FO Friday: Zombie 2.0 and Comrade Ratlovich

Today, my friends, is a momentous day - I can finally reveal my finished Zombie! And he's very photogenic :)

This is Birthday Zombie 2.0 (I know - really creative name, right?) and his partner in crime, Comrade Ratlovich. We had a ridiculously fun time with out little photo shoot together, if you couldn't tell :)

As requested, I made the zombie the same as my first zombie just with a blue coat (the recipient's favorite color) and adding his rat companion.

I know I've talked about this project a ton on the blog over the last few months, but I figure I'll mention the specifics again for anyone just tuning in. I used the Classic Zombie pattern by Fiona Goble (available free here) along with the brain and brain pocket instructions from the book Knit Your Own Zombie. The glory of the book is that you can pick and choose which elements you want to add. 

The yarns I used are Red Heart With Love in Lettuce (skin/body); Vanna's Choice in Cranberry (anything blood looking), Purple (stomach pocket), and Charcoal (eye socket and nose); Caron Simply Soft in Raspberry (intestines and around wounds), Chocolate (hair and rat), and Black (pants and mouth); Red Heart Soft in Cream (rib cage); Bernat Softee Baby in Soft Peach (brain); Lion Brand Microspun in Fuchsia (brain squiggles); Patons Canadiana in Gray (eye socket); and Premier Everyday Soft Worsted in Royal Blue (jacket).

I also used red velcro at the torso and head, metal snaps at the shoulders, gray bugle beads for the nails, and a glass bead for the eye ball.

Comrade Ratlovich says, "Oh, hello there folks. Don't mind me!" - in a Russian accent, of course.

Here's a little crime scene photo, lol. Everything is stitched and embroidered by hand.

"Oh, you don't need these intestines anymore, do you?"

Anyway, lots of photos. Just like last time, the amount of photos in this post directly reflects the amount of work involved in making it, lol.

And now for detail shots. I only had one issue come up this time - the blue yarn I used must be slightly thicker than the orange I used last time for the first zombie, because the coat came out bigger. This isn't really an issue except that it made the arms longer, so I had to roll up the sleeves like cuffs - easy fix. 

lol This is seriously one of my favorite angles to photograph these guys.

I really love how Comrade Ratlovich came out - so much so that I think my brother will be getting a rat of his own for Christmas to complete his zombie set. This guy certainly took a long time to make - the only pieces that are knit are the actual body (2 pieces), everything else is embroidered on.

I borrowed back the original Birthday Zombie so I could officially give him an eye ball, and I couldn't resist a photo of them all together. Just imagine lots of groaning and it will complete the picture.

And here is a closeup of the new eye ball in action :) It's pretty crazy how it make the face look so different.

I packaged up Zombie 2.0 and Comrade Ratlovich and delivered them last night. Yesterday was Eryn's birthday, so she will probably already have them by the time this post goes up :) I've been promised photos of Eryn with her zombie (and quite possibly her new favorite shirt - it says If Darryl Dies, We Riot, lol).I'm beyond thrilled with how this guy came out and I really hope Eryn loves it!

WIP Wednesday

Things have taken a nice turn around these parts lately. I had my husband ask the zombie-recipient's-dad when the birthday is (meaning when does it need to be done), and I found out it's July 31st! Hizzah! My husband has just told me "July" from the beginning, so I've been really worried it wouldn't be finished. Now I don't have to doggedly plug away at the zombie while forsaking all other responsibilities like I was doing for the past few weeks. In celebration, I spent a little time on my Myrna :)

I knitted a few hours on it this weekend and it is almost back to the point it was at before I frogged the whole thing. Yay! And even better - it fits! My gauge is still tighter than listed in the pattern, but I'm knitting the same size. It looks like it will come out with just a bit of negative ease - perfect! I can't wait to get more done on it. I'm fairly certain I will be dying the finished result though. I've been mulling over it while I knit and I honestly don't have anything to wear with a cream colored sweater. Now to just pick what color I would wear. Decisions, decisions.

On the zombie front, I have the actual doll completely finished except his hair. I've finished the fronts of his sweater and I'm almost finished with the back. I still have to finish the sweater, make pants, and make a rat - then it's done! I can't wait, lol, mostly just so I don't feel guilty it isn't done anymore.

 Don't you just love how his sweater compliments his ... eye :)

I've also been in a very "get-stuff-done" type of mood lately. So much so that I did a mega deep clean on my living room. It's been an embarrassing wreck ever since our office flooding incident, and now it looks great :) As a reward for my hard work Sunday night, I spent Monday night working on my long anticipated dress! I finally put in the zipper and honestly it doesn't look too bad. This is my first time doing a slot seam zipper, so I'm really happy with it. That said, I'm not happy with how the dress fits now. I'm not sure how it happened, but when I put the dress on with the zipper it looks like my boobs are being bound down and I get wrinkles above them at my arm pits. Also the arms are weird, but that's my fault for not including them in any of my 3 muslins of this bodice. Rrrrr... Oh well. This was meant to be kind of a wearable muslin anyway, so I'm not too beat up about it. I just wish I knew how to fix these issues so that I could make it in the future without all the problems.

