Crochet Mario Bros. Blanket: DONE

No more words. Here is the blanket!!!!

And like I said:

Super Mario Crochet Blanket: Nearly Done

The End is NEAR!!!!!!!

The blanket is still in my possession. I need a full picture of the entire thing with the new border I finished up the other night. I also want a pic of my brother when I give it to him so ONE more post till the end! This is my progress this far on this 2 year journey:

TADA: Borderless blanket. 252 granny squares sewn together. This is the blanket hanging up from my shelf above my bed. Pardon the shoddy camera work.

Close-up, Please:

This is the first border I did. It was a double crochet in each stitch all the way around. It started to ruffle and that wasn't the look I was going for.

So, I frogged it:

I did it over again, following the same pattern as the granny squares. It wasn't the look I originally wanted, but it will have to do.

This is the way I originally attached the label. I didn't have any embroidery thread on hand so I tried using some really thin ribbon. It was awful.

The next day I went out and bought some felt, some embroidery thread, and I spent the better part of last night doing this. It took three attempts before I got to this point, and I was tired. I settled for this:

The "This Took Forever" label is courtesy of Sublime Stitching . They are way awesome and I got the label SUPER fast!

Crochet Mario Blanket: The End Is Near

I'm sorry I haven't posted recently. It's my busy season and my crochet time has been limited, at best. I did not make my Christmas deadline. I made a few mistakes stitching together my squares, and had to frog the fuck out of this blanket several times already. Imagine having to rip out entire rows of squares because the stitches are uneven or mismatched? That's what comes when you stitch together squares when you're half asleep. Anyway, here are some of the pictures I've promised, along with my current progress. I will not say when this blanket will certainly be done because I don't want to jinx myself. Just know that I'm getting close.

So, I had all the horizontal lines done like you see above, but the vertical lines have not been stitched at all yet. This was Xmas Eve.

I started stitching, and this is what it looks like from behind. Not bad, huh? Pretty neat and tidy.

This is what the front looks like. See? Even with the thread color switches, you can't see the color of the thread I'm using to stitch this together, which means I wasted a whole lot of time switching from color to color. Since I started that way, I had to stay consistent. I also discovered another trick. I went out and bought 4 more needles. I have the different colors already assigned to a needle so I'm not changing out thread as needed. Duh!! Why didn't I do that to begin with?

Pardon the shitty image or the amateur special effects, but I took the pic hastily while it was spread out across my very mess bed so I had to try and crop out the laundry and junk all over my bed. But, this is what my blanket looks like right now. I have two vertical rows stitched already with 11 more to go, and maybe a finished crochet border along the outside in the denim color. Ugh. =(

Crochet Mario Bros. Blanket: A Stitch in Time

...will take me forever!!!!

Here is the first 6 rows of my Mario Bros. Blanket stitched together. I only have one picture so far to document my progress. I've added on a couple more rows since. I've had to "frog" this piece a few times already for stitching the wrong side, stitching the wrong direction, or stitching on the wrong color. Frogging, my cousin Lilia tells me, is a crochet/knitting term which refers to ripping out completed rows or stitches because you messed up. "Rip it! Rip it!" Get it? Frogging. Think about it....

Do you see Mario's face coming through?

 Tonight, I'll take another shot of my progress, as well as some close-ups of the back stitches so you can see how I'm putting this all together. I'll also take pictures of the problematic areas so you know the downside of stitching it the way I chose to.

I realized I like reading blogs with more pictures depicting what the heck the blogger is talking about. I'll try and do more of that so you can appreciate where I'm coming from. It's frustrating and slow, but I am happy it's taking shape and I will be super-proud when this is all done.

Oh, and the pic above is just a partial view. So far, this blanket is 14 squares across. He's going to have a pretty substantial blanky when this is all said and done!

Granny Squares Completed

This is what 252 completed granny squares look like. I am so relieved to be done with this. Now, I just have to stitch them back together. Since I have the flu and a four-day weekend, it looks like my blanket will be done by the end of today. I sorta want to do a finishing border stitch all the way around like my cousin Lilia did to her awesome afghan. We'll see if I can manage that today. I'm feeling like a hot mess right now. I have the flu...again. =( I don't know why I've been getting sick so easily the last few years, but maybe it's time to get checked out.

Still, I'm glad I'm nearing the end of this project. Next up is DOLL MAKING!! I think it will be a lot of fun! And my brother is going to love his Xmas present! (This blanket, not the doll.)

WIP: Mario Blanket- Hit RESET

Well, folks. After viewing my options yesterday at my nearest yarn barn, and after discussing it with my very learned Jewish yarn guru / store owner, I decided to put aside all 35 Water Chestnut squares I crocheted in the Patton's Classic and save it for another use. I bought 4 skeins of Blossom in Wool Ease, instead.

