The Leftovers

Yes, this is another amigurumi jellyfish post. (The pattern I use for these is from One Dog Woof, and you can find it here.) 

Pretty much for the month of August, I covered one computer aided drafting class at the continuation high school. (The teacher was on jury duty.)

After a while, I got into a rhythm with the class. I spent the beginning of each period giving announcements, getting them started, and taking roll. At the end of each period, I called for clean up (well, log off), and making sure things were neat for the next class.

However, in the middle of each period, as the kiddos were working (or, I should say "working"), there wasn't too much for me to do. (I had the occasional question. Or a call from the office. Or students asking for restroom passes.) Watching students "working" all period can get a bit tedious. I needed something to do with my hands.

It was an excellent time to have a crochet project.

There is a reason why handiwork projects have been taken along for centuries. It's really easy to focus on listening and watching while the hands are busy.

The first jellyfish I worked on was the one I already showed a couple weeks ago...

I bought the yarn months ago with the intention of making a jellyfish. But it got usurped by other more pressing projects. Once I found the yarn again, I knew it was as good a time as any to finish this guy off.

I finished it, and then I learned the teacher was going to be out for another week. What to do now?

Well, after making 30-something jellyfish, I had plenty of leftover yarn. From any one jellyfish there wasn't enough to make another, but after making four in the darker blue, I had enough leftover yarn to complete another blue jellyfish...

You should have seen the box of cotton yarn I have. It was a mess. I took an evening and detangled all sorts of odds and ends. And after weighing what I had, I found I had enough of a couple colors to crochet more jellyfish caps. As for tentacles, I had various odds and ends that would work.

I decided the next one to do would be in purple...

And the one after that would be pink...

I even have two more colors I could still do, but that's when the assignment was coming to a close. (When I heard that the jury was in deliberations, I focused on finishing up all the tentacles.)

For the record, the pink jellyfish is jellyfish number 37.

And there'll be more after this. There are plenty of days where all I'm doing is watching kiddos work. I have a great take-along project to keep my hands busy and my mind alert.

Knit & Crochet Check In

If you're up to date with my subbing stories, you know I've been covering the same class for a month. It's a class where they have projects they do on computers.

At a certain point (after I've given them the announcements for the day, taken roll, and walked the room) there's not much for me to do but sit and watch them. But I can't sit still and just watch them without going a little crazy. I need to do something with my hands.

It turns out that jellyfish are a great project in this situation. I don't have to think too hard. I can easily watch classes while crocheting them. I can jump up in a moment if I'm needed. So...

For those keeping score, this is jellyfish #34. And at this moment: jellyfish #35 is just awaiting final assembly, jellyfish #36 needs two more tentacles made, and jellyfish #37 needs all of its tentacles made.

Back in June, I showed off the start of a new infinity scarf.

I'm making slow progress on it...

Although, comparing those two pictures, the progress might not be as slow as I thought.

Slow and steady wins the race, after all. Seriously...

Four More Jellyfish... Again

Remember the jellyfish I made for my nephews' birthdays? The jellyfish never made it. They are lost somewhere...

I took some time to be sad about this. And mad. And then I got to making them again. (This time I'll give them to a person to take. Hopefully that'll take care of the problem.)

Now, I have pictures of jellyfish...

These should look familiar. I used the exact same colorways as before.

Although, the tentacle placement is probably different. I place them via formula, but that formula isn't exact. It's kind of hard to explain.

And so, I'll leave you with these shots of the jellyfish. Hopefully this time they'll make it to their intended recipients.

Blame It On the Heat

The jellyfish are coming along...

I don't have a complete jellyfish at the moment. But these pieces will go into the four that are in process.

I could be totally done with them except: (1) It's been warm, so I haven't been doing as much yarny stuff as I would do when it's cold, (2) I've been working many days (which is such a shock as I don't usually get so many summer school days, but I'm so very, very grateful for the work), and (3) It turns out that the heat is making me stupid.

How is the heat making me stupid? The other night I thought it'd be fun to do some different color combinations of the flip-flop keychains. I needed a bit of a break from the jellyfish. And while one came out really nice...