That's all that's going on around here (except for a crazy amount of sorting and cleaning and getting-rid-of). Head over to Tami's Amis' Blog to see what others have going on :)

WIP Wednesday: Limbs and Pieces Everywhere!

Well, Birthday Zombie 2.0 is coming right along :) I finished his head yesterday, so all I need to do now is add hair and velcro to call the actual zombie completely done. Now I just have to make his clothes and his rat, lol. I took this opportunity to take some fun pictures this morning.

lol I think it's funny how this one looks a little confused just from his eye-to-nose-distance. I also really like the eye ball bead. I searched high and low for them when I made my first zombie. I ended up ordering them on Amazon and I think it was about $4 for a bag of 20 or 25 beads. They are glass so each one is slightly different. I had become so used to seeing the other zombie with a long, dangling sinew for his eye that I wasn't sure I would like the actual eye ball bead, but I really like it on this one :)

And of course, I had to take some silly photos. I love that you can turn the eye ball - it's like one of those pictures that is looking right at you no matter where you stand, lol.

Here are all my pieces so far :) As much as I love how these come out, I can't wait to be finished. It feels like they just take absolutely forever. He is pretty cute though.

I also was able to make some progress on my Myrna this weekend. I hadn't touched it since the previous weekend, but when it comes time to go to a family gathering I grab it. My zombie has so many little pieces and parts that I don't want to cart around and chance losing. So, Myrna got some attention :) I've finished the upper back and now I'm just about to start the increases on the right front. I am thrilled to say that I was able to hold up the pieces that I have done and it looks like they will fit great! I was so worried after my first go at this. I will say - my gauge is definitely tighter than the pattern calls for, but it seems to work out so I'm not worried about it. I love that this is such a quick project, and I really can't wait to give it more undeterred time.

So, that's all around these parts this week :) Head over to Tami's Amis' Blog to see what others are cooking up!

WIP Wednesday

Well, the zombie is coming right along :) I have completely finished the torso, guts and legs - meaning they are completely assembled and embroidered. 

I seriously saved so much time this time around just with rethinking the order of assembly. The pattern has you knit two full leg pieces - an outer and then an inner one for the "wound". The thing is, the only area that you need the inner one for is that big red spot - so why do I need to knit a complete red leg? That's just silly. So I basically just knitted a patch that was slightly bigger than the opening and sewed it on the back. The pattern also has you sew everything completely together and THEN do the embroidery. Again, that's just silly. You have to try to hide your knots and ends after the fact when you do it this way. So, I did all my embroidery before I sewed up the back seam and seriously it was so nice to not have to worry about hiding my knots (I know the patterns always tell you that you don't need to knot it, but for real, I'm making this for a 9 year old child - I doubt she will be gentle). I also sewed the toe nails on one foot before seaming, but it turns out this wasn't a great idea - when I stuffed it the fabric shifted and now the nails are very loose. I will redo them nice and tight, but I'd rather do this with sewing thread than yarn so it's all good.

The intestines were another design choice - I knitted i-cord instead of seaming. The torso is exactly the same as my first zombie meaning it has a dark purple inner pocket. I also tied the cream yarn for the ribs on before I sewed up the seam. I had to embroider the second rib cage twice - I always have trouble trying to match two things side by side - please tell me I'm not alone, lol. I also waited to put the velcro on until I had both receiving sides ready just to make sure they line up right.

I'm really happy with how this is coming out :) And it is so much nicer to work on it for a few hours a night instead of one solid day of assembly like the last one. Incidentally, this pattern has apparently been posted online and you can get it for free! I literally just discovered this today. It's only for the 'classic zombie', so to make the other pieces you'd have to get the book, but most of what I've used is all in the pattern. Just head over here to get it for yourself :)

(sorry for the clothing shaver, lol, it's all stockinette so it just curls up without something to weigh it down.)

I also managed to restart my Myrna cardigan this weekend :) We had some long drives to Orlando and I don't like to take projects with lots of little pieces in the car - that's just a disaster waiting to happen. So, I cast on on my birthday and kept knitting it when I could all weekend. I'm past the would-be-keyhole area and into the main back. It's kind of crazy how simple (and therefor how quick) this sweater is. I'm hoping to get to really devote some time to it soon.

That's it around here this week :) Head over to Tami's Amis' Blog to see what others are working on!

