Here Kitty Kitty...

I was part way through making a techno-zombie but made the head far too small. Instead of frogging it and starting again I decided to convert the head into another cat toy. I was inspired by our cat Tiger-Lilly, one day we found him in the kitchen playing with something that looked like a fluffy grey catkin, on closer inspection it turned out to be the head of a mouse. Ik. But still rather cute, he was enjoying it so much.

Here then is a Zombie Mouse Head:





And here is Horatio enjoying it:



It's full of catnip of course ;)

SQUEEK

A friend of mine was kind enough to ferry me back and forth to a hospital in another town, nothing serious, just had to have my foot looked at and apparently the doctors in this town don't know how to do that. Anyway, in thanks I crocheted him a little Death of Rats, him being a fellow Discworld fan and he keeps pet rats...



The scythe was made from fimo polymer clay and the whiskers from fishing line. I did find a pattern online but I couldn't follow it so I decided to use the pattern from Creepy Cute and modify it. Turned out pretty well :)

Day of the Cute Tentacle

If you were born during the 80s and are now a gamer you will undoubtedly have played the epic point-and-click adventure game, Day of the Tentacle by Lucas Arts:



My brother and I loved it. So for his birthday last year I made him a tentacle which now sits on his computer desk:



I found the pattern on Amy's Odyssey it's most awesome.

Cthulhu Calls

At last I worked out how to do the wings, ok I say at last but it was actually about a year ago.

This little guy sat in front of the book at work and helped us sell more than we would have otherwise!







The bit of yarn trailing from his bum was left there so I could tie him onto the display, didn't want to make it easy for people to nick him!

Finally got the Hang of Hair!

The Lady Vampire's hair was done by tying on individual strands of yarn which was time consuming and didn't look all that good in the end. I only did it like that because I didn't understand how to follow the instructions for hair making in the Creepy Cute book, but by Beltaine I'd finally figured it out. I decided to make a seasonal amigurumi, a Beltaine Maiden:







The flowers were made from embroidery thread with a fine crochet hook, the patterns from the book I mentioned in my first post.

A Tribute to Goblins

My delightful other half Matthew loves the web comic Goblins by Thunt and once I was proficient at copying the patterns in the Creepy Cute book, I offered to try a bit of customisation for Matthew. He asked for a goblin, this goblin in fact:



His name is Chief. In the end I came up with this:







Isn't he cute? Thunt's significant other does crochet too apparently and squeed when she saw my little chief! Thunt put a photo up on his fan art page and more importantly, Matthew loved it!

The Whys and Wherefores

The Heathen Hooker. I so named my blog because I couldn't think of anything else. I am a pagan who enjoys crochet. That's it really!

I've been Pagan for over a decade but only a hooker for the past couple of years. It started like this... I work in a bookshop and one day this came into stock:



I suddenly developed the overwhelming urge to learn to crochet. I mean.. crocheted monsters? OMGs the cool! The trouble was, I didn't know anyone who could teach me. Thankfully that's where working in a bookshop comes in handy. I bought this book to go with my new obsession:

A week later I'd picked up the basics, a week after that, I'd picked up the slightly less basics and it progressed thusly until I felt brave enough to start making monders. (A cuteism of my brother's when he was very small and couldn't pronounce "monsters") Along the way I practised on simple baby blankets, rows of double crochet over and over again. This was my first attempt:


For my cousin's first baby. It was shown to her Northern Mother-in-Law and she approved of the tension I'd managed to maintain throughout. I was a happy me indeed, my first project approved of by a Northern Lady who knits for Britain apparently! For some reason I have the impression that people in the North of England are more down to earth and hardy and are born clutching knitting needles (ouch) and waving an umbilical cord jumper they'd whipped up in the womb. Don't ask me why.

Before the success of the blankets, I'd experimented with hats... disastrous hats as it turned out. Not even fit for the dog to wear.


This particular hat ended up being converted to a catnip mouse... which the dog played with. The next hat was a bit better but still too small really:



And the one after that was still too small:



I've decided that my head's to blame. I have a very big head. Recently I tried a different pattern which seems to work much better, especially since I now understand how important the gauge is! This hat's not quite finished yet, I need to line it with fleece and add some plaits:



You can see I've improved!

Anyway, back to my forays into the world of tiny crocheted beasties. I first tried a Cthulhu which was ok but I couldn't cope with the complex wings:



Also there is the hat-turned-mouse. Then came the Lady Vampire:



Yule was looming by this point so I turned my mind to more seasonal themes. I made a tiny father christmas for the tree, and one for works Secret Santa, also made a snowman out of the same glittery fluff yarn I used in one of the disastrous hats. That yarn too went to make an alien for our family christmas swapsie games.




Just between the alien's antenna you can make out a patch of green. That is part of a crocheted mistletoe leaf. One adorned each parcel we gave out that year. The pattern came from this book:



Which is awesome by the way. Mum and I share it, she's the knitter of the family and can't crochet to save her life but then I'm like that with knitting. I can make a scarf if I really try but even then I need Mum to fix it when I drop stitches. Nope, crochet's definitely the one for me.

I knew I was getting better at it when a colleague asked me to make a pair of monsters for his soon-to-be-born twin sons. I leant him my book and told him to chose which ones he wanted then I extracted a tenner from him to cover the cost of the materials. This is what he chose: