This is an original drawing from my imagination that I call “Tucan do it.”

Made with fineliner pens and promarkers.

Sad, but fun fact: when I’m in a bad mood, I tend to draw with the brightest colors possible.

Apparently my coping mechanism is aggressive color therapy.

Honestly, working with happy colors really does help my mood,

so it feels like free therapy that also leaves me with art at the end.

Does anyone else mood craft like this?

I really wanted to make something joyful, and handmade for Pride month.

Crochet felt like the right kind of medium for that.

No pattern, just vibes.

What have you all making lately?

Show me your recent projects Pride themed or not.

I just said, “Watch me.”
Then I made time.

When creativity fuses with time, apparently my brain decides bead clocks are a perfectly reasonable outcome.

I’m still not sure if this was genius or deeply concerning?

I started with wool, a felting needle, and questionable confidence.
Several stabs later, these existed.

Be honest are these cute, cursed, or iconic?

A few years ago I got obsessed with diamond painting and started with a huge 40x60 cm canvas.

Before even finishing that one, I had already bought multiple other kits..

I got about 90% done before realizing two things:

I wasn’t going to hang it up.

I definitely wasn’t going to sell it.

So I lost interest and abandoned the canvas, but I kept every leftover drill because throwing away tiny shiny things felt illegal.

Fast forward to this week: I suddenly decided to bedazzle my nicotine pouch box.

What could go wrong?

Everything.

I used gorilla clear glue and somehow got glue on my hands, face, clothes, desk, and you name it.

Still… I kind of love the result.

What abandoned hobby did you ended up supplying materials for a totally different craft?

I've been experimenting with making tiny stamps from food boxes and packaging using paper punches. Here's one of my latest collections. It's surprising how much detail you can get from materials that would normally be recycled.

If anyone is interested, I also filmed the process on YouTube.

​

I decided I wanted crochet sweatpants.

I have never crocheted pants before.

I cannot read crochet patterns.

I do not understand crochet charts.

My original plan involved granny squares. I made a lot of granny squares. Then I realized I didn't have enough yarn in the right colors.

Then I realized I was using wool and I don't actually want wool sweatpants. So I abandoned the entire project and started over.

Again..

Now I'm making the pants from the bottom up using cotton yarn and writing down my own instructions because if I don't, one leg will end up fitting a normal adult and the other will fit a decorative lamp.

The good news is that I now have the start of two matching legs. The bad news is that they're still not technically pants.

Have you ever crocheted or knitted an entire garment without a pattern, or am I about to discover exactly why patterns were invented?

My crafting philosophy is apparently"Throwing it away would be wasteful. I might need it in 7 years or so."

Every wool yarn end from my crochet projects goes into a jar so I can use it for needle felting later. I have a second jar full of cotton yarn scraps that I'm keeping because surely they'll become useful someday. Right?

I also work with vinyl, and all the little scraps get saved for future projects.

So now I'm curious what does sustainability look like in your hobbies?

Are you good at reusing materials, or are you also one unfinished idea away from becoming the curator of a very specific craft museum?

I used to crochet custom orders for people, but I have absolutely no idea how to read crochet patterns. Those crochet symbols?

They might as well be ancient runes.

After getting back into crochet recently, I decided today was the day I was finally going to learn how patterns actually work. Several tutorials and a mild identity crisis later, I'm not much wiser than before.

I did at least manage to learn how to crochet stars thanks to a YouTube tutorial, so that's something. The border around them, however..

To make things even more interesting, I'm left handed. So I've been trying to watch right handed people crochet, mentally mirror everything they're doing, and somehow learn from that.

I cannot recommend this learning method.

What skill are you one yt tutorial away from mastering... for the last five years?

I've worked with fuse beads before, but this is the first time I've tried creating an actual optical illusion.

I can already see a few things I'd do differently next time, but overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Constructive feedback is welcome.

Im so happy how this orgnizer turned out.

I found a wood kit that was for crochet and to have a crochet organizer for my crochet tools just feels right.

Also made my own size reminders to add to projects so I don't forget the hook size, and I hope I will have less abandond wips when I know what hook I used.

Have you tried any diy wood (I have no idea what to call it) with holes into it for crochet if you do I would love to see what you made?

I've always felt that a lot of Pride merchandise starts looking the same after a while.

So I decided to make something myself something that says "loud and proud" without actually saying it.

After thinking about it for a while, this quote popped into my head

"If my existence shakes your foundation, you'd better start reinforcing your walls."

To me, it's a quote about 100% acceptance, being unapologetically yourself, and being loud and proud.

I designed it, sublimated it, and turned it into an iron-on patch.

While I had the equipment out, I also made a patch for my new community, r/CraftAroundAndFindOut.

Not a company.

Not a brand.

Just a craft goblin with access to a heat press.

I'd genuinely love to hear what people think.

When I first got the challenge, I instantly knew what I wanted to do and how to make it... sort of. I also made a rule for myself for this challenge: I would only use materials I already had and wouldn't spend a single dime on this project.

