beck's blog

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Alan Rickman graph-ghan

Ok, I am almost finished with this. I wanted it done last week in honor of his 60th birthday but I was sooooo much more less done than I am now,......LOL!!!! It was a nice sunny day today so I forced the kids out to hold it up(after bribes of many snacks).

Here's the picture I used.


It's a photo of a print someone was selling on e-bay last year.
They said in their auction that it was a self-portrait Alan did for a charity.(Before he was an actor, Alan was a graphic artist, so I know he can draw.)

I have no idea which charity but he's always doing these nice things for charities so it sounds right.

ANYWAY, even if he didn't draw it, it's a fabulous image of him and I immediately thought of this when I decided to do an afghan of him.

Here's the almost-finished blanket...

(Images are clickable to enlage for viewing)


I say almost finished because I still need to block it to try and prevent the curling that this type of crocheting creates.






In this shot I wanted the "autograph" to show up. This part was tough to do so I did it exactly as 2 squares by 1 square). Then, at about his shoulder/neck area, I went to 2 squares by 2 squares for the rest. This allowed me to keep the autograph tight and try to make it readable. (Although, as many Alan Rickman fans know, his autograph usually resembles "Aran Pinkman" anyway. LOL!!!!

I think I will block it with black all the way around so it looks kinda like a picture frame. There are still a lot of loose ends to weave in at the back too.

Also I wanted to tell you all about my Snape ghan.
I had made the graph at this graph-generator site...


microRevolt

They had a "call out" to people who used their graph generator for projrcts and asked if we could send in photos of our artwork. So I sent the photo of Snape.

I heard back that they would include my afghan and that they were also interested in exhibiting it at the Richard F. Brush Art Gallery in Canton, New York from March - April. So I sent it to them. I really can't wait to hear back on what people think of it. I hope they let me know. (Even if it's not so nice).

I am so glad I heard about this site from the people at Crochetville. They have even improved the quality and options of the graphs you make so the Alan one I did is done from the newer version.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Snape Graph-ghan

I'm still working on the castle....I swear!
But my new year's resolution was to teach myself tunisian crochet so I could create a graphghan.

Well, after a couple of slightly distorted small ones, I think I finally figured out how to get it right.

It seems the stitch is longer than it is wide. So you need to double the width for every square you make going upwards.
Did that make any sense to anybody out there? LOL!

All I know is, for this Snape afghan, I quadrupled the width and only repeated the squares going upwards 3 times, (since the stitch was longer than wide). I hope I have made myself understandable.

ANYWAY, I used a 50 X 50 px Snape icon. This

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I took off the cunning word and made my own Snape word. The S is a snake with a cat's eye for his eye and a yarn tongue too. (Look for this cat's eye for when I reveal my Voldemort doll soon.)

These next two images are clickable to enlarge them for you-all to see.






This is being held up by my mother-in-law, (who thinks I'm totally nuts). LOL!

It looks best when viewed from a distance. I was surprised how much it did look like the picture.
When you are working on it you are thinking, "Oh my gosh, this looks like some kind of ink-blot test. Or sort of art-deco thingy. But when held up in a mirror at a bit of a distance, I could see how it actually was going.
I really enjoyed working on this and am now working on an Alan Rickman one.
As far as the castle goes, I've got the roof problem in the Great Hall fixed and am now working on attaching the portraits to the outer walls. Voldy is done, (though I'm debating whether to add ears or not.....