Day of the Tentacle Part 13

Back of the beak now closed off. Have sealed the tentacles as I realised the stuffing could work its way out into the body and leave them all floppy. Now just need to make a body and figure out the best way to attach it.

Day of the Tentacle Part 12

Beakenation has been completed. Have recycled some flat foam sheets that came with Malifaux packaging for support. Seems to be holding up quite well - ring support is also holding firm. Wiring on the legs is not as firm as I would like, the aluminium sculpting wire is definately a trade off of strength for lightness and non corrosion. Given main material is wool felt can't afford to have any kind of wire that might cause staining further down the track.  Will probably have to use wires to suppprt tentacles when it is displayed.

Day of the Tentacle Part 11

This thing has gotten rather unwieldy - my own fault for making it so big. The stuffed ring seems to be holding the tentacles up quite well, it has quite a few rounds of aluminium sculpting wire inside to strengthen it. Next stage is to make the beak and attach it to the centre of the ring.

Day of the Tentacle Part 10

Long tentacles are done - now just have to figure out how to hold it all together.

Day of the Tentacle Part 9

Next stage is dyed and ready to go. I have pieces for the two long tentacles, the beak and the centre ring which should hold the upper tentacles up and stop them from crushing the beak.

Day of the Tentacle Part 8

The tentaclation continues - almost there six and a bit done. Hopefully will have the arms done tomorrow and will be able to cut and dye the next stage over the weekend.

Day of the Tentacle Part 7

Still slogging away - lost count of the times I have stabbed myself with the needle or more painfully felting needle. Have decided not to decorate skin side yet, probably best done at the end so I can make it consistent plus I will know how much time I have left (thanks Scott for that very sound advice).

Day of the Tentacle Part 6

So tentaclation has begun - and I realise this is going to take ages. At this point I begin to question my decision to make the thing so enormous but I am committed now and will battle on to the end.

I was originally just going to sew on tubes of felt to make the suckers but when I tried needle felting over the join to see if I could make it look more seamless it had a really cool effect. This is of course going to make the whole process take even longer but well worth it for the effect.

Day of the Tentacle Part 5

So getting colour on the eight arms was pretty much a full day's work. First the felt is washed in hot water with mild soap to get rid of any leftover sizing from the manufacturing process. I started off scrubbing them by hand but ended up just simmering them on the stove in soapy water. Then it is washed out and put in a mix of vinegar and water to soak for a bit.

You take it out leaving most of the vinegar water in and lay it down on some cling film. Next it is painted with food colouring mixed with water to dilute it.  Once done roll it up in the cling film and steam for 15 minutes.

I made the mistake of rolling the first tentacle across the short axis which made the darker colours from the center bleed across to the light underside. Subsequent tentacles were rolled up on the long axis and came out much better. 

I also dyed some scraps to cut the suckers from and some roving for covering the seams and making patterns on the surface.

Day of the Tentacle Part 4

Have cut out the eight arms but have run out of felt to make the two longer tentacles. Will have to get another bolt of felt - although the arms will give me plenty to be going on with in the meantime.

I have cut them a couple of centimeters larger all around to allow for the felt to shrink a bit during the dying process. Usually I cut after coloring felt so shrinkage is not a problem but given the scale of this project it makes more sense to cut first.

Next step will be painting and steaming the arms.

Day of the Tentacle Part 3

Test tentacle number two worked much better - looks more muscular, less elegant. So now I just need to pull it apart and cut eight copies from felt.

Been trying to figure out how to stop the weight of the upper tentacles from crushing the beak once they are arranged in a ring. I am hoping a firmly stuffed tube of felt (like an inner tube) will do it.

Day of the Tentacle Part 2

This is test tentacle number one. I like the skinny pointyness of it but it is more octopus than sqiud. Plus it tapers off too quickly and I either need to reduce the base circumference or make it longer neither of which I want to do. So I need to try again but with less tapering, maybe down to half the original circumference instead of a quarter.

