PlanetJune by June Gilbank

I have to admit I’ve been a bit slow to appreciate the appeal of buying handmade, mostly because I’m usually guilty of seeing something and thinking “I could make that!” Well, yes, I probably could, given many hours/weeks/months of time, learning a new skill, and investing in new equipment and tools to do it properly… Now I’ve started to actually buy beautiful things that have been individually made by talented people, I can appreciate them for the lovely treat they are, instead of feeling like I have to challenge myself to make everything.

Of course, receiving a handmade gift is even more of a pleasure! I’ve been absolutely spoiled recently by some of my best crafty-blogger friends. Just look at this gorgeous grey-blue shrug that Kari (Crafty Ginger) made for me. It’s so beautifully knitted – a skill I have never picked up – fits me perfectly, and I just love the colour:

Kari also spoiled me with lots of other treats too, but they were dispersed before I thought to take a picture. Thank you, Kari – I love everything!

Alice (futuregirl) sent me a huge pile of lovely origami papers to use – I can definitely make good use of those for Folding Trees! But, even better, she sent me a handmade by futuregirl Birdcage Handbag! It is just beautiful. Alice is currently in the process of writing up the patterns for some of her bags, so head over to the futuregirl craft blog soon if you’d like to make one for yourself. In the meantime, take a look at mine:

Sorry for the strange angle of this pic – I was trying to show the embroidered birdcage on the front AND the bird fabric lining on the inside!

Thank you, Alice – I shall treasure my bag!

I’ve also been doing a bit of shopping on Etsy and ArtFire. As a buyer, both were easy to use, although if a seller has a store at both venues, I’m choosing ArtFire, because I know the artisan won’t be paying commission fees on my purchase that way! I thought I’d put together a little showcase of things I’ve bought and would recommend if you’re looking for gifts or to treat yourself. In no particular order:

I have been intending to commission a portrait of Maui from ArtFire seller Christy DeKoning for a year, but I was having diifficulty selecting the perfect source photos (difficult choice with such a photogenic cat… yes, I know I’m biased!). I’m so glad I finally made my mind up… Christy has painted the most adorable little watercolour for me, and she also e-mailed me a proof and was happy to correct the one little line that originally didn’t look quite like my boy (now it’s perfect). Christy also documented the process on her own blog – wow! The result is a beautiful work of art:

This adorable carved wooden chickadee comes from Etsy seller and talented artist Sandra Healy. Sandra has a huge range of over 270 species of wild animals and birds, and she individually carves and paints each one. If you like animals, you really must check out her store. Here’s my darling chickadee:

I bought this beautiful polymer clay covered crochet hook from Etsy seller Jenn Edwards, aka The Fanciful Feline. Jenn also sells polymer clay beads and more in her store. Jenn has taken my favourite type of hook (Susan Bates) and added a comfortable smooth handle complete with floating flowers and intricately caned butterflies. It’s my new favourite hook:

Lip balm is one of my vices – I never wear lipstick, but you’ll never find me without my trusty lip balm. ArtFire seller Bohemian Rose makes handmade soaps and sugar scrubs, and also has a lovely range of deliciously scented lip balms. If you feel in need of a delicious little treat to pamper yourself, check out her store. I picked up her Pele lip balm, which is a yummy fruity pineapple flavour, and a steal at only $5 for two balms (I also chose the Cuticle Balm – much more convenient than a bottle of moisturiser for those emergency dry cuticle situations):

I hope I’ve inspired you to look into buying handmade items for yourself and your friends and family. You can find beautiful, original, high quality handcrafted merchandise from forums such as ArtFire.com and Etsy.com, and the knowledge that you are directly helping to support the artist/artisan will give you that warm glow that you just don’t get from a trip to the mall. Long live handmade!

Wow. What a response! Thank you all for your comments – it means so much to me that you like my most personal work to date

Okay, so now you’ve seen the finished product, but I think I need to share a little of the insane amount of effort that went into making my orang utan! I would guess we’re looking at about 100 hours of June time, of which the actual crocheting that you see is less than half of that. Aside from that, highlights include:

• sculpting the hands and feet from pipe cleaners
• snapping and unsnapping armature parts to get the skeleton proportions right (literally hours of struggle, one pinched fingertip and one hugely bruised knuckle to show for that)
• sewing cushioned sleeves to cushion the skeleton and keep them in the right place inside the body
• the previous 2 heads that went wrong wrong wrong
• creating a wire base for the head so it wouldn’t sag

Here’s a glimpse into a little bit of the work that you don’t see in the finished orang:

left: pipe cleaners formed into shape of hand
middle: beginning to crochet over the form
right: finished hand with arm attached

left: a finished arm and leg
middle: the spine (this is the plastic segmented poseable armature I used)
right: quilted covers for the armature limbs so he wouldn’t feel too bony

I didn’t take any pics of the inside of the body or head, but that should give you an idea – there’s more than meets the eye to this little guy! But the result is that he is infinitely poseable and feels very realistic, thanks to the weight of the armature and the ‘backbone’ bumps you can just feel when you stroke him.

I’m so flattered that some of you would like a pattern, but, as you can see from the above, this wouldn’t be a crochet pattern – it would be ‘how to make a plush art sculpture (oh yeah, and you’ll need to crochet too)’. And that’s one reason why my orang utan is art, not craft – it’s not something that can be reproduced. So definitely no pattern (sorry!).

But there may be a way you can own a little piece of him, even though you can never make/buy an original: I’m thinking of selling high quality prints of a really good photograph of him. I tweeted the idea yesterday and had some good responses – I still need to investigate the logistics but I think it would be doable.