WIP Wednesday

Well, I'm knee deep in Zombie Land again! After the crazy amount of work that my last zombie was I had pretty much sworn off making more... But then mention to me that the chronically sick child of my husban'd co-worker thought it was awesome and that her birthday is coming up in July ... and here we are again, lol. Honestly, I can't say I didn't want to make another - the last guy came out so cool - and this time I had ample time to not stress over it. Fast forward a few months and  I find myself with 2 weeks to make one again. Whoops!

I've knitted most of the pieces, now I've got to start the assembly. I will say I've been a bit smarter about the pieces this time - I'm eliminating as many seams as is humanly possible. For example, I just knit the intestines as i-cord. I mean, why wouldn't you, right? At least I know that this time. I'm also doing the red sleeves for inside the legs and arms as well as the brain and brain pocket in the round. I'm hoping to save some of that seaming time :) So I've had to kind of put all my other projects aside while I crank this guy out. I'm really excited to see how he comes out!

I also made the unfortunate decision to scrap out my Myrna sweater. It was just so big that I knew I'd never wear it, so why keep working on it like that? I'd put off the actual frogging just since I knew I couldn't work on it anyway (plus I kind of dreaded all that pulling by hand, lol). On Monday though I had a pretty bad day, so when I came home I just decided to do it and did - and let my tell you, if you ever need to get yourself out of a funk, unravel a sweater, lol. It was quite therapeutic. I even rigged up my yarn winder so that I didn't have to do it by hand! I just hooked in the yarn, weighed down the sweater and cranked. I even made a video so you can see how cool it was:

lol How awesome is that? I had to use both of my hands on unraveling (one to turn the crank and one to guide the yarn), so I actually held the phone in my mouth to take this video - ha! I'm sure it looked pretty silly to the dog, but I just couldn't resist a cool video. Anyway, that totally did the trick for my mood. And here is my nephew modelling the sweater as it stands now:

lol Isn't he cute? He loves to hold my yarn for me. So, once I finish my zombie I will get going on this sweater again on the recommended needle size.

Also, I've finally figured out my button situation on my Miette cardigan :) I settled on some dark mother of pearl (genuine pearl) buttons from my stash ... but I only had 5 of them. So, I have searched high and low and I will do the top ones in the 5 that match and then the bottom 3 will be the same material and size but just slightly different. I'm happy with it :) I've seriously shopped everywhere (in stores and online) and no one has anything close to what I want. I'm hoping to block and finish this soon!

And on an unrelated note - look at my first crop from my garden! Two teeny tomatoes and a big red pepper :) I can't wait to eat them!

That's it for my this week! Head over to Tami's Amis' Blog to see what others are up to :)

FO Friday: Zombies and Turtles and Mysteries Revealed

This past week was filled with far too much knitting than is good for anyone, lol. I've had to promise my husband that I will cut back a bit just so the house doesn't get covered in funk. At least I got everything finished by the time I needed to :) I warn you - this post is very picture heavy. I look at it as the amount of pictures is in direct relation to the amount of time the items took to make. So without further ado ... I present the most complicated item I have ever knitted: Briggs' Birthday Zombie.

I used the Classic Zombie pattern from Knit Your Own Zombie by Fiona Goble. I just love that shot above, lol, I had a lot of fun with my little photo shoot.

The cool thing about the book is that the zombie pieces and parts are designed in a pick and choose fashion, so you can mix and match patterns at will. I stuck to the Classic Zombie pattern except that I added a brain and a brain pocket.

lol As you can tell - my photo shoot was a lot of fun especially when I realized that he would stand up on his own. The eye sinew will soon have an actual eye ball on it. I checked everywhere for an evil eye bead like the book uses, but in the end I had to order some online and they hadn't arrived by Sunday. I'll update with a new pic when it's on :)

And here are all the pieces I made. The brain is removable, as are the stomach and intestines. I made the hole in the torso a deep purple color (to keep with decaying body realism, lol). The pattern calls for velcro that matches the yarn color for the head and torso, but in a design decision to keep it gruesome I hunted down some red velcro instead. I love the effect of it! Much more gory. The arms have metal snaps to join them together so they come off as well. The arm and one leg have nasty wounds on them. These are made by actually knitting a red limb, then the green outer limb, sliding the red inside the green, then embroidering with a burgundy yarn around the edges of the wound to attach them. This guy also has toe nails and finger nails that are long black bugle beads. The rib cage is (again) embroidered. The pants were knitted like normal, then I embroidered around a spot I wanted to make a hole and then (gasp!) cut the knitting! It was a scary moment and it didn't really work out as easily as the pattern made it seem and I had to whip stitch around the edge to keep the knitting from unraveling, but the effect is awesome.

lol I love this picture with the nubby arm and the guts sticking out. So gross. The entire face is embroidered on - no easy feat, let me tell you. It took a lot of time, but I really do love how it came out. The teeth are more bugle beads. I decided to use the black instead of white like the pattern calls for because, duh, dead and decaying body!

