WIP Wednesday

 Well, this week has held quite a bit of knitting :) Clue #5 for the Fuzzy Mitten Mystery Knit-Along came out on Friday and it looks like this:

This is my kangaroo's body. I got it knitted, but I have yet to sew it together. Just for a visual, here it is with the other pieces:

Pretty cute, huh? I'm excited about the pocket :) I've also finally found and ordered mini buttons for the cardigan. They are called micro mini beads and I got them from Joann's (they had $1 shipping yesterday!) - Joann's was literally half the price of even Amazon, I was quite surprised. I got a few different color packs so I can decide once they arrive.

I started a last minute birthday gift for my brother last week too. I borrowed Knit Your Own Zombie  from the library just to give it a look through. When I showed my mom, she started talking about how much my brother would love something like this, and I knew she was right. His birthday is April 6th and he will be 16 - what 16 year old doesn't need an interactive zombie doll?! lol So, I raided my stash for the perfect colors and got to work knitting.

I have all the body parts and pieces knitted - now I just have to start sewing and embroidering - yikes! This just goes to show that I love my little bro - look at all those seams! The pieces are all assembled like if you were folding a box out of paper - there are tabs that wrap over the edges and miter at the corners to for a box. The limbs then have red sleeves that will poke through holes in the "skin" layer to look bloody. I went with green for the skin to be more decomposed looking, lol.

I seriously love all the holes. It made for a ton more work, but the fact that you can see bloody wounds makes it all worthwhile.

I also combined the Classic Zombie pattern with part of the Zombie Rockstar pattern to include a removable brain. This is the head pieces and the "brain pocket" along with my partially finished brain. How cool is that? You can have the brain pop out! Or you can have a rat crawling out of its head!

And here is the stomach set up - the purple is the "stomach pocket" - I made it purple to add to the rotten effect. I made the stomach and intestines out of burgundy yarn to differentiate between the "blood" and the "organs". I'm going for authenticity here, lol.

Another awesome aspect of this project is that the head and torso are attached with velcro - so you can remove the head or rip the body in half! To add to the gross-factor, I hunted down some red velcro, lol. The pattern also has you use bugle beads for the toe and finger nails, so I got black ones, lol. One of my favorite parts of the pattern is its eye ball - the original uses a glass eye bead and it's attached with red embroidery floss - so it looks like the eye has popped out and is barely hanging on! I searched all over locally to find the eye beads, but even Joann's didn't have anything close. So, I turned to Amazon. I have some beads on order, but I don't think they will arrive before Briggs' birthday - so I'll just have to improvise a severed sinew in the meantime. Anyway, as you can see I have great plans for this project. To be honest, it's much more involved then I anticipated when I began. Also the directions are really not that great. Mostly I just have to look at the picture and break down the best order to attach everything myself. I'd better get cracking though since his birthday is on Sunday! Lots of work...

I finally had the crochet urge again this week - the zombie proved to be more thinking than I wanted to do, so I started a nice brainless crochet project. This will be the Turtle Lunch Tote from Amigurumi On The Go by Ana Paula Rimoli. I've had this book almost a year an still hadn't made anything from it! A sin, I know. They are all so cute! My nephew has reached the age where he really likes putting things in bags and then unloading everything, so I figure this would be a useful gift for him.

Just to warn anyone else who is making any projects from this book - you have to stitch through both loops. I've gotten used to stitching through the back loop only like I do all my animals, so I made the whole base that way ... only to get to the part where it changes from the base to the sides and read "crochet through the back loop only". This is why we read patterns through before beginning, folks. The switching from regular stitching to back loop only gives the turn definition and without this the base was just a big dome. I had to pull out the entire thing and start again. Live and learn.

I also just started reading Anna Karenina today and I'm already impressed with the writing style. I've read lots of other "classic" novels before, but they always have a tone that is typical of their time. Not so with Anna Karenina. It's written just like any modern book I've read. I really like it thus far :)

So that's what's going on with me this week :) I'd better get to stitching! Head over to Tami's Amis' Blog to see what others are working on.