This is the giant post of boyfriend craft

Over the last year or so, I have been making various pieces of crafty awesome for my boyfriend (also awesome). But I have been exceptionally lax in blogging these creations. So, in an extremely tardy fashion, here are some of the geeky boyfriend crafts I have made over the last year:

Birthday! A quote from his favorite Terry Pratchett character, Sam Vimes, from the book Night Watch – the flowers at the bottom are lilac blossoms, which are seriously plot-relevant in the book.

Also, a cross-stitched triceratops birthday card! The triceratops is from from Makoto’s Cross-Stitch Super Collection, which has fantastic mini-designs.

Christmas! Cthulu cross-stitch from Needlenoodles, and Zombie Vampire from Zombie Felties. We had at the time been playing a lot of Arkham Horror; on reflection, that fed heavily into my crafty psyche. Plus, cutesy Lovecraftian nightmares and steampunk-style zombie vampires are just cool, y’know?

Valentines Day: a heart, of course! I stitched this ages ago, but could not pass it over as a Valentines gift: it just struck the right note between geeky and romantic.

Anniversary! A Weighted Companion Cube from Nerdigurumi (and also, well, Portal). Made after we began cohabiting, and therefore crocheted in secrecy, at odd times and in weird places. Stitched with love and weighted with glass beads, your Weighted Companion Cube will never threaten to stab you.

Aaaaaand birthday again! A hand-embroidered felt d20, of my own devising! Again stitched as a covert operation. The project began as a crocheted d20, but in the end, felt was a much more manageable medium, especially with that much embroidery and sewing-up. While it’s not entirely game-legal, it does roll surprisingly true!

 Also, I made a Jaffa marble cake with dark chocolate ganache. It was delicious!

Needless to say, we are well suited in our geeky tastes.

 

Giving the gift of creepy crafts

Two of the guys in my D&D campaign had birthdays recently; creepy gifts were clearly the order of the day.

One gift was made at extremely short notice – Facebook informed me that it was his birthday at about 3pm, and I had this zombie undertaker whipped up by about 4:30pm. Whatever else you say about Zombie Felties, those little critters are goddamned swift to make.

I was a little more organised for the other gift. The goal was to crochet an extremely creepy blue-grey monkey;  the recipient’s character in our D&D campiagn owns just such a monkey. It has a complex backstory and answers to the name of Patrick. After may hours of solid crochet work and some consultation with the Dungeon Master, it was decided that this is Patrick:

Patrick was made from PlanetJune’s fuzzy monkey pattern, with a lot of the cute exchanged for extreme creepiness. The limbs and tail are fully wired and poseable, and the muzzle has handcrafted metal teeth (another plot point from the D&D campaign). Patrick can now be found assulting random stuffed dolls and statuettes all over his new owner’s house.

 

Express your inner geek

My inner geek has had a lot of chance to express herself lately – I’ve started playing Dungeons and Dragons. We basically sit around, create some imaginary characters, and then use them to violently attack other imaginary characters. With, you know, a plot. It really is huge amounts of dice-rolling fun.

Normally, this wouldn’t really be relevant for this blog. But there are extenuating circumstances…

After a few battles, we realised that there was an inordinate amount of paperwork involved in tracking the damage taken by our half-giant fighter. He’d get punched, then he’d get healed, then someone would stab him, then he’d club a dude and thereby actually gain health. It was all getting very complex.

My solution? Craft. (because craft solves everything)

So over the next week, I hacked up a chair leg, collected buttons, broke drill bits, twisted wire, and ended up with this: a custom designed hit point abacus.

The left column is for normal HP, the right column is for temporary HP, and it’s expandable to twice the character’s current health. And it works! Really, really well!

My inner geek is out, and damn, is she proud.

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In other, Radical Craftier, news: we’re having a Crafternoon this Thursday, 24th Feb, 1pm, @Format, 15 Peel St, Adelaide. Free wool for yarnbombing, dirty cross-stitch kits, afternoon tea. If you’re local, you should be there. It’ll be rad.