Okay so I know that I had said that I was going to be doing the first lot of squares for Tales of the SMP next but as it turned out, I had to order a whole load of wool to arrive (which is also why I haven’t included Foolish’s square here and it’s only a three part update rather than four – I had to buy so much more wool for his square like seriously??? The heck???) and so I figured I’d instead reformat my the blanket pages and do it by factions rather than anything else (by the way – thoughts??)
And naturally that inspired me to get going on a couple more designs – particularly for the flags (which will come after the Tales updates) and Las Nevadas
I’m going to be completely honest right now though and confess that the only one of these which I’m happy with how it turned out is Quackity’s. But it’s been a while since I did an update on the blanket so I figured I’d bite the bullet and post these anyway since I’ve been feeling really, really awful for the past few days and so I don’t know when I’ll next be able to give a proper update on the squares
Also just some quick Las-Nevadas-based admin about the blanket – I have designed the piece for the flag and I have also done the design for Foolish’s square. But I am pretty much lost over what I should do as the design for Fundy and Slimesicle, hence why they’re not on here either. So if you have any suggestions (or any suggestions for any prospective squares!) then please let me know!
Quackity
I debated a lot back and forth over what I ought to do for Quackity
My first plan was actually to do a casino-based square with some gambling chips but then I was so unhappy with how that design turned out that I just straight up binned it
My next plan was to do a duck but I didn’t even get to the design stage of that before scrapping it for the same reason why I don’t want to end up doing a fox for Fundy – it doesn’t feel right as a testament for their SMP characters
I then considered doing something Butcher Army themed. Perhaps a meat cleaver or a bloody apron or something but, while I haven’t scrapped that idea entirely, I have put it on the back burner as I think I want to do that as a separate piece not representing anyone in particular but just as a ‘historic’ square or whatever
But the Butcher Army idea did lead me onto the one that I finally settled with, which is, of course, Quackity’s eye. The fight that he had with Techno after the failed execution with the Butcher Army was such a pivotal point of his character’s development that influenced his going off and forming Las Nevadas and as a result I felt that doing his scarred eye would be a good representation of what his character is on the SMP
And as I said, I am pretty happy with how it turned out! I deliberated a lot over what to do as the background colour before ending up committing to the navy blue and I think that it looks quite effective as a whole piece. The actual designing of the eye took me ages to get to something that I was happy with and while it definitely, definitely needs a bit of tweaking now that I’ve made up the first attempt at it, I do think that the design itself is pretty good
My main concern over it is the scar itself – I want to make it look more dramatic somehow, but as it turns out, it’s difficult to make knit-ware look edgy and dramatic!
I also think that I did the pupil itself in the wrong place and so I want to go back and alter the design a little in that respect too, but overall I do like how it turned out! It was also not overly complicated to make and I think that I pretty much started and finished the entire thing while watching MCC 15
(though I didn’t watch Quackity’s POV, I watched Wilbur because my dad wanted to watch and he really likes Wilbur – it’s definitely because me and my brother listen to his music all the time around the house lmao)
Awesamdude
I’ll give you a chance to look at this long and hard before I tell you what it’s meant to be
…
Did you get it?
It’s obviously a gas mask
(sarcasm, I’m very aware that it does not look anything like a gas mask)
This is proof of when you do the design pretty okay and then mess up the actual knitting of it
Basically, I think that I stretched the yarn too much as I was knitting and then also pulled the threads too tight behind the piece as I was working it and changing colours, which is why it looks pinched at the sides and also a lot taller than it is wide
The design I made did look a lot better and more like a gas mask than this turned out and I don’t know if this would look better after I have blocked it. But I don’t even know if I want to settle on the gas mask design for Sam anyway. I considered a lot of designs for Sam and this is the one that I decided on though, as I said, I’m not entirely convinced by it so any suggestions for what I could make to represent Sam would be so, so welcome
Sam’s square is 100% joining Phil and Dream’s first attempts on the ‘Freddie teaches herself how to block her knitting’ pile. If I can get that right I do think that this will turn out okay and, while I almost certainly won’t use it for the blanket in the end, it will look better and I won’t feel so ashamed of myself every time that I look at it
But yes, please send in your Sam suggestions – I considered making a Fran square or a creeper in a crown but I didn’t feel as though they screamed Sam enough but honestly I’m open to any and all suggestions!
Purpled
Okay so again, not wholly happy with how this one turned out but I think that it’s a relatively easy fix to make it look better
Again I think a lot of my issue with how this square turned out is that I stretched the yarn again as I was knitting and also with the yarn itself – the white wool I used seems a million times more fragile than the coloured wool I used for the UFO itself
(oh yeah, that’s what it is, by the way – I tried to make Purpled’s UFO)
But that’s the reason why the white wool looks so strained in some parts because it feels a lot thinner than the other wool I used (though it’s actually the same thickness)
So when I redo it the plan is to make the grey area of the UFO itself shorter/flatter, do less of the green area on top of the UFO and I also want to do a different coloured background. The only reason why I used white in the first place was because it was the only colour that I had on hand which didn’t completely override the design. Though I still don’t know what colour to use instead
What I did think was not having the beam at the bottom and just having the UFO itself and do the background in purple, but I don’t know if that would actually look good and because of the designs I have for the Tales squares I’m somewhat reluctant to use purple for the backgrounds of any of the squares that aren’t Tales or Karl
So a lot to consider, basically, in the meantime though enjoy a couple of the progress pics I took!
But over the next few days I’m going to start trying to teach myself blocking with the squares that I’m the least happy with (so Dream and Sam basically and probably Phil, too)
I’m also going to be blogging about more non-knitting related things! I have a couple of posts lined up, a couple related to mental health as a whole and a few about where I currently in Scotland so please do follow the blog if you’re interested!
A couple of friends and I have also been working on setting up a Discord server which we’re going to make public soon so we’ll keep you updated on that too!
But please do check out the rest of my DSMP blanket blogs – send in any suggestions you have for either improving the squares/designs I’ve already completed or ideas for what I should do for any of the other characters or events or places that I haven’t already done!
If you do have any ideas for designs for the blanket squares or ideas of how to improve the ones I have already completed then please don’t hesitate to let me know! You can either leave a comment on here, or leave feedback with the feedback button I’ve just figured out how to put in, or if you’d prefer you can contact me on any of my socials! Send me a DM on Instagram, Twitter or Tumblr (all socials linked below) and I’ll be sure to get back to you and I’d really, really love to hear your thoughts on how the blanket is coming along!
There’s also a link to my donation page – there’s a lot of information there as to what the money will go towards, but there’s really no pressure at all to donate to me, though they are really appreciated
I hope that you’re all well!
Freddie 🐸
Knitting With Norbert 