New Projects: Scarf and Mini Bruce Lee!

Mreh. My life suddenly got busy again, so I haven't been crocheting much. (lol. Actually, I've been distracted by videogames.) *cough* Anyway, I decided to take a break from crochet for a while. I'm sorry to leave mini Bruce Lee in this unfinished state:

If you don't know who Bruce Lee is, I will make an appalled face. Well, in case you don't or in case you forgot, here's a pic I got off google:

Isn't he awesome?

Yeah, so I stopped accepting commissions for amigurumi temporarily so I can make stuff I want. Like the mini Bruce Lee! Cause I'm into kung fu movies and Bruce Lee and Ip Man and Donnie Yen and just Chinese martial arts in general. (I secretly enjoy fighting/sparring <-- lol. Not much of a secret anymore now)

I want to make a mini Ip Man next! If I were a guy, I'd totally cosplay Ip Man.

Ok, before I start going on and on about martial arts, lettuce move on to the other topic. After doing a lot of amigurumi commissions, I really need a break. Soooo... I switched to knitting temporarily! I suddenly felt like making a scarf, so I started making one. As of this moment it still looks like this:

I'm currently using yarn from my special yarn stash. It's special cause I got it from my trip to America (My master knitter Aunt gave them to me from her stock) and it's soft and comfy. I don't have a lot of it so I save it for super duper special projects to give to people whose existence I care about.

I really love using this brand of yarn cause of its comfy feel. It's good quality yarn. I recommend it, especially for making gifts for the people you love. Here's a close up of the tag thing:

Not sure if the brand name is an intended pun.

If you know what I mean. lol

I'm not exactly a knitter. My knitting skills are at the basic level (i.e., I only know the 2 basic stitches. Can't do anything else), but at least I can somehow make a decent scarf. At one point, I wanted to make myself a collection of striped scarves, so these are the part of the collection (see image below). Don't be fooled by the picture. They're actually not as big and insulating as normal winter scarves. But meh. I'm in a tropical country. We don't need winter things.

I hope the scarf will turn out right. xD I shall post updates later!

~Papina

Angry Birds and Domo Hat

When I first started selling stuff I crocheted, I began with hats. Specifically, panda hats. Unfortunately, I didn't get to take much pictures of my earliest works, and I regret that (Never thought I'd actually use them for a blog). Well, anyway, these are the hats I made that I did manage to take pictures of:

Angry Birds! Back when many people were still crazy about it.

And here's Domo... with a half-sewn dress behind him. xD

One of my early hats. It's a hat with a sad face. Not based off anything.

I'll update this post if I come across more pictures of hats I made.

~Papina

Gotta Catch 'em All! Pokemon Amigurumi!

Pokeballs... Perfect for throwing at your frien-- I mean--- catching pokemon.

I want to be the very best, like no one ever was.

If you're a fan of the TV show or if you've played the game on a gameboy years ago when you were a kid, then you can probably relate to most of the amigurumi I'll be featuring on this blog post.

I've always wanted to have a pokeball fight with friends. If Naruto cosplayers can have some random paper shuriken fight, there should be Pokemon cosplayers throwing pokeballs at each other too. Sadly, that pokeball fight hasn't happened yet, but I did make a bunch of pokeballs for that purpose. xD

Squirtle, Pikachu, Bulbasaur, and Charmander in a cute bundle~

Why stop at pokeballs? Let there be pokemon amigurumi too! I made the Kanto starter pokemon plus Pikachu. This was actually a commission but the one who asked me to make them didn't pick them up. *shrug* So now I get to keep them and have a pretend pokemon battle with myself.

Pikach--- wait, is that a Squirtle head?

Diglett dig!

Oh, and I made a diglett too, which was the only amigurumi left unsold during my first time selling at a con. It finally got sold after the next con. Maybe I should make a Dugtrio next. xD

I still have an unfinished mudkip hat. I'll probably post it up when I finish it... but that will take a while cause I'm lazy.

Team Rocket! Blast off at the speed of light!

~Papina

Wedding Pillow Challenge

A friend of mine asked me to make the pillow where the rings are supposed to be placed for her wedding. I only had a day to make it, so I began gathering all the white lace, ribbons, flowers, and other decorative stuff for the pillow.

