Home Stretch: A Minecraft Creeper Christmas

OK yes, it's taking me a looong time to finish this crochet amigurumi project. It's partly because of all the teaching I did this year. Try as I might, I wasn't able to use the Creeper as part of my class prep.

Inventory: 20 out of 28 Pieces DONE. Eight remain before final assembly.
I can do this!

For example, none of my class topics include its "jacquard" or "tapestry" or "intarsia" color change technique (for the primitive bitmapped look). None concerned 3-D crochet toys or sculptures either. Not this year, anyway.

Tunisian swatch on the right, single crochet on the left. 

Curious about a Tunisian crochet version? Me too. Here's a quick swatch using Tss: (Tunisian Simple Stitch) 

I've finished almost all of the Creeper pieces. Today's inventory:

4.5 out of 8 Leg Panels DONE.

The Four Torso Panels (the largest pieces besides the head):
DONE!

The Eight Toe Panels (my favorite part):
DONE!

The Tops & Bottoms of Feet (smallest panels of all):
3 out of 8 DONE.

The remaining small panels are perfect for TV crocheting, depending on the show. I'm watching season five of Lost and my crochet hook stops moving when it's on. Can't help it.

Update: Minecraft Creeper Crochet

I've made significant progress since my last post!

Here is the completed head, which I stuffed with 8x8x2" pieces of foam rubber after seaming together 6 squares. It worked out.


This means several things: 

1. The size of the crochet pieces (approx. 7.5" square, plus a selvage stitch at each side edge) works out with the 8-inch square foam pieces. I'm glad I added those selvage stitches.
2. Cutting the foam into the sizes I needed was fast and easy. (I sawed through the foam with a bread knife.)



Chair cushion pads (they yellowed while in storage with my
sewing stuff). The bread knife worked great for
cutting the 2-inch foam into 8" x 8" squares. 

3. The seam turned out easier and better than I expected. It's a simple slip stitch crochet seam. The medium green yarn blends the best. 

Slip stitch seam with wrong sides facing out.
Ready to be turned right side out, and stuffed with the
four squares of foam.

It blends so well that I was even able to crochet the last seam after stuffing, instead of sewing it. This meant the seam was done on the outside of the head -- a.k.a. with right sides facing out, instead of with wrong sides facing out, like I did the other seams. Doesn't seem to matter, which is great!

Three pieces of foam added so far. One to go.
It's been pretty easy so far. Will the fourth foam piece
be difficult? It wasn't, really.

Another happy accident is that the foam doesn't show through the stitches because it's green. 


Meanwhile I have three out of six body panel completed, and a few of the 24 pieces needed for the feet.



The only thing I still wonder about is the best way to attach the head and feet to the body....

Crocheting a Minecraft Creeper

Courtesy of Minecraft Wiki

I started crocheting a Minecraft Creeper near the end of Dec 2011. I got in over my head.

Creepier Side of the Creeper, no?

How could I resist Toytester Bob's vision? We both want to see crochet capture its pixelated look. 

This certainly complicates the crocheting: the color changes are frequent and random.


I pretty much only got the face done by Christmas. It was so slow-going back then that...I...lost heart. It's my first challenging crochet intarsia project. A project like this takes a unique kind of planning, as I'm finding out.

A little over a month has gone by and I've figured out how to go about it. I've crunched the numbers (of pixels, colors, yards per gram of yarn, etc). I'm re-inspired! Most importantly I can now track how far along I am (37%)--I thought it was barely 10%. No wonder I lost heart! 

Kitting it up

Another reason I initially lost heart is that I thought I couldn't make it portable. Today I'm "kitting up" the Creeper body parts. This makes it even more fun. They're grab-and-go little kits because I've learned that to have a fair chance of finishing this project, it must be portable. This means NOT lugging around 6 messy skeins of yarn, for example.

Ready to wind into butterfly bobbins

A plus is that the crochet stitches only have to look nice on one side. For a stuffed 3D figure--it will stand 8 inches tall--it needn't be reversible. I also won't be weaving in any yarn ends. If it were to become a Minecraft Creeper afghan instead (imagine!!), I think I'd still go about crocheting it the same way and put a soft fabric backing on it as for a quilt.

Another plus is that as crocheting amigurumi goes, this one is elementary geometry: just stack some 3D squares and rectangles. This means: zero shaping (increasing or decreasing stitches); I can crochet it in several flat pieces; all seams are straightforward; it's easy to calculate yarn amounts needed for each color.

When I first started this project I planned to blog my progress, for my own records and for others who wish to crochet a pixel-like Creeper. This means I have earlier blog posts in my head. To move forward from here instead, I'll just list the steps taken so far.

Initial attempt to make it quick & easy: variegated
camo yarn and diagonal box stitch (shown is
linked stitch version--to close gaps between the
stitches.) Toytester Bob reminded me that
a true Creeper has no shades of brown.

1. I picked the crochet stitch (single crochet in rows), yarn type (worsted weight), and construction (flat in rows then seamed; stuffed with foam blocks). I'd hoped I could just do the diagonal box stitch with variegated yarn! If so, I could have finished it in a few days. It didn't create the digitized look we wanted, though. Also, the taller double crochet stitches had gaps between the stitches, which let the stuffing show through. 

Courtesy of PlanetMinecraft.com

2. Once I accepted the jacquard-tapestry-intarsia-crochet challenge, I limited the number of colors to five, plus black. (For the record, a true Creeper appears to have more than 3 shades of green and 2 shades of grey). I used a mix of ToytesterBob-approved colors from my stash + whatever I could find in the three stores nearest me. I found the best color choice at the time with Vanna's Choice afghan yarn.

The 8 toes of the 4 feet

3. After crocheting the face I then crocheted all of the "toes" of the feet blocks. This was so that I could eliminate the skein of black yarn. The project page I created in Ravelry covers the first stage. 

4. Decide on bobbins or stranding. Yes I know: Step 4?? But until this stage, I wasn't sure if I should pick one technique: crochet over the other colors, or strand across the back, or use small cut lengths (bobbins). A mix of all three is working out the best in terms of uniformly snug stitches, clean color changes (I'm still learning though!), and ease of working. 

Whew.

5. Mapped out on the graph for each of 7 different types of pieces when bobbins are best vs. stranding, block by block! 

6. Measured best cut lengths of yarn for one block of color, a group of two, and so on. This was so that I could create bobbins for my portable kits.

7. Counted totals of blocks of each color to see if I would need more than one skein of each. I'll need another skein of the light green and the medium green.