Crochet Beholder Amigurumi

Hello! One of my resolutions this year is to actually post on my blog, so here I am! I'm going to aim for at least one post a month, but if you want to see more of my nonsense, do feel free to find me over on Instagram.

So, in my last post (from JULY 2018! Far out I've been slack!) I talked about how Scott and I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons with a group of our friends. We're still doing that and when I asked Scott what he'd like for his anniversary present this year, he requested a Beholder, which is a monster from D&D.

I found a great pattern by Aja Moniz on Ravelry and used that for the base of my Beholder, but I did make a few changes.

The pattern picture shows a Beholder with six eye stalks, but Scott wanted his to have ten, so I made a few extra stalks. I also decided to use safety eyes instead of using embroidery. The mistake I made with the safety eyes is that I decided to do that after I'd finished crocheting the eye stalks so if I made another one, I'd crochet the rounded bit of the eye, stick in the safety eye, and then continue to crochet the stalk.

I also wanted the Beholder to have more teeth as the official D&D artwork shows that they are very dentulous. Instead of crocheting the teeth, I cut out strips of fangs from white felt and then used a felting needle to attach the strips to the mouth area.

I intentionally used some different types of safety eyes, but I wish I had have had even more variety in eye colours. I think that since each eye of the Beholder has a different power, having different colours would be a cool way to indicate that.
 

Scott picked out the yarn for his Beholder and the purple that he chose for the body is some that I actually dyed myself! I liked how the colour come out, but the wool itself was pretty stiff and scratchy so it went into the stash box instead of being used for the scarf I originally wanted to make. It was a good yarn for amigurumi though, and it wasn't rough enough that it hurt my hands to use. Unfortunately I don't actually know any of the brands I used for this project as they have all been in the stash box without their labels for a long time!
 

I don't think he's as scary as the "real" Beholder, but Scott likes him anyway!

- Lisa xx

Imperial Eagle Cross-Stitch on a Crochet Dice Bag

Hello! If you've been reading this blog for a while, you've probably heard about the elusive creature that I call my husband, aka Scott. Scott is very, very patient with me as I constantly promise him things and then take ages to actually make them so his presents are quite often late. But, a strange thing has happened! I promised Scott a dice bag for his birthday this year and it's finished ... two months in advance! I think this means I better make him something else to give him on the actual day, what do you think?

I used this pattern by Geek's Dream Girl to crochet this bag, but made a few changes so that it could accommodate Scott's largish dice collection, which he uses (along with *a lot* of tiny, hand-painted army figurines) when he plays Warhammer 40K. The pattern suggested doing five rounds to make the base of the bag, but I did eleven. I did 21 rounds to make up the majority of the bag, and then seven rounds to make the bit that ruffles when you close the drawstring.

I used a DK weight wool to crochet the bag, and a thinner acrylic yarn to be the drawstring. For the drawstring, I just threaded two lengths of yarn through the trebled section of the bag (that will make more sense if you take a look at the pattern!), knotted the ends, and added a toggle.

One of the other advantages of making the dice bag bigger was that I had room to test out a technique I'd been keen about giving a go; cross-stitch over crochet!

I made a pattern for a very simplified version of the Imperial Eagle (which you can grab from my Google Drive here if you'd like to!) and cross-stitched it onto the bag, using the lines of the crochet as a guideline. It's certainly not as easy as cross-stitching onto Aida cloth, but I'm pretty happy with the result! 

Here's a kind of action shot, with Scott's Space Marine Centurion and Chaos Space Marine Maulerfiend looking on. Open ...

... and closed!

I'm currently working on some ~secret things~, which I absolutely can not wait to share with you, as well as a couple of gifts ... I think I better whip up something for myself too so I have something to show you next week! ^___^ What I'd really like right now is a bathtub to soak my skating-induced aches in, but I think that's a little beyond my abilities ~____^

- Lisa xx