I have been insane in the membrain recently.
I made so many crafts that you couldn't believe. Most importantly,
I got big time into knitting again. Sure, crochet is nice and cool, but knitting is so cute and drapey, and for
clothing, knitting lends itself so well. For crochet to be drapey and neat, you need to crochet with
a quite thin yarn, while with knitting it's not necessary, as the stitches are much thinner by themselves. AND, as a
bonus, knitting uses up way less yarn than crochet! I was so happy to find out about this.
The pieces I will show you will be out of order, and I won't be showing absolutely all of them here either, just
know that I am a freak and a menace and I can't stop making things.
My most proudest project that I finished recently probably would be the Pike sweater that I designed myself.
First I made the pixel art, which I converted into a pattern with the help of Stitchfiddle.
I found the base pattern on Ravelry, it's called the
Easy Peasy Sweater, so I thought that my crazy idea of making a colourwork sweater as my first knit sweater ever
might be possible, since the name promised me that the construction of the base sweater would be super easy. And...
It kind of was!
As for the actual colourwork, since the design is only on the front of the sweater, and I wanted to do complex
pixel art, I needed to figure out how to carry my second colour while knitting in the round. Luckily, I found this
awesome technique of back-and-forth stranded colourwork, and after some trial and error, I learnt it quite quickly.
Though, as you can see from the image, I have some issues with the tension, i.e. there are some holes on one side
of the fish due to the strings in the back pulling on the strings in the front. But overall, not bad for a first
sweater :P
At the moment, I have several WIPs (works in progress) started. I am not the type to do one project at a time
at all... I much rather start 10 projects, and then chip away at them whenever I feel like it, to keep myself
motivated and interested in the project. Some of the WIPs I have right now:
Birch pattern tweed scarf
Birch pattern fluffy lace shawl (yes, same pattern, but with a much larger needle gauge and wider)
The only crochet project I finished recently has been a hexagon cardigan, made from scrap yarn. I have no pattern
for it, just made it with a rough idea of the construction, and regular trying on. It ended up with these large
poofy sleeves with fitted cuffs, and an oversized drape, which is actually very comfortable and warm.
Yes, I consider gamedev to be a craft and an art as well. It may not be a fiber art, but it's such a big part of
my life nowadays that I must talk about it or I will explode.
Firstly, the current project I am working on for money, "Sticky Date". It's going quite well, and I enjoy working
in the team. Ofc it's hard to jump into an already fleshed out project as a junior programmer with no senior around.
But I think by now, I have gotten a bit more comfortable with the codebase, and am able to truly contribute to the
development. Because before, I was messing around, just trying not to drown in the convoluted managers and controllers.
There's a lot that could be fixed, optimized and made more streamlined and aligned with programming design. Though I'm not
sure how much I will be able to do, as my official contract ends at the end of March, and beyond that I won't be able
to spend more than 8 hours on the project weekly. But I will help them get to their launch date with a stable build,
that's for sure. :)
Anyways. In the midst of working on this project, I also found time to participate in this year's Global Game Jam,
more specifically, LT GameJam in Vilnius, and we made a game called
Tough Crowd. I joined a very strange and diverse team, filled
with mostly amateurs or complete beginners. Though, one of the people was practically a veteran of game development,
he told me he's a narrative / UX designer in World of Tanks (I think?), and has been in the industry for over 20 years.
That was overall a cool experience, filled with many caveats, but also many surprises, and I am proud that we managed to make a playable build
with little to no bugs (and a relatively fun game? Whaa??)
I am also working on my Decay Project still (that's the working title, anyway. I am at a worldbuilding and level design stage, trying to figure out
how the total player experience should look like. I figured out so far that I want one main path with some looping branching out,
and several little branch-outs to explore and look at various points of interest / interact with optional NPCs. I
made a first mockup of what the level design would be like:
I want the terrain to look like an actual mountain / nature path, while at the same time not ignoring the anatomy of
the Mater. Thus some of the path will go across her stomach, some (more difficult path) on her fingers, some
over her breasts. But the player's camera being quite zoomed in and small, they should only kind of notice that
they're walking on a giant overgrown woman. This, hopefully, will build some wonder and amazement in the last scene, when the
camera zooms out and you get to talk to Mater. At least, that's what I'm imagining right now, anyway. It may change
next week :P
So, yeah! If you want, let me know what you think about my projects, and maybe what stuff you are working on yourself!
I am always so curious about everyone's creative and crafty endeavours.
At the moment, I have several WIPs (works in progress) started. I am not the type to do one project at a time
at all... I much rather start 10 projects, and then chip away at them whenever I feel like it, to keep myself
motivated and interested in the project. Some of the WIPs I have right now:
I want the terrain to look like an actual mountain / nature path, while at the same time not ignoring the anatomy of
the Mater. Thus some of the path will go across her stomach, some (more difficult path) on her fingers, some
over her breasts. But the player's camera being quite zoomed in and small, they should only kind of notice that
they're walking on a giant overgrown woman. This, hopefully, will build some wonder and amazement in the last scene, when the
camera zooms out and you get to talk to Mater. At least, that's what I'm imagining right now, anyway. It may change
next week :P