want to make sure that I add a little personal touch so that my homemade goodie can always be linked back to me wherever in the world it may be!

I got my sewing machine, Brother SQ9000 last Christmas and it is AWESOME!  It has this monogramming feature that I hadn't tried out until this week.  It has all the letters in the english alphabet as well as some foreign accented characters!! It was super easy to program the letters into the sewing machine and once that was done all I had to do was put the pedal to the carpet and VOILA!! Awesome little personalized nametag on my finished pillow.

Yes, yes, I know my name's actually a bit crooked on there but hey! it was my first time using it and I guess my head was tilted a bit when I started the machine..... yea that sounds good we'll go with that...
Honestly, I feel like it adds a little more flair being crooked and all so I can't say I'm disappointed.

The thread I used was part of this set that I bought on EBay from this little store in INDIA!!!  The colors in the set are AMAZING and shiny as you can see in this picture. The thread I used for the lettering is a mixture of pinks with white in it all swirled, all gorgeous looking.  To stitch the tag on, I used the blue thread which was a variety of blues and white in it too.  I used a purple non-stretchy fabric for the tag so that the letter wouldn't crinkle or risk the thread of the lettering to get torn from being stretched.  I also made sure to make the tag a bit bigger than I wanted so that I could fold over the edges of the tag and make it a nice finished edge and avoiding the future fraying that may happen from use.

Tunisian Crochet Pillow- FINALLY done!

Remember that Tunisian Crochet pillow I was working on?

Weeeellllll, I FINALLY Finished it and I'm super excited :-)

First, I crocheted a border on it...

Then, I stuffed and sewed on the fleece backing...

Finally, I added a sweet button to tie it all together...

Done!!  It wasn't even that hard of a project but for some reason, I just kept delaying and delaying to finish up the small details that were left, but it's alll DONE!

Tunisian Crochet Pillow

As I was roaming through Goodwill a couple months ago, I ran into this book for $1.99 with various crochet projects.  If you crochet, you know that $1.99 is a KILLER deal for crochet books, they're expensive!  The book is called "How to Crochet" by Pauline Turner.

Within the book, I saw this Tunisian Crochet flower pillow pattern, super cute!  I had never done Tunisian Crochet so I decided to try something new and give it a shot.  Here's how it came out!

Not too shabby if I say so myself :-)  This project definitely took considerably longer to do than any of my other crochet projects!  I guess it was because Tunisian was new to me and also because (no offense Pauline) her instructions were so confusing!!  I must have done the first petal over about 8 times before FINALLY understanding what she was trying to say... geez... oh well now it's done and I'm a pro at Tunisian :-)

In the book, it says to create two of these, one for the front and another for the back but since this one took me so long, I think I'm just going to stuff it and sew a fabric backing onto it and call it a day :-)

Anyone else attempt this project?