FO: Science Pillow

Back in 2015, I had grand plans to make the Geek Along blanket. It's a bi-monthly blanket square project that you can make throughout the year and each year has a certain theme. Back then, it was Mad Scientists, and it included designs to represent both real and fictional scientists. I started out with the Tesla square, then made the Muppets square, then realized how much I greatly dislike tapestry crochet, lol. It was thick and heavy and annoying to make. I didn't think it would be a very comfy blanket given how stiff the squares turned out. So I completely lost steam on the whole idea, but I had these 2 finished squares just laying around for years waiting to be turned into anything at all. Sometime in there, I got the idea to turn the 2 squares into a pillow. I'm not sure exactly when, but it was at least a few years ago. The squares still sat simply because I never really felt like doing it :/ so lazy. Fast forward to now. My boyfriend's birthday was coming up at the beginning of May. I had a present on the way (which was a big success), but it wasn't going to get to my place while he was visiting before his birthday and I wanted to have something to give him. And suddenly I was struck with genius as to what that could be! The science pillow! He's a science-y guy who likes Tesla a lot, so I knew it would be an entertaining gift at the very least and it would mean this project finally had a purpose to its existence. So I stitched it up!

When I picked these up out of the abyss of random things in my sewing room, they looked like this. They looked like this for 5 years! Craziness.

All I did was lay the two blocks wrong sides together, pick a yarn I liked for the edging, and did a single crochet border all the way around, making it (sc, ch1, sc) at each corner. This seriously took maybe 20 minutes to do which is so sad considering how long these blocks sat. When it was almost enclosed, I stuffed the daylights out of it with playful and continued to finish the edging. My bit of advice with making anything stuffed - stuff the living crap out of it in the beginning because the fluff will compress and be floppy over time otherwise. Now it is a fun and hug-able pillow at last!

The yarn I used around the edge was just the first one I came across in my stash that I thought looked good with the various colors of the blocks. It's Red Heart Super Saver in Gold. The Tesla coil block is made in Loops & Thread Impeccable in Yellow with Premier Everyday Worsted in Aubergine while the Bunsen & Beaker block is made of Red Heart Super Saver in Spring Green and Red Heart With Love in Mango. All of these were stashed acrylic yarns I had on hand for making stuffed animals. 

I will say - I may want to try tapestry crochet again now I've had 5 years to cool off after making these, lol. At the time I found it super tedious, but let's be real - I've made much more tedious things than this over the years, so I should be able to handle it now just fine. It's pretty neat, really. You crochet around the color you are not using and just switch out the colors to make the color work designs. But this does make the fabric itself much thicker since you have 2 strands of yarn in every stitch. 

I think what I disliked so much about it was following such an involved chart. Even with the crazy lace charts I've knitted, they generally have a repeated pattern to them and don't change every single row like these color charts do. So I think that's what put me off back then. I'm willing to give it a try again now though.

And since this was a gift, I had to add my custom tag :) just on principle. Aren't I fancy? So we had dinner and cake with my family a few days before his birthday and I gave him this pillow. It seemed to go over well, lol. 

His REAL present came the day after he left :/ Isn't that always the way? And then another 2 weeks passed before I could see him to give him the main event of his gift. In that 2 week waiting period, I decided to make something else for his gift. I've been making more resin over these months and I realized that my petri disks were the perfect size to act as a fancy stand for his present. I made up a batch and picked this one because I thought it looked like a virus in a petri dish, lol, plus the colors look cool with the colors of the gift. I used drops of silicone oil to make those more clear sections and it turned out really neat, in my opinion.

So here is the full gift :) He let it drop once that he always wanted one of those closed ecosystem orbs but never got one (he's very interested in hydroponics), so I kind of had a cheat code on what to get him. I settled on this Shrimp Bubble because it had better reviews as far as the shrimp living, plus if you do accidentally kill them you can get into the bottle to put new little shrimpies in there. Some other brands are completely enclosed and those apparently have a higher rate of them dying off. For the record there are 4 tiny shrimp swimming around in there. Looks like they were camera shy when I took these.

So I think the combo of the blue petri stand and the yellow sand and the green algae looks really good. I'm glad I was able to not only give him something I knew he wanted but also give it a personal touch. 

And that's his birthday present :) He says he really likes it, so I take that as a win. Yay for making something with those blocks and showing I care about someone in the process, right?!