WoollyRhinoCrafts

 Behold, the theme song of this post: This is kind of a serious post. Kind of.  I want to chat a bit about my Phoenix Wright hats and answer some questions/address some concerns I've gotten. I started making these hats back in the early days of my Etsy shop (2012-ish). The first version was double-knit and took me about 20 hours to make - this was terrible, obviously. I sold them for a laughable price that I won't even mention because I'm so embarrassed. Closing sales was more important to me than actually making a profit. I have been tweaking this design since then. I soon realized I needed to make a more efficient version, so I reworked the pattern and started making a double-thick version with *duplicate stitch. *Duplicate stitch is a type of embroidery that mimics the V-shape of knit stitches, which is worked over the knit stitches. It is very tedious, but the end results are very nice. It maintains the stretchiness of the piece and is particularly good for when the des

  A decade ago (literally 2014), I made a little version of the Magician Teensy from Rayman Legends , and I made a totally useless blog post with very lazy instructions. It might be one of my most unhinged blog posts from the ye olde days, and you can see it right here if you want some lols. For years I've been wanting to remake this and make an actual pattern. After a great struggle, I finally did it.  This version is larger (because I hate working small because I can't see anymore), and it's not in slip stitch (because wtf why did I make this entire thing in slip stitch anyway). You can absolutely use this pattern as a base for other Teensies or even Rayman if you're smort. You can snag a PDF, ad-free version of the pattern here (which is also free of all these extra rambling words). The paid version includes a lot of additional images not included in this post, for some bonus help with assembly should you need it.  Now, hear me out, I know the Magician I made that&

  This pattern took way longer than I anticipated. I am the absolute worst judge of time. Worst. I thought I would wrap it up on Friday then have the weekend, but I ended up working on it all weekend and then also Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Here I am posting about it after midnight on Thursday! I spent a heckin long time working on the companion videos for YouTube. Making videos is so incredibly time-consuming. It slows down my work and then I have to edit, etc. etc. etc. Here's my YouTube channel where you can find said videos if you want to listen to me talk for hours. I added chapter markers to these videos so you can follow along with the different sections of the written pattern.  You can buy the pattern from Ravelry or Ko-Fi . Of course you can also buy it from Etsy if you want to pay more money for it and don't want me to get that extra money.  There are also two (2) ready-to-ship, finished, physical Blue Badger plushies on Etsy. There is a cuddly version and a

Ok, it was already delayed because of the Blue Badger pattern, which is taking way longer than anticipated. I'm working on the companion videos now, but after that I need to take a bit of a break from hand/arm activities. Yesterday, in a hilarious mishap involving a wasp, I jerked my elbow in such a way that I appear to have pinched a nerve that caused me to lose feeling in my thumb and first two fingers of my left hand. While I am right-handed, my left hand is quite involved in both crochet and knitting, and even holding embroidery. Also, typing. This morning I've regained most of the feeling in my middle finger, but I still have a dead thumb and index finger, so I'm going to give my whole arm a rest for a day or so until I can hold things properly again. lol I will not tell you what the freebie pattern is and it will remain a surprise, but it is a redux of one of my very oldest freebie patterns. That is a hint. That is all you get. XOXOX

  In lieu of this month's pattern roundup, I decided to unleash this FREE crochet pattern! I got a little spicy in last month's roundup (and not spicy in a good way), so I'm changing things up this month. Because I can. I do what I want. This is my blog. This is more fun anyway? If you want a PDF copy of this pattern, without ads, and without all of these extra words, you can snag it here . It's a pay-what-you-want as long as what you want is within reason. Patterns take days to make. Even remaking an old pattern. It's a lot. A lot goes into all of this. If you don't want to pay for it, you get ads and me being unhinged on my blog. That's the price. This is actually based on one of my very old patterns. And listen here: I was going to do it in mosaic crochet, but then I changed my mind...for reasons. I do plan on doing a mosaic crochet-specific pattern and tutorials for the two types of mosaic crochet as (hopefully sooner rather than later - maybe for next m

  Feel absolutely free to skip over these words and jump right down to the patterns. Words on the internet are not actually written for people and are written for search engines after all.   I'm feeling extremely fatigued by social media and blogging and also...yarn, in general. I don't want to wax poetic about it too much, but I'm getting very discouraged. My craft business used to be sustainable and now it, simply put, is not. I've been doing this for years and the last couple of years it suddenly got extremely hard to drive traffic anywhere and people also don't want to pay me for my time. They want my things, but they want sweatshop prices (and yet they'll shell out $75 for Stanley cups, for example, because of the "brand" so don't say one word about "the economy" because the problem is that people don't want anything genuinely unique and handmade is no longer valued). Yeah, I know some people can't afford stuff right now, and