...I managed to make stupid mistakes on the other two. This one in orange and purple...

...is for me, so I'm making myself live with the mistake. Can you see it?

As for the other...

...I was going to put it up for sale, but I can't sell this. Can you see the mistake? How about here?

Yeah, so I'm going to have to remake this. Ah well.

I did manage to list a couple more lip balm cozy colors. (If you click on the pictures, it'll take you to the listings on Etsy.)

As I was doing some research, I saw lip balm cozies with mermaid tails on them. What do you think? Should I attempt such a thing?

My Week in Projects

Last week was a holiday week in the district. Yeah, the whole week. Did I get any knitting done? Nothing spectacular. In my defense, there was this holiday. And it got kinda hot at the end of the week. And then there was that day I had to stand in line at the DMV... (Yeah, I know, make an appointment. Someone waited a bit too long to make that appointment.)

When it's summer, I do more crocheting. Crocheting is cooler. When I knit in the heat, my palms sweat. So, I made another flip-flop...

In pink and orange... Because pink and orange...

In case you hadn't realized, the sole is in the trim color...

And then there was a little key-per keychain that was for a custom order. (This was knit, for the record.)

Colors chosen by the customer...

And I finally took some pictures of... a pom pom. I broke down and bought a pom pom maker a few weeks ago. And I went a little crazy with it.

It turns out that making pom poms is kinda fun. I followed a pattern with the intent of making it look like a watermelon...

It needs a bit more of a trim. And someone who's had a bit more practice. (After this, I practiced doing a little color blocking. Pictures of that I'll post another time.)

I'm also in the process of collecting pom pom patterns. I have them collected on a Pinterest board.

Oh, and one last jellyfish...

Not the last jellyfish I'll ever make, mind. (I have to remake the jellyfish for my nephews. Theirs... got lost in the mail.) Just the last jellyfish picture for today.

Happy Monday.

What I Did on Sunday

I made another trip to the farmers market. I rather liked this setup. (Just please ignore the needs-to-be-ironed tablecloth...)

The flip-flop keychains were out. I'll get better pictures for you next week.

And it's time to make more jellyfish. The yellow guy is now all by his lonesome. The orange guy went to a new home.

Four More Jellyfish

Last week I promised finished jellyfish. This week, I have finished jellyfish...

I did, in fact, have them finished by last Monday.

That's when I took these pictures. I even used this one to replace my header photo on a couple of my social media pages...

They were mailed on Thursday, and according to the online tracker, they arrived on Saturday. Hopefully the nephews are enjoying them.

Now, it's back to infinity scarves. I started one on Tuesday. It took me over an hour to cast on. I worked on it for the next couple days. On Saturday night, I ripped it all out.

The stitches were too loose. I decided to go with a smaller needle. And once I'd pulled it off the needles, I saw that it was waaaay too big. So, good call, that. (No one needs an infinity scarf that's 70 inches around.)

I'll post pictures when I have some progress to report.

The Fastest Jellyfish

I've been making amigurumi jellyfish for almost two years now. I've written numerous posts about them, including inventorying how many I'd made just over a year ago.

Because I've made so many, I have a routine when it comes to constructing the things. If I push myself, I can get one finished in a week. (Not that the work really takes a week, but I've got a day job and other things that must be done. If I just crocheted all day...)

By the time you read this, I will have completed four in two weeks. For me, that's lightening fast.

(And the "lightening fast" only happened because I was doing the crocheting while at the day job. Sometimes I luck out and have classes that only need me to monitor, like having a student teacher or having AP classes after they've taken the AP test. I have to do something to keep my brain and hands busy or I'll be struggling to stay awake.)

As of "press time", however, I only had two complete...

...with two more just waiting for a face and stuffing...

If you follow me on Instagram (I'm @ZiziRho), you'll have already seen some of my progress...

(And I'll post pictures of the last two on Instagram once I finish them.)

That'll bring my grand total number of completed jellyfish up to 29. (I'm keeping a list.)

Wow, that's one short of 30. I'd better not say that too loudly. Someone will surely request number 30 before too long.

