WoollyRhinoCrafts

UPDATE 2/7/23: What a fun time! Having finished my two DragonCon cosplays with some weeks to spare apparently made me look very available to help someone mere days before we leave for Atlanta. There won't be a free knitting or crochet pattern this week, pals - because I have been spending every waking hour working on someone else's costume - a hunter from Destiny . Thankfully, she had fabricated most everything already and just brought it over. She also had a (horribly made) gun molded, which I'll rant about in a later post. My job has largely been painting, which is something I enjoy. I also sewed a cloak. I don't enjoy sewing, but I'm pleased enough with it. I've been watching Project Runway , which has instilled me with confidence? I did some draping shit, which looks alright. Today, because we have reached the eleventh hour, I've been doing assembly of some of the pieces and still painting. Painting. Painting. I may or may not have put more work int...

  UPDATE 2/6/23: These very nice boots utterly destroyed my feet. FYI. I wrapped up the final pieces of my crochet Sailor Saturn cosplay last week...at least the pieces that will be on my body. The Silence Glaive is still in a sort of limbo. It's been raining for days upon days and in order to do my repairs on the mighty beast I need to lug it outside on a not-rainy day with low humidity. The Weather Gods have not been on my side. I'm going to be...um...injecting(?!) epoxy resin UNDER the crochet in the weak spots that need to be reinforced. This is insane, I know. If it doesn't work I'm just going to coat the whole thing in a layer of epoxy and some silicone. I was trying to prevent it from becoming insanely heavy, but my tragic design flaws during Stage 1 may have ruined this dream. If I end up coating it, I'll be able to use it to for real bludgeon people at DragonCon, so watch out! For any future crochet-covered props, I'm going to be sure to create fra...

UPDATE 2/6/23: Format fixing. I was moving full-steam ahead on this mighty adventure. 'Was' is the operative word. I had some grand goals to finish completely by the end of this weekend. But alas! I thought I had another skein of Caron Simply Soft 'Passion.' I was trucking along on the boots when I ran out and discovered that I had no more. 'Passion' is the main purple I'm using. I don't even need that much more to finish. I left the house to get another skein and both Walmart and Michael's failed me. They always have this color, but not when I need it. I'm not going to order a single skein of yarn, so...I guess I'll be finishing the yarnwork for the Silence Glaive. Sweater Saturn Bag Lady Mitts Not having made a great deal of gloves in my crocheting time, I poked around the Internet until I found a pattern I could modify in order to work for this costume. I went with Stitch11's Simple, Easy and Quick Arm Warmers . I dropped my ...

UPDATE 2/6/23: Corrected some weird formatting. Bringin' The Law! Nisha's glove doesn't have any pink on it, so I went ahead and painted it. It only took about an hour. You know I love progress pictures so here, look at this: It looks much better on my hand and finished. Ignore my stupid face. It looks like I'm surprised I have a hand. I'm so bad at selfies. I ordered the other paint colors I need (as well as fabric glue) and I'm going to cut out the boot armor pieces, belt buckle, etc. from cardboard shortly, so that I can attach all of them and get started painting as soon as the stuff comes. I don't think the painting will take as long as Zer0. At least I hope it doesn't... Mainly because I have hundreds of hours of work left on the Saturn suit. Sailor Saturn's Bodice The bodice (sans sleeves) took about 80 hours, give or take. I'm still not quite done with it. I need to go back and add needlepoint detail stuff and the sl...

UPDATE 2/6/23: Did some format-fixing... I finally got back to work on this monumental task. I decided to dive into the bodice, which I anticipated to be the most difficult part. It's proving to be quite challenging. Again, I'm trying to avoid the Sailor Sack look and I'm going for a form-fitting top that doesn't strangle me, further smash my already flat chest nor pinch my armpits. Oh, and I also want to be able to get in and out of it easily. The nature of crochet doesn't allow me to make a big crochet fabric panel and then cut the fabric to the appropriate size and shape. I have to shape and properly size each piece...at the same time...as I go...while also concerning myself with the ridiculous shading I was compelled to do. It's involving a lot of strategic increases and decreases and constantly checking measurements to ensure that everything is happening as it should. It's quite tedious. By "quite tedious," I mean "really, really tedi...

UPDATE 2/5/23: I don't have any major commentary to add to this, years later, but I am planning to get my YouTube going properly with WIP and tutorial videos this year! This is a small update so don't get too excited! I'm planning on another update later this week that is much more meatier 'n stuff. I took a break of sorts last week to finish up those Furry Beast hats . I've gotten started on the collar and I completed the first side of the top of the Silence Glaive. The collar isn't interesting yet, but the top of the glaive is pleasing. I shot some time-lapse footage as I worked on the glaive, which was highly experimental. I'm only like a lvl 1 videographer or whatever. I'm pretty pleased with the video with the exception of the idiotic angle I was filming from (and why am I wearing those ridiculous pants?). There was some logic behind it, I swear. Next time I'm going to raise it higher and come from over my right shoulder so you can actually se...

UPDATE 2/5/23: If you stumbled on this post and you're wondering - I do still have this entire costume. EXCEPT the Silence Glaive. I made a ton of posts about it as I worked on it and it would be nice of me to gather all of the links together, I guess. I will add it to my to-do list for this blog revamping project I'm doing.  This past week I finished up the boob bow, covered the shaft of the Silence Glaive, tweaked the butt bow and did a great deal of intense, deep thinking about the bodice. When I say this, it sounds like I did a lot, but I unfortunately have surprisingly little to say about any of these parts. I'm especially lacking in clever commentary for this week's progress. In the upcoming days though I'm planning on shooting some time-lapse video of the top of the glaive. This will either be super cool or really boring. After that I might take a little break to work on my Nisha costume, which is not crochet. Boob Bow This bow is a little smaller th...

UPDATE 2/5/23: This was my magnum opus of cosplay. I think I peaked here. After this my entire life was downhill. Entire. Life. I didn't make any huge strides in progress this week. I did finish up the skirt and got the main part of the boob bow out of the way. The Boob Bow The boob bow is a little smaller than the butt bow and it's going to have a purple heart as the middle. Here are some pictures I took of the boob bow as I worked on it, so you can see better what I did to make it (nevermind that some of these pictures look like some sort of ad for Chapstick!). I'm not using a pattern aside from jotting down the number of stitches and number of rows I used, etc. My scribbled notes are just to get things symmetrical. The colorwork has all been pretty much freeform and sizing has been trial and error. I work from messy sketches. Here are some sketches of the coloration on the boob bow and also the Silence Glaive. The Great Silence Glaive Do-Over Speaki...