Chunky Yarn

Hello and welcome back my lovely readers! No WIP post today, that will be Monday. You may have seen this post before, for some reason I scheduled it for 2 weeks ahead but it went up anyway so sorry if you got that little preview. anyway, here's the post.
I'm not usually one to jump on the latest trends, but Chunky yarns are huge right now and I am loving them. If you've been around for a while, you know I have a thing for making a plushie then making a giant and miniature version. Chunky yarn makes great giant plushies! I love the look of the big stitches rather than just doubling up your stitch count (which doesn't really work right, you have to adjust your increases/decreases etc.) and it's a much quicker process. So I wanted to take a little time to talk about some of my favorites and what I am doing with them. I don't plan to do any chunky yarn reviews too soon, I want to get through a lot more of the worsted weights first as they are more practical, so this is what you get in the meantime.

First off, Bernat Softee Chunky. This is your inexpensive option. This was my first foray into chunky yarns and I like it a lot. It has very vibrant colors and comes in some of the bigger skeins I've found. I wish it were a bit less fuzzy though, but it makes for good plushies. Due to the price, I may use it more in the future. It's easy to work with and this would definitely be the yarn I would suggest if you are just starting with chunky yarns or finances are limited. I would use it more, but my primary use for chunky yarn is giant My Little Pony plushies and this yarn doesn't really have an orange which is very frustrating. I made these guys with this yarn in the past and I love how vibrant the red is!

Next up is one I have not worked with as much:

I have only worked with Loops & Threads: Zoomba once, but it was very much like the Softee Chunky (dman these yarns have weird names!) it's soft and fluffy but a bit more for a similar sized skein. Also you can only find it at Michaels which is a pain for me as it's across town. It only comes in seven colors so is not great for my use but I used it because they had the only chunky purple I could find at the time. Not a bad yarn at all if they have the colors you want. I made the large pony here using it.

 And finally my favorite:

I'm not generally a big lion brand fan, but their Hometown USA chunky weight yarn is fantastic. It runs a bit more expensive considering it is a smaller skein but I think it is worth it. It's a very soft and sleek yarn that is just wonderful to work with, it unwinds into super soft roving if you just untwist. It gives the plushies a great clean feel and they don't collect bits of fluff like most other yarns do. I have gotten very lucky with this yarn lately as my local Craft Warehouse has been selling bags that have three to five skeins of this yarn for only $5, considering one skein usually runs around $4 that is pretty incredible. Unfortunately the colors are limited so I have a ton of light yellow but I have a big project planned with it, but I'll tell you more about that once I have a bit more of it completed. I would definitely suggest giving this yarn a try it is an absolute dream to work with and the color variety is better than either of the other two. I've mostly just made my ponies with this yarn (minus the purple one of course.)


If you are going to give these yarns a try, I suggest using a size J hook for double or HD stitches and you can go up to an M or N for SC. You could go even bigger if you aren't working on something that worries about fiber fill poking through. I generally don't like using the huge hooks as I feel like I'm doing less fine craft and more kids craft, but it is a lot of fun to see how quickly these projects come together.

Thanks for taking a look and I hope you find this useful if you are planning to try using some chunky yarn or just looking for some good brands. I know there are other good yarns out there, and these are only some of these acrylic yarns so let me know what else you like, what I should be trying. I will be doing a follow up in the near future where I talk about some other projects I am working on in chunky yarns. But until then, have a great week!

Event Talk: Kaleidescope Bazaar

Hello and welcome back my lovely readers. I hope you had a wonderful weekend. Today I want to talk a bit more about crafting for a living and selling at craft fairs and the like. I promise we will be back to talking about yarns on Monday (I already have the post written so I have no excuse this time!) but I just want to share some of the things I've been learning about the business that I wish I had known when I started. It all has a lot to do with the last couple of events I have been selling at.

At this point I have worked six events, two pirate/LARP events, three craft shows and one comic convention and I've only really done well at the convention (ignoring the wonderful fluke of selling some of my stock to a reseller who also sell at conventions). This weekend was definitely no exception and probably the worst I have ever done only selling a pair of gloves and one octopus. It was a small local craft show in it's first year but enough of the other vendors did well enough for me to guess that this is just not my niche. I hoped that there would be parents and grandparents looking for christmas presents who would at least buy my toys, but sadly no. The show was well run and advertized so I think craft shows are just not it for my work.

