Feburary 2025!
Hooray! I finally have something worthwhile to be posting on here! Back at the end of 2024, I told myself that I really wanted to get my page all ironed out again so that I could start doing a weekly journal, but the end of the year is always so busy and by the time the new year rolled around, I had deemed it too late to start doing anything here. :/ But today that changes!
I've been up to a lot since we last spoke, and in particular, I've rekindled my love for crocheting in full force! When I was in high school I used to bring a project with me every single day, but being self taught and young and foolish, I never bothered to learn how to protect my wrists and suffered the consequences. I was able to crochet until I was nearly all the way through community college, when the pain caught up and I had to stop. Last year, though, I decided I'd try learning again and prioritizing wrist health, and--at least so far--I seem to be doing alright!
I've got a whole bunch of projects from last year to post, a lot of stuff I'm really proud of, but what good is a February themed post if I'm not posting about stuff from February?
The first project I completed this month was the infamous Cat Hat! It's a crochet classic, and yet over the years I had never made one! I'm not really a beanie kind of person--a slouchy beanie, sure, but I'm really picky about my hats and a classic beanie just isn't one of them. However! It got REALLY cold earlier this month, like 27° on my way to work cold (this doesn't happen often), and I really wanted a nice, warm hat to help me through it. Plus! I've had the blue yarn used here for years now, but it was a pretty small ball so it never felt like enough to really make something with it. I only used about half the ball on this, so now I've really gotta wrack my brain to figure out what to do with the rest.
It's such a nice hat thought! SUPER warm, has an adjustable brim, and only sorta feels like its slipping off my head sometimes! It worked up really fast, too, since I held the mysterious blue yarn and a black Caron One Pound together. I think it used a 8mm hook? I don't remember, and it doesn't really matter since this was all freehand anyway!
One of my coworkers saw me working on it and loved the end results so much that I offered to make her one, too. She brought me some yarn from her stash (the Red Heart Super Saver in Aran Fleck) and I twin held it like mine and busted her hat out in like two days (I have a tendency to crochet during down time at work, usually for a few hours of the day, with periodic breaks to like, do my job and stuff. These hats are definitely a one day project if you stick with it). I don't have pictures of hers, but she loves it! And she has plenty of yarn left to knit a scarf to go with it, which she told me she was going to do!
This is one of the National Parks crochet patterns that I had made as a potential gift, but has instead become another one of the millions of plushies littering my home. Would I recommend this pattern? No, I would not, as it gave me far more trouble than I think it was worth, but is it a fun idea and way to engage with the community nonetheless? Absolutely!
I find it hard to talk a lot of crap on this pattern because I'm sure if I were to write a pattern for some of the stuff I make it would turn out no better, but there is a clear difference between this pattern and any pattern you'll find from a seasoned pattern writer. I think its the difference between making something multiple times and having testers and working out all of the kinks before it goes live as opposed to finishing a cute piece and posting how you got there, but its able to be followed and Clubfish here is my proof!
I don't know where they come from, but my mom likes to send me little crochet project inspo things she finds from Facebook all the time. More often than not, they're just cute things she found that she felt like sharing, but she found this cute little bear shaped glasses holder a little while ago and sent it with the attached message 'I NEED one of these that looks like Judy!' and like, how am I to say no? She never asks me for anything!
If you go looking for Judy from Animal Crossing, you'll know that the yarn I chose was a little more saturated than her pastel color palette, but this was such a small project I didn't wanna buy two giant skeins of yarn that I was never gonna get through. I found this cake at Joann's that had these colors that looked good, and just cut them out from the cake. I think the palette gives more sour gummy worm than Judy, but my mom likes it and that's all that matters! We had talked about putting felt eyes in it that look like hers, but I was too excited to wait to get felt and just took it to her like this. I might post another pic once she finishes the eyes, but they're looking cute so far! Long live Judy Animal Crossing!
The last project I've completed (so far, its only the 24th) is this cute little headphone cushion! I'm a big gamer, and play something on my laptop just about every night. I've got these headphones that I stole from my gf that I've been using for...gosh like two years now? And within the last few weeks my head started hurting really bad when I put them on each night. Realized this weekend that the foam cushion on the underside of the band had worn out right where my head was hurting, so I spent an evening crocheting this little sleeve with some of the leftover yarn from that cake I bought for Judy, and made this cute little sprout to go on top! It's not my prettiest work, but oh man the difference in comfort was immediate and dramatic! I might make covers for the ear parts too, just to make it feel like a more finished product, but its not necessary right now so I'm not gonna bother.
Other minor crochet project progress of note: I started making a rug for our living room last fall and finally put the last few rows in it and sewed in ends last night! It had been sitting with its incomplete edge hidden under a bucket for the last few months since I couldn't decide how big I wanted it. I've also made some good progress on My Big Project of 2025, which, I technically could be posting about now because its owner doesn't know about my site yet, but just in case I decide to share before its finished and gifted, I'll keep it a secret for now! That was what ate up most of my creative juices this January, that and a plushie for my brother that still remains unfinished 😬. I'll post about both when they're done, you'll see 'em eventually.
And lastly, in other creative news, this upcoming month I'm finally going to immortalize my Lob Corp nuggets as official OCs. I've already written a bunch of disjointed fic for two of them, but I have a little gaggle of them that I want to make actual reference for and start using for things. I don't know what, because I'm really unhappy with the state of my drawing skill at the moment, but maybe having ref of them will push me to really start honing my skills.
I spent a while last week figuring out how to put together pieces from the LC spritesheets to get high quality renders of my agents, but that stopped at figuring out how to put the suits and hairs together. I need to transfer the screenshots I took to the cloud somewhere so I can focus more energy on that between work, getting gifts and facial features on is too much of a challenge with the tiny icons I have of them right now. Maybe one I have them all together I'll get back to editing that fic I'd been working on. It was like, a recap of my LC run through Eugene and Gonzales' perspectives, but my memory of my run was already so shaky back then, its even worse now lol. It might just be time for a new doc altogether.
I don't think I have all that much else to say about the current status of my art. My writing motivation is still lost to the void, but I have enough other creative endeavors that its not a huge deal. I will leave you with this art I did of Eugene and Gonzales in MSPaint last summer as a reward for reading through everything, and I'll update if anything else gets completed before the end of the month! Bye for now!
Posted February 24, 2025, around 12pm