Day of the Tentacle Part 1

Working on a micro scale Kraken for the Burrinja Open Studios exhibition. Have switched to hand painted felt due to carpal tunnel doom from too much giant scale crocheting.  Have been having a lot of fun with felting - am using pre made wool felt and dying it with food colouring using vinegar as a mordant. This has the advantage of being kitchen safe as there are no nasty chemicals involved (and me safe too I guess).  The vinegar mordant can split or change the colours (especially purple) which can be a pain when you are after a very specific effect but on the plus side gives you an excellent sense of anticipation and surprise when you unwrap it after steaming.

Anyway after a whole heap of pondering and sketching I decided to base the Kraken on a Colossal Sqiud. Not least because I had seen the preserved one in Wellington - utterly amazing by the way. 

Now I always seem to start off thinking I will create the pattern in one go but it never seems to work that way. I inevitably end up starting somewhere  (often the toes) and building the scale of the rest of the creature in relation to that bit.  In this case the tentacles have become the starting point and the rest will follow once they are all in place.

I knew I wanted the eight arms to be about a metre long but had a lot of trouble trying to figure out the diameters for the top and bottom and the amount of taper I needed.  As a result I decided to make a test tentacle - I am often too lazy to make test versions and just tend to wing it but there is a very large amount of felt involved here not to mention all the hand painting.

Next time I will share the results of the first tentacle test and where it goes from there.

Industrial Strength Blocking

I have had a new shawl/rug ready for blocking for a couple of months but keep procrastinating because is is a bugger of a job.  I usually use the back of a rug to pin things out on, but it is not very satisfactory for the large round pieces as it is not quite large enough in one direction and I don't get enough stretch.

However given our veranda is literally falling to bits I thought it probably wouldn't matter if I hammered a couple of nails in and pulled them out again.  All the timber will have to be replaced before too long anyway - thus industrial strength blocking was born.



There is a towel under there to prevent snags and absorb some of the moisture.  It is still a bit wonky as I did not have a finished measurement and I had to stretch it out by eye but is is a really effective stretch.



I did not realise on my first couple of blockings how tight you really have to stretch the work out.  Not until I actually knitted a pattern in the yarn it was designed for and had proper measurements to block to.  Especially with lace patterns, my blocking wires are starting to look a little bet and battered but it is all in a good cause.



I used fencing staples which were particularly effective as the blocking wires could not jump over them as they can with t-pins when you stretch it really tight.  I did not even have to hammer them in too hard and you can't even see the holes they left.

And it was a very effective block:



This is the Girasole pattern from Brooklyn Tweed (again) it is so much fun to knit although the edging seems to last forever.



It is worth it though, the knitted edging looks so much better than a crocheted one.



I cannot for the life of me remember what yarn I used - I think it might have been Cleckheaton but I really have no idea.  I have a fair few balls left but they seem to have disappeared into the mysterious vortex of my study.



Anyway at least that is another UFO out of the way - not much of a dent in the pile so far but it all helps I guess.

Catching Up On UFOs

I was so excited at all the things I was going to get done in my five week break but the first two weeks have been killed a bit by the horrible hot weather. I am totally a cold weather person (you will never here me complaining about the cold), hot weather just destroys my ability to do anything much at all.

That being said we are partway through a week of cooler weather so I have started to get moving again.  I am hoping to get some of my enormous pile of unfinished objects sorted out, plus I need to finish the legotorium, make myself a new giant crochet Cthulhu, and get started on some bird like things for my next art project.

First UFO off the block is a very basic scarf made from hand dyed mohair.



I have had this stuff for ages and have started and pulled apart a couple of projects, ultimately I figured colours this lovely don't need an exotic pattern and went for a plain garter stitch scarf.



I am a total sucker for things in spectrum order, it just needs to get cold enough for me to wear it now.



I have not taken any pictures of the legotorium yet - still too much of a disaster area.  We have a ridiculous amount of Lego and keep adding more all the time.  Maybe next week things will be a bit more under control.