That mean's I'll have to re-crochet the 35 I already made plus the remaining 8 that I needed to do. It sets me back a few days, but honestly, even though I love the feel of 100% wool, it will felt and get all fuzzy as time goes by (which is fine) but all the other 200+ squares I made will not. So, Mario's skin will look like it has some disease while the rest of him will look like the wool/acrylic blend that I've been using on the majority of the rest of the blanket.

Blossom is more on the pink side, rather than the peach side. Paton's has the advantage on the color I was trying to go for since NO ONE has peach except Red Heart, and we all know how I feel about Red Heart. (YUCK!) But, Blossom comes pretty close and it will match the texture of the rest of the blanket, which is more important. I hope this works!! Wish me luck, people!

This is Blossom.

Now, I'm back to 43 squares away from completion! Hey, it's been nearly 2 years! I can live with that!

Mario Blanket Hold-Up

So close.....and yet so far. I have 8 flesh colored squares left to crochet before the mise-en-place portion of my blanket is completed!!!

 And I ran out of my Paton's Water Chestnet pale pink yarn. I took it for granted that I could find almost any yarn at the Fabric store across the street from my job, but upon further inspection, my yarn color was not in stock. Further to my dismay, I found a similar color in the Lion Brand Worsted Weight Wool that I've been using on the rest of the blanket!! The color was Blossom.

I'm so friggin' aggravated! I just wanted to have this blanket done sooner rather than later so that I could move on with my craft projects. It looks like I'll have to order it online.

=(
Bummer.

Nearly Finished Granny Square Mario Blanket

Hey, you guys!!!!!!

I am just 24 flesh colored squares away from completion!! Well, then comes to the daunting task of joining them all up, but my Mario Blanket is nearly finished!

WIP: Crochet Mario Bros. Blanket - We Have a Problem!

Hey, happy hookers!

On my last Mario Bros Blanket update, I mentioned that I had issues finding the correct color yarn for his peachy/pink skin in the Lion Brand Wool Ease blend that I've been using for the rest of the blanket. I finally consented and bought Red Heart Classic yarn in light peach.

That was scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to yarn. It's cheap, it's acrylic, and it sort of burns my fingers when I'm crocheting quickly. In desperation, I bought 6 skeins of it. After completing the last of the chocolate brown squares, I pulled out one of these skeins and immediately felt the difference in texture and weight. I did one granny square and realized this wasn't going to work. LOOK:

My flash sort of messed up the shot, but you can see the size difference of a square crocheted from the same pattern with the two different yarns. The Red Heart brand is bigger, and less pleasing to the touch. This won't work if they're all going to be joined up to form one huge blanket.

I need to crochet 43 of these little peach squares, and I'm not going to do it with the wrong yarn only to find out at the end that none of those squares will work out. It will take me about 3 days to do it; three days I'll never get back if I go one using the wrong material.

Back to the drawing board, I'm afraid. I'm going back to the craft stores to search again for something in the Wool Ease brand that may do or even Vanna's Choice. I'm not going to let my 2 year-long project go to shit because of ONE color!

Old School Mario Bros DS Cake

I made this cake a couple of years ago for a customer who wanted a Nintendo DS shaped cake but with an Old School Mario scene from the very first game on the original NES. This is what I came up with. Granted, it's not the BEST DS shaped cake ever made. He didn't want much cake. He was more interested in the scene on the screen.

Most definitely one of the most fun cakes I have EVER made. It took me about 5 hours from start to finish.

My shaped cakes have come a looooong way since then! Still, you never forget your learning projects. I learned a lot from this one. I can't draw very well. So, I used shapes instead to get the picture just right! Cute, no?

Materials:

Two 11" x 7" butter cakes
Strawberry filling
Vanilla Buttercream
Wilton Fondant
Food Coloring

PacMan Lovin'

I know, I know. I like to keep my cake creations on my cake site: Queenie Cakes. However, I'm so tickled that these came out so great, I can't help but brag about it on my craft blog.

Chocolate Fudge cupcakes topped with fondant decorations.

WIP: Crochet Mario Bros. Blanket

This poor bastard of a project has been a work in progress for nearly a year. It consists of 252 crochet granny-squares. The breakdown is as follows:

Blue:108
Brown: 54
Red: 45
Yellow: 2
Flesh: 43

This is what's done as of right now:

Yellow: 2
Red: 45
Brown: 22

Which means I have an ass-ton more to go! Ugh. This is my Excel grid of what's done. I'm hoping to finish within a month or two. I'm still in search for the elusive Flesh-toned color. It's been hard to find in a worsted weight wool blend. I'll find it, though!