Apologies for being behind in responding to comments. It appears that Blogger has developed a glitch and is no longer sending me email notifications for blog comments. (Is anyone else noticing this? Or is it just me?) Hopefully, the glitch will be repaired soon.

Thirteen Tentacles

I'm at it again. I'm making more jellyfish.

It's kind of a long story. It starts with me being a bad aunt. It ends with me having oodles of time last week. (Two words: student teacher.)

Anyway, I've made four bodies, and now it's time to make tentacles. I've made thirteen already...

Which is a good start. There are eight tentacles per jellyfish. I'm making four jellyfish. 8 x 4 = 32.

32 - 13 = 19.

Nineteen more tentacles to go...

Deep sigh. Why did I start this again? Oh, right. I've missed all my nephews' birthdays. Bad aunt.

Jellyfish No. 23

Last week was a low and slow week for me. I had hoped to finish writing up the pattern for the keychains I've been working on. I've got most of it done, but not enough to be able to post it this week.

So, instead I'm posting a picture of the latest jellyfish. I finished this guy about two (three?) weeks ago. And I just spent the better part of 20 minutes verifying that he is #23. Sigh.

(Link to the pattern.)

Note to self: perhaps one should number the jellyfish inventory to help with this count in the future.

The colors on this one are for a very specific purpose. I had a request for one for the newly born granddaughter of the lady from the farmers market. She wanted it to match the colors of the baby's bedroom. But we had a pink/coral problem. I posited this color combo. She didn't think it sounded like a good idea. So, I made the color combination she requested. But then I had to make this one just to prove it would also work. And here it is.

I had the colors in yarn already. Why not?

I wish you a good week.

Jellyfish No. 20

Last week I did my jellyfish inventory and showed my current jellyfish in progress...

I finally got it completed Thursday night. Not that I had all that much to do. It was just one of those weeks where I'd get home and would be so out of it that I didn't have the energy to do that final bit of detail work--the face.

(The pattern gives great detail in where the eyes should go. Unfortunately, getting the smile right and in the center between the eyes is always a bit of a challenge.)

So, now it's finally finished...

And I posted a short video to Instagram (because I like to see it move)...

A post shared by Liz A. (@zizirho) on May 20, 2017 at 2:40pm PDT

Jellyfish Inventory

The other day (okay, it was more like a couple months ago), someone made a comment about how many jellyfish I'd made. And I realized that I had no idea what that number was. The vast majority of them have gone to other homes upon my finishing them.

But I had kept records. Could I track down the number? (And, the thought occurred, it might be a good idea to keep a list of them from now on.) So, since I really have nothing interesting to talk about today...

The initial idea came from someone at that farmers market I do from time to time. She showed me some images, and from there I was able to track down the pattern (via One Dog Woof). (This came out just about a year ago. Wow.)

And then I made my first jellyfish...

Shortly thereafter, I made two others...

And then the one that went to Betty...

The lady who bought the first one requested one in purple for herself. Then four others for her granddaughters...

I made three for others at the farmers market, two for Christmas presents, and one for someone family adjacent, none of which I remembered to get pictures of. Then MJ ordered one...

And finally, just a couple weeks ago, the one from my "neighbor" at the last farmers market I did...

That's 17. I've neglected to mention that after Christmas I got bored and made another one in orange. (The purple one in this image is from the second image. I can't recall when I made that middle blue one.)

And that's 19.

Wow. 19.

Anyway, the whole reason that this even came up was because of Anna. She's seeking donations for a Support the Troops Auction for the USO of North Carolina, and I offered to make something. She suggested a jellyfish, and I had the brilliant idea that it should be red, white, and blue.

It's not quite finished yet...

While I was working on this one, I started to wonder, again, how many of these things I'd made. And so, I decided to count them up. This one makes 20.

Oh, by the way, I also started another yellow one. Just because I had the yarn and I was bored one night. It's barely started, but it'll bring my total to 21.

I have this image in my head of my farmers market booth with a line of jellyfish. So, there are going to be more. Eventually. Probably.