It’s been a while since the last update but I have a few projects on the go so please be patient. I’ve got my favorite character from Azumanga Daioh (98% done, just need to embroider the mouth), the Katamari pattern (60% done, must add more nubbies!) and also, in honor of the soon to be released Bioshock 2, the coolest thing I have yet to make (surprise! 35% complete).

Tsukino Con is fast approaching and I am blowing the dust off my sewing machine for the marathon of sewing I have ahead of me.

In the meantime, gaze at my lack of updates in anticipation for the awesomeness to come.

I live in Victoria BC, a moderately sized Canadian city that is uber-westcoasty and is blessed with a University that is blessed with an Anime club that has blessed our community with an annual anime, manga and Japanese cultural convention, previously called Kei-kon, now reborn as Tsukino-Con. This has been great for the kid, and to be truthful we had a hoot last year too. All are looking forward to the convention in February, despite my nervousness at the continually decreasing amount of time I have to sew costumes.

We are n00bs on the scene, however as always, being the eternal meddler, I wanted to *do* something, so I have signed up to do a workshop panel type creature where I teach Amigurumi crochet. I did a dry-run of my really ambitious plan which is now being reworked and scaled back to a more sane and doable version, however the videos I prepared may be helpful to the interwebs as a whole so I have released them on the youtubes in all of their “made for Tsukino-Con” glory. There are some references to kits and local stores which are irrelevant, but the video quality is decent and I remembered to stay in frame for most of it, so they videos may be of help to folks just starting out and wondering what exactly they should be doing with the tangled mess of yarn that stands before them.

I learned from horrible grainy youtube videos, and now I pass that torch to the next generation… behold, the Nerdigurumi Youtube channel!

Of particular note, is this playlist that has instructional videos of pretty much each row of the pattern I designed for the workshop. It’s basically a peanut (see left) that can become a bear, a bunny, a cat, a dog with floppy ears like Cinnamoroll, or can remain a peanut. It’s a short project and the videos go over most of the steps so if you need some hand holding, I’m your girl! Plus when you are done you get to have this little weirdo on your left, and what’s not awesome about that?

I have a lot of yarn, a full inventory and retrieval from the various nooks and crannies balls and skeins are known to hide it revealed enough to fill 5 well stuffed, color coded bins full. My stash is mainly worsted weight cotton yarn in solid colors, Bernat Handicrafter Cotton, Lily Sugar & Cream and Peaches & Cream, and a few balls of Bernat Cottontots for good measure.

The initial idea was to fill a 9 space cubby hole thing with yarn like in the stores, all bright and pretty stacked neatly on display, however avalanches, dust bunnies and inevitable catfuzz tumbleweeds have made me rethink this storage strategy. Random bags stuffed to the gills, strewn about the house just weren’t cutting it anymore, so I bought bins for the cubbies and sorted by color into marked the bins.

The big balls are stacked on their own in their own tight little cubby with some odds and ends and there was even room left over to afford some shelter for some of the newly acquired figurines since the kid has run out of Otaku shelf space.

Husband came up with the idea of tying yarn to the handle to identify the colors contained within, brilliant yes?