Commander Sterling

I've been keeping this one under my hat, a wee bit.

It's fair to say that I'm a fan of James Stephanie Sterling's work - I remember when they started publishing videos on the Escapist, and at first they weren't for me, though eventually I went back and got hooked.
Seeing their transformation, and hearing their explanation about it, has definitely helped me overcome a great degree of ignorance when it comes to LBGTQIA+ issues.
Since they started wrestling not just in England, but local to me, I wanted to make a doll of them to give as a present, which I managed to at the debut of Avant Garde wrestling:

On a separate note, it was my first live show - I may do a bit of a write up, though I'm not familiar enough with the art to go much further than "I enjoyed it!"

The doll itself is, like the other dolls I've made and intend to make, based upon the patterns in AmiguruME by Allison Hoffman.
The main differences to mention are:

• The Mask
• The Cape
• The Arms
• The Body

The Mask

For the mask I followed the main wig cap pattern, but when I got to round 15 (around where the nose is) I would start with a ch1, reverse, inv dec, sc until the last two stitches, inv dec. I then kept decreasing until I ran out of space. The downside to this is that it neglects the chin strap, though that was difficult to see in the material I used as references.
After then squeezing that on top, I made a star out of some yellow yarn (the closest I had to gold) to stich in place. Attaching the safety eyes after this was nothing short of a nightmare, but I got there in the end.

The Cape

For this I effectively made two capes - one using a colourful rainbow-esque yarn I had (it would be lovely if there were some "space" yarn, but I thought it was nice and suitable) followed by the same in a metallic grey (to simulate silver).
I then stitched the two layers together, for the final effect.
I think I used the blazer pattern as a base, but just kept expanding outwards until it was wide enough, but I can't fully remember. I keep thinking that maybe I should have made the cape a bit longer, but I am happy enough with it.

The Arms

This was a major deviation - the arms in AmiguruME are rounded, without any fingers, and I wanted to branch out a bit. To do this, I followed the patterns from Edward's Crochet Doll Emporium by Kerry Lord. The issue was that the arms in that book are longer than those in AmiguruME, even before you factor in the fingers.
This taught me quite a lot about the nature of crochet - I tried using a smaller hook, for example, but I crochet so tightly that it doesn't make much of a difference. The overall size of the work is a combination of the size of the tools, the tension, the size of the yarn, and the number of rounds.
The arms ended up slightly too long, so in future I will try to cut out a few rounds. Either that, or use the (very misleadingly named) "traverse route" technique into future works where I want fingers. I suppose I could try to integrate them in more naturally, but the patterns in the books start from different ends of the arms, making that even more challenging.
When it came to the gloves I switched to a non-metallic white (a bit more on that later) and worked backwards a little bit in order to create the layered effect.

The Body

I followed the "curvy body" pattern, but largely ignored the pattern when it told me to decrease - this meant the breasts lost a bit of definition, so were I to try again I think I would try to increase everything proportionally.
The majority of the body legs and arms are done in a metallic white, with other parts (gloves, boots) done in plain white, in order to represent their wrestling costume.
I did not realise when I started that the jumpsuit is actually grey, but so shiny it looks white in all of the videos and pictures that I had seen. Were I to try this again, I would change the body suit colour.
I put stars over the body, but the yellow I had used for the face-star was too thick to make stars that small. As such, I used some thin threads which were much paler, hence they are completely different colours. Once again, were I doing this again I would invest in matching colours for this.

Time taken

It's difficult to calculate the exact amount of time it took - I specifically remember being in the very early stages at the start of March, in the days surrounding my Granny's funeral. I can't remember exactly when I finished it - I showed it to people, but only on camera, so I cannot trace the exact date. I had definitely finished it by early to mid-June. So that was 13 weeks, round down to 10 for going to a conference etc, working for on average 8 hours a week (in the evenings and during lunch breaks at work), so in total at a guess it was 80 hours of work. No where near my current record of 2.5 years for Janos, but still a lot of work.

Before publishing this blog Steph tweeted about it, and the comments in the thread were heart-warming to read.

Janos Audron Amigurumi

This one has been in the works for a very long time, but last weekend I finally finished the amigurumi of Janos Audron that I've been working on for (no exaggeration here) - around 2 1/2 years!

Let's get into the details.

First of all, it cannot be understated how big this thing is:

1 foot tall and with a 2 foot wingspan tip to tip!

This was, like the Sunny doll, based on the patterns in AmiguruME by Allison Hoffman, though there were a few adaptations.

The most obvious one is the wings. When I started these off I was using a Magpie pattern from Hanneke's Designs. However, the free CAL (Crochet A-Long) period ran out while I was working on it, and I didn't have a backup. Rather than buying it, I reflected and felt that the pattern just wasn't quite right.

Eventually I managed to find this Pegasus by Crafty Designs, which I felt would result in something large enough with enough detail to satisfy me.

I really am too much of a perfectionist, but not so much that when I found the wings were slightly different sizes (due to my differing tensions) that I was willing to start again - this part alone took up the bulk of 2 years!

Another change is the feet. From the reference photos, you can see that Janos doesn't have shoes - he has exposed feet with two large claws, then wrapped in a sort of foot-wrap that goes around the balls of the feet. Another book I have, AmiguruME Pets (by Hoffman again) features a pattern for a dinosaur, where the ankle is the same width as for the human patterns! Perfect, except the dinosaur features 3 toes. As such I had to do some maths to resolve it (I'm hesitant to post the exact instructions, though, as since it's based on someone else's designs I'm not sure if that crosses a line)

The end result works very well, though!

The next big issue was the tunic. Following Hoffman's pattern for a blazer, it didn't quite fit due to how I had attached the wings. As such I did each of the three sections according to the pattern, but effectively doubled the arm-hole piece (HDC across a row, then do the increase or decrease) - I also made one of the sections one row longer than the others (and didn't finish it off).

Once each of the three sections was done, starting with the part that I intentionally made longer, I effectively continued the stitching into the bottom of the back piece and then into the other side - as a result, they were naturally joined together rather than needing to stitch them with a thread and then continuing onwards. I added many more rows to make the tunic as long as needed.

Then came the collar piece. Despite looking up patters for capes and pauldrons, I could not find anything appropriate, so I had to sort of free-hand it. I made a "model" out of a piece of paper, and then just stitched using it as a template. That also worked rather well!

The final flourishes were a bit basic - a golden belt, a sash over the shoulders, and the face (including tiny stitches to be the fangs)

Over all, I'm happy with the result. I hope to never do wings ever again, but still want to do more Legacy of Kain characters (eventually)

To finish, here's a close up of the face, and the final resting place: My display cabinet, with a Raziel toy for scale.