First Four Flags

I have to say this to start with because holy shit it’s been annoying me but it’s also kind of really funny – I completed a project before these four flags. It’s a rabbit, however, I can’t post about it yet because it doesn’t ever stop raining up in Harris and so I can’t take nice photos of it and goddamn it the rabbit deserves good photos because I put blood sweat and tears into it

Not that these pieces don’t deserve good photos, but the scuffed photos I took inside on my bedroom floor of them are better than the ones I took of the rabbit on my floor – you get what I mean

I also branched out a little regarding wool type, but I’m not sure that you’re overly interested in that so I’ll be quick – it’s still all Sirdar Double Knit. However, while previously all the squares have been made almost wholly out of Snuggly DK wool, here I have also used Sirdar Hayfield Bonus DK, as I needed some different colours and the shades int hat line were better than the ones I found in my usuals

Even with those alterations in terms of wool lines, however, I think that these all came out pretty well! And so with those notes, let’s get into it!

It’s just two colours, which is a miracle compared to The Syndicate and Las Nevadas, and I didn’t have to cast on in multiple colours and I didn’t have to use a million balls of wool to try and make it as neat as possible

And I think that it’s pretty effective in knitted form!

Of course, it’s a little curled up at the sides now (nothing that blocking won’t fix) and it’s not quite as egg-shaped as I had wanted to stay true to the design, but that’s just a simple fix, a couple of alterations to the pattern chart and it’ll look pretty awesome, I think

It’s kind of ironic, though, that I chose to make up the Eggpire’s flag, despite having not created squares for any of the members? So… that was kind of a strange idea. But I do want to now go on and make my next four squares be for some of the Eggpire guys – however I’m a little lost on ideas for a couple of them. I know what the design for Ponk will be (possibly Punz’s too but I’m on the fence still), and I have some fallback ideas for what to make for Antfrost, Skeppy and Hannah but I need to get Bad’s done before anything else. I mean… he’s the one who started the Egg on the SMP, and I also just love him, so it’s essential to me that I make up his

But I’m lost – I straight up don’t know what I can do to capture his character or represent his character on the SMP so please, please, I am begging you to help me out here

And it’s a lot easier to see that in person and in good lighting, but as I’ve already explained, I don’t have good lighting and I’m bad at taking photos regardless

(anyone wants to give me tips on how to take and edit photos better please hit me up)

Out of the four flags that I’m talking about in this post, I genuinely think that Kinoko Kingdom’s is the neatest one I completed, which is not what I was expecting. I thought it would take me a million attempts to be happy with how the flag came out, and while of course, as with most of my other blanket designs, it does need some adjusting and improving, I am really, really pleased with this!

I’m unbelievably excited, as well, to see what it’s going to look like when I’ve blocked it (send me good thoughts, by the way, when I get home-home I’m gonna try to teach myself how to do that and I’m genuinely terrified) but I do think that it looks cool as it is

Before anyone else comments on it, though, I will be the person to point out that, in the most infuriating thing I could have ever imagined, I didn’t centre it properly and so the emblem isn’t quite in the same place. I genuinely don’t know how I managed to get that wrong, where I was off in my chart, but I was and I didn’t realise until I had already started and at that point I had deemed it too late

So yes, I will be redoing it, probably doing the design again pretty much from scratch, to try and figure out where the hell I went wrong and to centre it properly, so please don’t bully me I genuinely almost cried when I realised and now I cannot unsee it

But, now that’s out of the way

I did the Las Nevadas flag here partly because I’ve already made a couple of Las Nevadas’ Boys on the blanket and also because we’ve had a fair bit of Las Nevadas Lore as of late (catch me genuinely considering a burger van for Wilbur’s square by the way) and so I was pretty fixated on it

It is quite messy – there are certain parts that I forgot to carry the wool across the back or cut it too early or something along those lines, which has resulted in it looking pretty messy compared to most of the other blanket squares I’ve made. And that is really annoying, but I’m not too bothered about it as of right now since I already knew I was going to have to go back and redesign because I messed up the centring and also because I think I want to use some different shades so there’s already a load of changes I need to make

Regardless of that, I think it looks okay – I think my main issue here was with the wool I used. I couldn’t quite get the gauge right even though it’s using the wool that I always use, but I need to play around a little and figure out what I can do to make it look better and neater in that way

It’s a starting point, though, and that’s what counts

or at least that’s what I’m telling myself

So when I was trying to come up with designs, I knew that I had to include their table somehow (apologies for how it does look kinda squished in this photo, by the way, I was in a rush taking them but they don’t look that warped in real life) considering that that is kind of their ‘logo’ I guess, seeing as how DreamXD got involved in it all

The table design here is the second idea I had for including it on the blanket – originally I thought about having the portal eyes as an outline around piece, but eventually decided against it for the time being – though I think that that’s something I’ll come back to in a moment

So after trying to remake the table design as the centrepiece (yeah, that blue is the closest shade I can get to warped planks, I’m gonna look for a better shade, though don’t worry), I then didn’t know what to put on either side of the table. At first I had the intitials of their codenames – so Z, P, N and L, two on either side of the table. But then I couldn’t figure out where to put the fifth initial for H and so I scrapped that idea

I wanted to make tiny logos for the members as well, which would have worked really well if I had the table as a border rather than a design. But I got worried about repeating myself within those by just having the same logos as I had for their actual individual squares. So then I was trying to think up other ways I could represent each member of the Syndicate and I figured, you know, a bucket hat for Phil (or a crow, but I wanted the black background) and maybe a pig head or a sword for Techno (very on the nose, forgive me for that) but then I was stumped for what to do with Ranboo and Niki, and since I still haven’t decided what I want to do for their actual individual designs, I put a pin in that idea to come back to and finish

So ideas as to what I can use for their actual squares or for them in The Syndicate would be greatly appreciated because my mind is melting trying to think of all of these

I landed on the fireworks just because they are Techno’s signature weapon. And I know that The Syndicate isn’t just him, of course it’s not, but I was exhausted and needing to get to work on some more designs and knitting and so I committed to the fireworks for the time being and I do think that they look pretty cool, but they’re probably not there to stay

I’m gonna play around with my design for The Syndicate a little more – experimenting with other colour schemes for it, make it more red and black for anarchy and all, but for the moment, I do like how it looks and I can upload this photo of it being relatively happy with how it turned out