And here are all the parts laid out. The body parts are all sewn as separate pieces and seamed - holy crap did that take forever. Then I had to embroider everything, sew on beads, sew on velcro, sew on snaps, and make clothes. I had knitted all the body pieces over the course of about a week and then used my day off to put it all together. I'm not kidding when I say that this is almost all I did all day! And I still had to make the clothes!

I had to include this shot ... because it's awesome.

My brother definitely loved his gift, which made it worth all the work :) We kept teasing him that he got a doll for his 15th birthday, lol, but it was all in fun because everyone had to agree that it was gross and awesome.

I am super proud of how this project turned out, I can't lie. It was a crazy amount of work and the pattern certainly doesn't help in that. I'm used to American patterns that include a certain amount of (sometimes unnecessary) hand holding. This British pattern did nothing of the kind, and I've now discovered that this is common with British patterns. For example it would just say, "Seam pieces together. Embroider rib cage.," and the like. No walking you through how to do it, just referring you to a one picture diagram at the beginning of the book. In spite of that and in spite of how sick I was of making this thing when it was done, I would not be opposed to making another. The response from everyone who sees it is really great :) And even though it's gross, it's just so cool that it 's interactive. Even my 1.5 year old nephew loved to take the brain out (in fact we had to force him to give it back, lol). So, I would say there will be other zombies in my knitting future :)

But my making didn't stop there! I was also participating in the Fuzzy Mitten Mystery Knit-Along and the final clue was released last Friday. Now that the mystery is over, I am left with a super cute ... kangaroo!

This was my first ever Fuzzy Mitten project and it did not disappoint. How cute are they?! When I finished them, my husband said that she should be named Charlene (only to be read with a heavy Aussie accent), so this is Charlene and Jake :)

This project was made over the course of a month for me (it was actually 6 weeks with 1 clue each week, but I came in late). I used Vanna's Choice yarn in Toffee and Beige for the body - both were in my stash and they seriously turned out to be the perfect colors.

The cardigan comes off and all the limbs are jointed, so I can make her sit or stand or put her hands up - so cool! I will say, she didn't really like to stand up without her tail on, but that's a non-issue now since she has a tail. The joey was part of the final clue and you want to know what is the coolest thing about him? ...

He's a finger puppet! This is pretty vital to the design because it makes it possible to shove this little guy into the mom's pocket. And the body is made all in one piece! No sewing on teeny little arms and legs - so cool! I'm now obsessed with the idea of making lots of finger puppets, lol. The joey has 6 mm safety eyes and the mom has 10 mm ones.

The obligatory back view :) I love that it's really a little play set. I imagine that I kid would love to play with these. And most of the Fuzzy Mitten animals have similar sized bodies, so you can mix and match their clothes. I would have been all about that when I was little.

The cardigan is made from Red Heart Pompadour in blue and Aunt Lydia's Iced Bamboo in Icicle for the white stripe (it has just a tiny bit of sparkle in it). The cardigan was the first item to make, but it sat unfinished because I was waiting on buttons. I had to order these from Joann's and they are 7mm size. At least now I have a bunch more for the next project. I love that the cardigan only has those two buttons at the top so it can be worn and still see the joey :)

I had loads of fun making this set! I really love the fun of a mystery knit or crochet along, and the Ravelry groups always make it 10 times more fun. I'm so glad I was able to participate, and I have already almost finished my next Fuzzy Mitten friend. I know that I will be making plenty more of Barbara Prime's designs!

And there's one more item! This wasn't really anything I had to make, but it was just too cute and I have a feeling it will be useful and fun at the same time. I've had Ana Paula Rimoli's book Amigurumi On The Go since my birthday last year and hadn't made anything from it yet! I had to remedy that :) So my nephew now gets a super cute turtle tote!

Isn't he fun?! This is made just like any other crocheted amigurumi - you just add a long bag part to the top :) The whole bag is just hdc and then you add the stripes. Originally I didn't know if I wanted to add the stripes since it looked cute without them, but I am so glad I did!

I think the stripes really take this bag to the next step and make it less homemade looking (not that 'homemade' is a bad thing!) I made my stripes in dark red, yellow, orange and gray - all yarns out of my stash. The green and blue are both Red Heart Super Saver. 

The top cinches in with the pull cord. The bag is much bigger than I thought it would be! He is 9.5" tall and  5.5" wide, but it fits a surprising amount of stuff. I hope that my nephew enjoys putting things in, and then taking them out, and then putting them back in again :) He likes to do this with other bags, so now he will have one of his very own that no one will mind when he unloads it, lol.

Phew! That's all my projects from the past week. Crazy! If you have endured this entire post, thank you! I know it was really long but hopefully the pictures were cute enough to stay interesting :) If you're still interested (lol), head over to Tami's Amis' Blog and see what others managed to finish this week!