I would consider just working on getting my work out there and selling online, but I love working events. I love getting to meet people and talk to them about my craft. I love getting to meet other vendors. And it is much easier to gauge your prices when you can see customers responses to them in person. This means I have to focus on finding and getting into conventions. They are less common than craft shows and I am competing with other very talented artists in the area of which there are many) for limited table spaces, and for the larger shows tables can be very expensive. San Diego Comic Con runs in the thousands for tables, but you definitely get what you pay for in the number of potential customers. I'm not aiming that high any time soon, but there are enough cons in my area to hopefully make things work.

So that would definitely be some of my advice for someone trying to get into selling your wares, find your niche, and stick to it. If you want to sell My Little Pony, Pokemon, and Super Hero plushies, maybe you should stick to cons or online. Here's to hoping the next ones go better so we can afford to get into some of the bigger conventions. I hope this is helpful to someone and not just me ranting. It is always a learning process in this business and as long as I take away something new, I guess I can't consider any event too much of a flop.

Project Update 11/21

Hello and welcome back my lovely readers. If you missed it, there was a post on Monday but it was a quick one. I hope you had a good week, I've had a very busy one. I've been working my fingers off all week, I sold most of my ponies last week so I needed to refill my stock for the show we are working this Saturday. I've had some health issues this week so I didn't get as many done as I would have liked, but here's what I did get done. I do apologize for the lateness of the post, I was tryingto get one last pony finished before posting.

These three ponies were some of the first I ever made and they never sold so they looked a lot worse than my newer ones so I decided to do some updates on them. The Fluttershy with the white eyes needed the most work. I had originally had blue felt behind the eyes because I didn't have blue eyes at the time, they looked terrible. Unfortunately I couldn't get the eyes off and didn't have the time to remake the whole head, so I at least took the felt off. The legs and head weren't secured properly so I had to redo that. Then the yarn I had for the hair was terrible and way too thick so I replaced it. The old wing pattern is ok (so I left it on the other one) but I had put them on backwards on this one so I just made a new pair of wings for her. And then all three ponies just had cut out and glued on felt cutie marks so I ripped those off and felted on new ones. Now I am much less embarrassed to put these on my table. It was interesting getting to look back six months and see how much I have progressed since then.



Then I finished off a set of medium ponies. Nothing that I haven't shared before here. New yarn for Pinkie Pie, looks mostly the same but she comes out slightly larger and less soft. Before I was using a knit picks: brava (hence why it was so small) now I'm just using a red heart: super saver. But I think the size difference makes up for less softness. Also I altered the patterns for the horns on the unicorns. The pattern calls for a more dynamic change as you expand (basically adding three stitches, doing a row in the new count, then expanding again) I switched it to a gradual increase, starting and ending with the same number of stitches, but it looks smoother now I think.

Having finished the smaller ponies, I have been rushing to get a many of the giant ones done as possible. Thankfully I had yarn on hand to do a few of them (yay for finally starting to stash smart) so I went ahead and made a couple. I am still working on Rainbow Dash obviously but I wanted to get the post up. Thankfully I was able to find the bright purple for Twilight Sparkle in the same yarn I use for the other ponies, as well as an orange for Applejack instead of the gold I used last time. One of the biggest challenges of making character plushies is getting the colors close enough that fans will want them while keeping the yarns consistent. I still have three more to make to have the full set but I simply did not have the time and I wanted to prioritize getting you lovely people a post today.

I didn't have much time to work on most of the projects I showed you last week, I thnk I got maybe 4 rows on all of them combined, except for the pokemon. I managed to finish up this little guy and I think he is just the cutest. I am just in love with how these look when then are finished, especially with the felted eyes which I have been working very hard on perfecting. I have already started on the next once (no pics as he's packed away to be worked on tomorrow) but I should have finished pics next week. However, this finished one is an Umbreon I'll need to put up a pic later of the whole set as they look very cute together.

So that's about it for this week. I didn't get much more work done on Luna so I won't bother showing her off. I'm off to a craft show tomorrow which I will tell you all about on Monday. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I will see you next time.

Event Talk: Yule Bazar

Hello and welcome back my lovely readers. I hope you all had a great weekend, mine was interesting. As I said I went to a local Yule Fair this weekend to sell my plushies with a friend of mine who also does crafts. We got into the show last minute after the one we had scheduled to work last weekend cancelled last minute so we were glad to be able to find anything. I have only been vending since this spring and I am still learning a lot, we spent a lot of time optimizing our table set up and figuring out what things we need (tape, we always forget tape) and which things just don't work.

Plushies and such are mine, jewelry and dragons are not.

