Craft Fair

Leading up to the annual craft fair at the elementary school where I work is always insane, mainly because I usually decide to participate at the last minute (shame on me). This year I did the same thing. I wasn’t sure I had enough pieces to fill up a table and I certainly didn’t have enough time to make a bunch of new pieces. But a week before, I agreed to do it and then it was a frenzy of trying to create items the students would enjoy. In that week, I managed to make four Pokeballs, two poop emojis, eight doll purses, and two smiley emojis. That was it. Luckily, I still had some dolls and hats lying around that could fill up my half of the table. My lovely, artistic, amazing and super talented daughter had the other half filled with her artwork (bad mommy that I am, I didn’t take any pictures).

My booth at the craft fair at Promenade Elementary School

I noticed that there was another booth that was selling crocheted toys and they had a really nice setup with some really nice things. I felt too inadequate to actually go over there. I had a tiny table with a mish-mash of items. My daughter went over and checked out the competition and being the good daughter that she is, told me my stuff was more unique. Well, it was definitely that. None-the-less, I did better than I had in previous years. I only had a few pieces but I focused on things I thought the kids would like and I knew my students would come check out my booth no matter how small it was. Almost all the items I specifically made for the fair sold. I wish I had had more time to make more Pokeballs and emojis. Those sold out fast with the kids wanting more. The poop emojis didn’t last long either. But most exciting of all was that I sold the Elsa doll from Frozen and that red-headed doll in the top right of the picture (above).

Great picture of Elsa taken by a PTO mom.

I always get a little thrill when I sell one of my dolls AND no one tried to talk me down on the prices. One of the hardest parts for me is pricing my items. In previous years, people loved the work but thought they were too expensive. This year, the items just sold! I was so happy.

The making of some of the items on the table were chronicled on previous blog posts. The tooth with the toothbrush (sold), the Pokeballs (sold), the purpliciousdoll in the top row, the Christmas doll with the purple hat, the face emojis, the Elsa (sold) and Anna dolls, and the superman doll.

An added bonus of doing the fair is that I get to see my students, past and present. Lots of hugs were dispensed that day. My favorite part is when they tell me they still have and value something I made that they either got from our prize box or that they purchased from a previous craft fair. How wonderful is that!

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Freebie Friday – Jersey Mitts

 

The instructions seem very detailed.

Now that the weather is turning warm, a nice set of cozy mitts might come in handy. The patterns offer full fingered gloves as well fingerless gloves. I have made mittens and full gloves before but I honestly can’t remember if I’ve ever made fingerless gloves. Might be time to give them a try.

I am not affiliated with any websites nor do I make any money from these sites. They are simply patterns I like or would like to try myself.

 

Freebie Friday – Minecraft Villager

Recently I tackled a Minecraft Villager one of my student’s requested. I thought it was going to be an easy task. My student showed me what it looked like and my initial thought was ‘easy peasy.’

Once I actually did some research on the character, I found other pictures that showed a little more detail.

He had a large nose. Did I want to embroider a long nose or make a separate piece and sew it on? He obviously has a robe. Should I keep it simple with no robe or try for the robe? Arms crossed (in pictures of the game they seemed crossed) or hanging loose?

Freebie Friday – Superman Rag Doll

Superman is one of my favorite super heroes and my hubby thought I should make one, especially since I had made a Batman. I whole heartedly agreed.  Here he his waiting for action. I think I will keep this one.

My hubby got in on the fun and created this for me.

More Crochet Rag Dolls in Progress

I have two more dolls I want to make at work before the end of the school year. I’m hoping they’re my last two student requests. I guess I should say I’m planning to stop at these two dolls because the request never stop coming. But I might get suckered, I mean convinced, to do more. 🙂 One is a Mario rag doll from Super Mario Brothers. I’ve been putting off doing this one because it seemed more complicated. Not the doll itself but getting the face and the hat just right so that it looks like him. The other request was for a Spiderman doll and I almost started on that one because it’s not that hard to make it LOOK like Spiderman even if it’s not perfect. But I put Mario off too many times and I finally went for it.

I looked at different sources to find a look I wanted to work with. I actually combined different looks from different sources. I used Minecraft versions, Lego versions, and the actual image from the game. The trick is to go as simple as possible, at least with these dolls because the idea is to get them done quickly while still clearly recognizing what they are supposed to be. If the child doesn’t think it looks like the character, then they are disappointed. So far, I’ve been pretty successful with student happiness but this one had me worried for some reason.

The progress so far.

I thought  a lip on the cap would make it more recognizable.

The emblem had me worried but the kids knew what it was right away. Phew!

Not sure this looks like Mario but the kids seem to think so.

Freebie Friday – “I’m Batman” Crochet Rag Doll

So one of my students reached prize box and couldn’t find anything he wanted in there. I asked him if he wanted a jumbo candy (another prize point on our chart) instead and said he couldn’t have candy. I asked him if there was something in the prize box he wanted before and that I could buy and he said no. I asked if there was something he wanted me to make and he said Batman! I obviously walked into that one but I did offer so I went off to do some research.

Turns out if you look up a character and attach the word Minecraft to it, you can find a Minecraft version of almost anything. I did just that and found this:

I showed it to my student and he liked it. I looked at a few other options for reference but this one worked best as a guide since it lends itself so well to my square rag dolls.

Most of my rag dolls are made from squares and rectangles. The head and body are made with two square panels and some color-work. The arms and legs are made from one square (or rectangle) and folded over. I sew up three sides. Then I assemble my doll by sewing the pieces together.

All rows in all the pieces for this doll had 10 single crochets per row.