At first I had this stash:

... but then I felt like I needed more stuff, so I dropped by the department store and bought more decor like ribbons and a better cloth (Japanese Cotton).

After two hours of being an extreme perfectionist with a dose of general anxiety disorder symptoms, I finally settled with this arrangement:

I decided not to use the white rose cause it would draw the attention away from the rings. I used the mini crocheted doily I made as a cushion for the rings. It would have been bigger, but I suck at improvising patterns and I'm too lazy to actually follow one. xD

Yeeahh! Good enough.

~Papina

It's Catbug!

Have you watched Bravest Warriors on Cartoon Hangover yet? If you haven't, then spend a minute and fifty-four seconds to entertain yourself with this minisode:

REBECCA!!!

Good. Now you met Catbug and can now relate to one of my latest amigurumi projects.

SUGAR PEAS!

Catbug is so adorable and fat that my bro friend made me make this little guy that ate up a lot of my stock of stuffing. I wasn't used to making big things, so it didn't end up totally symmetrical. Meh. Most of it is close enough anyway. xD

WHY ARE WE RUNNING?

Time to watch some Cartoon Hangover! Oh, and btw, Bravest Warriors is made by the same guy who made Adventure Time if you're curious about the resemblance.

~Papina

Kyo-kun and Post Guide

This is Kyo. If you've watched Fruits Basket, you'll get why he's named Kyo. xD

So there was this dude who was running a booth near mine during a con. He kept coming back to look at little Kyo-kun and squish him. Every time he went to my booth, he always tried to haggle the price down, but I wouldn't budge. Soon, someone else saw Kyo and bought him. When he came back, he was devastated. xD Tsk. Tsk. Poor guy.

Post Guide

Okaay. So I decided on putting little tags on the post titles to inform you about the type of post.

No tag - Normal post about an item I made or perhaps an event that took place where I sold stuff

[Tips] - Tips on crochet or other stuff

[Tutorials] - Tutoriaaals!

[Papina] - Random unrelated posts or posts about me

More tags may show up, but we'll go with these for now.

~Papina

The Hurt Panda

Originally supposed to be a teddy bear, but I ran out of gray yarn so I used black. Then, I got lazy and just gave it an X for a mouth. There were also supposed to be more bandages, but I decided to keep it simple. And that's the end result right there.

When I crochet something, I tend to switch the design on whim or go impromptu. In this case, I did it many times. I went for an injured look cause I was probably thinking along the lines of guro loli (def: A style of lolita that's grotesque, basically blood and bandages).

When I was selling this piece at a convention, ArchCon 2013 to be specific, it was popular with high school girls. One of them went, "I want this panda, cause it's hurt. Like me." I find it interesting how the implication of it being a hurt panda draws in people. Does it draw people because they feel like caring for it? Or because they see themselves as the panda? Or pandas are really just that popular? It's probably different for each person.

So where's panda-kun now? Well, he's with his current owner, so he shouldn't be lonely. Maybe.

~Papina

Pleased to Meet You

My name is Papina and I have tons of hobbies. One of them is crochet.

Over the years, I've made tons of crocheted stuffed toys and other random items for people, including strangers. Each item has a story to tell. Stories their present owners aren't aware of, which brings us to one of the purposes of this blog: To tell those stories.

That and I figured I needed a place to keep track of what I've made so far. xD lolol

Ehem. Anyway, lettuce get acquainted with the term amigurumi (編みぐるみ) cause it's a huge pain to keep explaining to people what it means.

Ok, so it basically means crocheted or knitted stuffed toy and when you hear this, you'd think of cute crocheted animals or just animals in general cause that's what's usually featured in Japanese amigurumi how-to books. Of course, the term extends and includes other stuff now like food (with faces!), random inanimate objects (with faces!) and people (who are supposed to have faces!). If you want more details, just look it up on google cause I'm not about to give a Wikipedia-esque discussion on it.

Oh yes. A picture. Here:

Yes. I made those. And I'll be talking about them soon.

For now, I need sleep.

~Papina