Thankfully we had two tables this weekend so I had one (mostly) to myself. I've been trying to get my plushies up off the table and this is what we are trying at this point. I like being able to put different things at different eye levels and it helps being able to put the more expensive plushies out of reach of toddlers. At a show this summer I had a little boy come running up to my table and shoved one of my octopi in his mouth. Thankfully the parents were responsible and bought it, but I was glad it was a 10 dollar plushie with no felting and not one of my bigger ones. Hopefully we will just be adding to and adjusting this setup in the future (like actually getting my sign up, or a  full sized tablecloth) but I generally like it.

I'm talking more about the setup because the event itself was really a dud. I made only one sale and my friend made a couple of small ones. We are still new to vending and trying to figure out what shows are worth it. At least I got to spend two day hanging out with a good friend and crochetting while meeting some awesome local vendors. One such vendor works a lot of the shows we would like to work but just won't have the money or stock to do for a while and she ended up buying most of my ponies to sell at those events which is huge for me. I got to make a big sale when my family could really use the money, that puts my name out there at events that I won't be able to work, and hopefully if they do well for her I can do more in the future.

The only problem is that I have an event this coming Sunday so I will be working my fingers off to get more ponies done by then. As far as problems go, this is a great one to have. I just want to get them finished so I can go back to working on my big pokemon, I may be a bit obsessed.

So bad event, good weekend, here's to hoping the next ones goes better! I will be working another (hopeuflly much bigger) local show this weekend, again with Kristel but also my husband's Sister (who makes jewelry) and another good friend who does art. Hopefully this one does better for everyone involved.

I would end the post off here but I want to talk about he recent changes in the blog. so I tried out a new layout, it was terrible, I changed it back for now, because this one is less terrible. I definitely want to play around with it more in the future but I don't really know what I'm doing so please bear with me if things look weird sometimes. Thank you for taking a read and have a great week!

Project Update 11/13

Hello and welcome back my lovely and patient readers. Sorry about the delay in posts lately, I have been working my hands off for the three fairs I am working in the next month, starting this weekend. I have made many ponies, too many too count (ok so I made 26 but it feels like a whole lot more) 15 octopi, two goblins, another large eevee, finished off hats and put in way too much time on my giant Luna plushie. And of course I got an order this week so I have been very busy.

I want to at least show off a bit of what I have been working on this week with you, though most of it is already packed away for this weekend (there will be pics next time) but I am still finishing up a couple of big projects I'm a bit proud of.

I've been working on a big Umbreon (another of the pokemon) and he just needs more felting and to be sewn up at this point. I used a bit of a stiffer yarn for this guy (no idea what it is, I have a lot of blacks without labels) and it seems to be doing better with not showing fluff and not picking up bits of dust or what have you which can make black projects look dirty. The pattern I am working from is for the main Eevee so the pattern for the ears and tail and all the colorwork is my own. I'm getting a bit better with shaping pieces, but still only as long as they are symmetrical. It will be a while yet before I could design something like this body.

Still working on the shawl for my Grandmother-in-law. I have a month and a half to finish it but I'm just enjoying working on it so much. I let myself do a little bit of work on it between other projects throughout the day as a reward. I just love how soft and lacy it looks, most of what I do is bright colors and solid pieces so it's just nice working on something delicate and traditional for once.


Speaking of solid, brightly colored pieces, I have been teaching myself Tunisian Crochet. Not sure why, but it sounded fun. So I'm working on some more wash clothes and just doing the very basic stitch for now. It doesn't look great (especially from the back, I'm not showing you the back) but it's my first piece so definitely a learning experience. I have a great little book on Tunisian stitches so I want to go through it just doing a washcloth each in different stitches. Hopefully then I will have enough washcloths!


Like I said, I have been working on a lot of other stuff, but there is one other project I don't have finished and binned up, yep I'm still working on Luna. I took the time to at least sew most the finished parts together and that tail is ridiculous! Working on the mane right now and it is a ton of work but will be worth it. Then just wings and accessories to go. I really love working on big projects like this but this mane is really driving me crazy. I am definitely looking forward to having this plushie done, I think I'll work on one with a bit simpler hair next time.


So that's all I have for today, now to finish up the last couple plushies and get ready for the event. I am lucky to get to work events with my good friend Kristel of Kristel Creations (She has a crafting blog too, check it out!)  and I will tell you more about it next week.

I'm working on a buffer so there will be less missed posts in the future. Have a great weekend and stay awesome!