My polymer clay arrived today for Cthulhu's claws so work will have to commence soon.  I was going to make a practice version, but given I only tend to like making things once (especially when they are that big) I am just going to wing it like that last one.

For the first time since we moved to this house we have black cockatoos living in the big pine tree.  They are supposed to be native to this area but have been chased away by the feral sulphur crested cockatoos.  We have a mated pair and their fledgling who is quite big but still being fed by its parents. They have the most beautiful eerie call but chatter very melodically when they are all in the tree together.



This is the baby, pretty much grown up but still conning food from mum and dad.  They are the yellow tailed variety, I think the red tailed ones are almost extinct.  I hope they stay around and nest on our tree.

Things are Changing

Lots of good news for the beginning of the year and hopefully a chance for me to get my act together and do more artwork.  As of this week I no longer work full time and after 5 weeks off will be working 3 days a week - so no excuses really.

I have been quite angry with my work since about September last year and found that all the times when I usually work out design problems and have my best ideas (morning shower - best place in the world) I was instead having internal rants about my job.  Not the best state of affairs, so when an opportunity came my way to leave - I went.

Stay tuned for developments, I am planning a new Cthulhu (just for me) and an avian theme to my next big crochet project.

These photos are for Mum - just to show you how alive they are:

Rita's Shawl

Although I have been rather slack on the update front I have been working on a few things albeit slowly.  Up until the end of April I was consumed with finishing this shawl for Mum's 60th.  It is knitted in Brooklyn Tweed Loft in Meteorite (a little more yellow than I had hoped from the picture but it knitted up well).  The pattern is another Brooklyn Tweed called Leaves of Grass, it is beautiful and I cannot wait for Jared's next circular pattern.



It took ages to knit this - I totally underestimated how long the edging would take.





The middle did not quite block flat I probably should have put some more pins in.



For once I actually knitted the pattern in the listed yarn so I had blocking measurements - I was surprised just how far it was stretched out.

















Hopefully more to come on a new crochet art project soon.

Gardening and a New Friend

When Mum and Greg visited in January they had a bit of a frenzy in the garden and weeded out the bed outside the kitchen (among other things).  Naturally Corto being the giant ginger pain that he is decided he would dig it up to make a lovely dust bath, which in turn drove Scott to make a beautiful herb garden.



The netting is to keep out the possums, who while fluffy and adorable absolutely decimate any soft herbs we plant, they even eat the chili bushes down to the ground.



We have tarragon, sage, mushroom plant (weird but yummy crispy leaves that taste like mushroom, the texture really throws you), and black ornamental and quite hot capsicum.



Plus horseradish, parsley, thyme, jalapenos and black something or other chili, in the week or so since I took this picture they have all grown heaps more.  The wet coolish summer we have has has been brilliant for growing things.

Aside from the digging we have had more dog drama, everyone is fine but it did get a little expensive. GIR's lipoma on his front leg had grown very big, as had the skin tag on his elbow (called Pepe, don't even ask how it got it's own name) and the vet thought it was time to remove them.  There were way more stitches on the lipoma than I would have thought but GIR was very good and did not even need a bucket on his head.



He is all better now and the scar is disappearing nicely.  Of course a couple of days after GIR had his surgery Corto had to get in on the act by putting his paw through the glass in the back door.  Luckily he only got a little cut, particularly as it turned out it was not safely glass and shattered everywhere.  Expensive to fix but at least he was ok.



Just got a new member of the monster family from Loki Coki, such a great combination of crochet, felt and embroidery, I wish I has thought of it.



How adorable is she, now I just have to resist the temptation for another one.  Here she is in her new home, snuggled up with Cthulhu and Shoggy.



Been a bit disorganised on made things lately, I have a new rug but it needs to to be blocked and the weather has not been in my favour.  Did a colour variation on one of the Urban Threads designs for Mum, although it still needs to be sewn into a bag.