So now I’d like to ask you: would you buy a print if they were for sale? Would you prefer something more ‘useful’ like a blank notecard or postcard, or an art print that you could frame? Or something else again – I’m open to all ideas. If there’s enough interest I’ll get some printed and put them in the shop.

You probably all know the story by now: I’ve had a pet project for the past year – to crochet a life-size realistic baby orang utan as a freeform art project (no pattern!). It’s been a long time coming, but I have finally finished him!

I have a lot of detail I could share, but I think I’ll save that for another time, and let the pics speak for themselves today. Please, please leave me comments! This is the most important (to me) piece I’ve ever made and I really really want to know what you think of him…

And finally, with a wink to the fellow Pratchett fans: OOK!

For some reason I am very nervous about showing him to you – I feel like my soul is on display! I hope you can tell that I have poured my heart into him. Please let me know what you think in the comments…

Okay, I can’t spin out the suspense any longer – I have to show you what I’ve made… It seems like there are a lot of Mario or PacMan inspired crafts going on at the moment, but I can’t imagine why nobody has thought to make these before: amigurumi Lemmings!

Gamers of the ’90s probably remember the classic Lemmings video game franchise – those hapless green-haired troops who followed each other in a line and would walk straight off a cliff to their doom if you didn’t create a path to safety for them. It was an original and engaging puzzle/strategy game with really cute music. I used to love playing it on my cousins’ Amiga, and later the tiny black-and-white version on my original GameBoy.

The way to play the game was to assign skills to some of the many lemmings in order to help as many as possible to safely navigate their surroundings and make it through each level. There were 9 different skills:

1. Walker: The basic model lemming. Walks and walks until he hits a wall or falls off a cliff
2. Blocker: Stops other lemmings from passing
3. Miner: Digs a tunnel with his trusty pickaxe
4. Floater: Falls from any height without damage thanks to his handy umbrella
5. Builder: Builds a bridge using the boards he carries in his backpack

There were also Digger, Climber, Basher & Bomber lemmings, but I didn’t make those because they didn’t have any interesting props.

Please click through to see the full-size image – it looks so much better that way!

I crocheted all the Lemmings using my free Mop Top Mascots pattern, and I improvised their accessories to make them into the appropriate lemming. I crocheted around floral wire to make the pickaxe and umbrella handle, and I made a little stand for Builder’s bridge out of black polymer clay (a crocheted bridge isn’t stiff enough to support a lemming!). I also made a stand out of floral wire for Floater (you can see the base of it in the group shot), so he really does hang in the air.

Click through to see the full-size image

It was such a fun project. My favourite parts to make were the umbrella and the builder’s backpack – tiny accessories are just so cute!

Retro-game geek June signing off… Please leave me a comment if you like my Lemmings!

ETA: Just to make it clear, if you’d like to make your own lemmings, the basic lemming body uses my Mop Top Mascots pattern, and you can improvise your own accessories for them!

ETA: Bowing to pressure, I’ve added details for how I made the accessories in the next post…

ETA: If you are interested in commissioning any lemmings from me, please see this post!

Thank you so much for the Discworld love; I’m so happy you get what I was trying to do here. I also have some news: I contacted Terry Pratchett’s agent, to ask if there was any possibility that Terry could see my Discworld, and Colin kindly agreed to show the pics to Terry. And I have a reply from Colin about Terry Pratchett’s reaction:

He gave a quiet laugh and said, ‘Well, if you’re going to crochet Discworld then that’s the way to do it!’

Thank you, Terry! (And Colin.) This has made my day!

I thought I would share my happiness by revealing some more details of my Discworld project. I’ve had several requests from people wondering how I managed to accurately crochet in the landmasses of the Disc. I’m not intending this as a tutorial or method for you to follow – I just thought you might like to see the crazy method my mind came up with to crochetify the Discworld

First, I started by crocheting a plain blue circle for the underside of the Disc. I scanned this into the computer. Then I used the Discworld Mapp to sketch (with pencil and paper) a map of the landmasses and a rough guide for my colour changes. I scanned this into the computer too:

I edited my sketch to remove the white background and darken the lines to black to make them easier to see. I resized the two images so they were the same size, and then layered the map over the crocheted Disc:

Now for the slow part… but I figured it was better to make the mistakes digitally than to have to rip back when it came to the crocheting part. In my graphics software, I picked a paintbrush that was about the same size as one crocheted stitch, then began to colour in my map onscreen. I kept the coloured layer translucent, so I could still see the stitches beneath. Here’s a close-up, and the complete digitally-coloured map:

Lastly I turned off the black sketch layer, and printed my ‘pattern’:

With all that work done, I just had to reproduce my digital crochet in reality! No secret method here – just careful counting and colour changes.

When I had finished, I crocheted both discs together around the edges, to keep it together and give a subtle Rimfall effect. I also stitched the two discs together at various points across the surface (with blue yarn in the blue areas only, so it doesn’t show), to avoid any problems with it trying to puff up in the middle – it’s called the Disc, not the Lens

Oh, and you may also be able to see from this pic that I used a variegated green yarn, so I chose the lighter green parts of the yarn to be closer to the Hub, fading to darker green towards the Rim. I just thought it added a little more depth:

That’s it! As I said before, it really was a labour of love, and it took much longer to design than to actually crochet! And now I can say it’s officially Pratchett-approved

You can, of course, buy the patterns for my Turtle and Elephants, if you are so inclined.

I hope you enjoyed this insight into the unusual way my mind works. Please leave me a comment if you did…