The back of the head was done with 10 rows all done in black. The front was done with 7 rows in black and 3 rows in beige (or tan). I made the eyes before sewing and stuffing the head.

The body was done with 5 rows of grey, 2 rows of yellow, 1 row of black, 2 rows of grey, black, grey color work.

Here is my version before assembly:

Memyselfandpi Minecraft Doll

One of my students requested a Minecraft doll called Memyselfandpi. I’m not sure if that’s what it’s really called but he said it was a Youtuber character. This all went over my head but I looked the character up to assure him and myself I could make it. This is what he looks like:

He looks an awful like Steve from Minecraft to me 🙂

Very easy to do. Basically, he looks just like Steve but with a different color shirt and what appears to be a Rubic’s Cube on his hands. But I wanted to try something new with these dolls so I shook things up and made him with Tunisian crochet. I love Tunisian crochet and the ability to make fabric that looks like knitting. I thought it would look good on this character. Here’s what I came up with:

The hands didn’t turn out exactly right but I think it was close enough for this round. I keep all the little scraps of yarn we collect at work so I used those to make the different colors on his hands. Since they would be hidden, I made individual cross stitches and tied them up with a double knot inside.

My student (and his dad 🙂 loved him so I was quite pleased with the result.

One of my kinder students wanted a Mario Minecraft doll. What?! There’s a Mario Minecraft doll? Sure enough, I found an example of this character doing a google search. Where would I be without the internet to help me out! (clueless I’m sure LOL)

That character is a bit more complicated so I’m spending some time contemplating how best to approach that project (while my student is in the background asking me if I’m done already!). In the meantime, I’m finishing up a rag doll style mermaid. The head is made up of two abandoned square pieces made by a co-worker. I hate wasting anything so I took this time to work on something other than Minecraft and turned the head into a wannabe Ariel from the little mermaid. I’m working the body in the round instead of my rag doll motif of rectangles and squares. Should be interesting: square head and round body. Hey, it’s my doll and I can do whatever I want. 🙂 I will post pictures when I am done, even if it looks wonky.

Minecraft Steve Doll Pattern Progress

Someone asked me if I had written the pattern for the Minecraft Steve Doll I had made and posted in a previous post. It’s been a crazy busy year and I got side tracked. I had every intention to get this out a lot sooner but you know what they say about good intentions and all :-).

As I’ve mentioned before, I can read patterns and am passable at writing them (which is why it’s taken me so long to get this out). I had hoped to make another doll and force myself to write down what I did as I went but I just haven’t had the time to make one. So I’ve started a new one recently and my goal was to finish the doll with the changes I wanted to make to the last doll and post the pattern the last two Fridays. The first Friday, I realized there was no way I was going to finish the doll and it’s pattern by my deadline. Instead, I thought I could give a tutorial on what I did so that people could make it from that and I would still have a post for Freebie Friday and I would finish the doll by the following Friday and I would have an actual pattern.

Minecraft Everywhere!

I have been furiously working on the dolls my students have requested. Although my goal was to only crochet those projects at work since they’re for the students, I promised two students I would finish their projects over our Thanksgiving holiday (we get a week off from school for Thanksgiving. Yay!).

One of the reasons I don’t usually take personal requests from students is because as fast as I am at crochet, I can’t possibly keep up with the demand, even if I worked on their projects at home. But, working at my own pace, I can take suggestions and slowly fill the treasure box with them.

However, I found myself letting those suggestions turn into requests because I thought I would have enough time to finish projects when they reached the treasure box. Well…the best laid plans an all that. I now have about seven pending requests and they are all reaching their goals on our star chart so I find myself telling them they have to wait for their particular item. I thought I had a lot of time on one of the requests since he was far from his prize on our chart so I kept putting that one off but my student reached his goal on our star chart and he’d been asking me about it repeatedly. I felt bad that he was one of the firsts to ask me for something and I still hadn’t even started it. So I finished it over the break.

Then, I promptly started the second one I needed to work on. He didn’t get finished until the end of our first week back to school. It was a busy week at work so I didn’t get much time to crochet. My student asked me every single day if I was finished with his Villager (Minecraft character) and I was finally able to tell him yes.

Here are some of the finished projects.

Top left: Villager

Top right: Dan TDM

Bottom left and right: Popular MMO’s. I believe his name is Pete.

The bottom two look the same but I tried different faces and color work versus cross stitch. The one on the right looks a little worn because I photographed it after I gave it to the student so it’s a little loved around the edges. 🙂

I don’t know these characters so I do my research before I can start one. I go to the actual game on our classroom iPad as well as on the web to get the essence of what they look like. I rip back a lot when I’m making a new character as it never comes out exactly right the first time. I feel I’ve learned a lot as I make each subsequent one. The Villager and the Dan look better than the grey ones. Another student wants one of the grey ones so I think it will come out really well now.

On to the rest of the list! Hello Kitty here I come!

Square Rag Dolls

I’ve been busy making more crochet rag dolls for the kids at work. They have really gotten into the spirit of the thing and requested all kinds of different dolls. Of course, trying to tell them that the point of making these dolls is to keep it simple hasn’t quite sunk in. After all, my hope was to actually be able to finish them in a timely fashion (as opposed to some time next school year 🙂 ). I’ve been reigning in their requests to something I can actually accomplish.

The second request was a Chris TDM YouTuber thing I had never heard about. I did gather it had something to do with Minecraft. I asked the student to draw it while keeping in mind the parameters of the rag dolls: Square, rectangle, etc. He drew this!

Awesome drawing!

I could do that!

And I did 🙂