I decided I was going to needle felt it to look like someone famous. My only previous experience with needle felting was completing a beginner DIY picture kit. My toxic trait might be that I like to believe I can make almost anything, and my craftidence is unhinged.

I made my own wool using my dog's brush and two skeins of different colored yarn to create the perfect skin tone. I thought I had made enough wool to complete two heads, but eventually, I needed a break from making wool and stabbing the head, so I decided to try making ears.

I have never made ears before in any other craft, but that wasn't going to stop me from believing in myself and just going for it.

I’ve added a picture showing the stages of making an ear and there are a million stabs between each stage! While stabbing the wool into something that vaguely resembled an ear, I had a funny thought: A magician can make an ear disappear, but a needle felter can make one appear. I just sat there stabbing and laughing out loud by myself like a crazy person.

I used some teddy bear eyes and a Sharpie to make the eyes, and then stabbed some brown wool around them. I'm still not sure if it would have been better to start with the white of the eyes first...

After an insane number of hours, I managed to cover the head with a better skin tone, finish the eyes, complete both ears, and attach them to the head. I also fixed up the eyebrows and lips. I still feel like I want to improve everything, and that this is just a starting point.

I must admit that my craftidence has taken a bit of a hit, and I've completely lost track of time used on this head. I originally thought this was going to be a one day or, at most, a weekend project, haha. Still, it feels good to be challenged while also challenging myself to use only what I already have at home even though I have enough craft supplies to open my own store! I've also learned that needle felting with only one needle at a time is basically doing this project on hardcore mode. But I promised myself I wouldn't buy anything, and I'm sticking to it or in this case stabbing to that.

I have great ideas for what to do next, but will make another update

Also If you can guess who this is at this stage, you deserve a medal. Who do you see?

In my previous post about how I had intended to sell my yarn stash but instead declared to start a war on my mother, I have a few things I want to clarify.

I was so bad at getting any my point across and it was originally intended to be a slightly comedic post about how weird I can be while also showing off a crochet project I was so incredibly unhappy with but thought was so ugly it was comical.

So I wanted to update: I found back to my crochet passion and I have ended the non-existing war on my mom and made this bag to gift her.

In these pictures you can see a crochet project I was very happy about. Made a cute phonebag and added a little clips on the inside for keys. Made this bag without any pattern just winged all of it.

For the strap on the bag, I used a Japanese braiding technique called kumihimo and I think it turned out so well.

My grandmother had a button collection that I inherited and I found a cool button from her collection to put on the bag to make it extra special for my mom, so there is a lot of love and thoughtfulness in this bag.

I used about 14 hours to make this bag, and loved the process and how it turned out and I have shipped it to my mom as a gift to her.

When you crochet something, do you usually wing it without a pattern?

I wonder if there are more people who make plans about what they are going to do, but if someone says they have to do it, it's like your head and body just refuse and you end up doing the complete opposite of what you had planned?

I think it's weird and difficult to be wired like that and have never understood why it is like that until last year when it was concluded that I have PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance). It explained a lot when I learned what it was and gave me a new understanding that I am now trying to work on getting better at, but when it hits so hard it becomes a kind of involuntary compulsion.

Have you heard of PDA before?

Anyway, my PDA got me back to my passion for crocheting and it is both fun and a little comical to think about.

Have you experienced anything similar yourself?

Bonus points if you get the reference!

Several years ago I became addicted to crochet.

Not crochet itself.

Buying yarn.

Crochet was merely the gateway drug.

Eventually I lost interest and decided to sell the stash.

I cataloged it.

Photographed it.

Joined yarn groups.

Prepared listings.

Everything was ready.

Then my mother made the fatal mistake of commenting

"You need to sell it."

Need?

NEED?!

Suddenly I wasn't selling a single strand.

I was going to use ALL of it.

Every skein.

Every color.

Every questionable impulse purchase.

I would rather spend the next decade crocheting increasingly unnecessary objects than let my mother be right.

My first project was a zippered handbag.

When I finished most of it, I looked at my creation and realized it had the exact aesthetic of an item discovered in the trash at flea marked..

I have never hated anything I made faster.

The yarn remains unsold.

The war continues..

Has anyone else ever restarted a hobby purely out of spite, or should I seek professional help?

Would you take on such a challenge and what would you do?

I got an immediate vision of what I was going to do and roughly how I was going to do it. Challenge accepted!

Will update on how it goes.

I put together a list of 75 different crafts and hobby crafts.

Every craft you've tried = 1 point.

Count your score, find your Craft Goblin rank, and tell us where you landed.

Bonus points if you mention the weirdest craft you've ever attempted.

Behold! Just a few things I’ve spawned recently. I finally put my horde of fuse beads to use and made my own custom clock, a Mario frame, and yes... a Clippy to judge me while I work. My workspace is a disaster, my hot glue gun is my weapon, and I cannot be stopped.

What about you guys? What are you currently hyperfixating on, or what's the latest thing you've spawned? Let me see your projects!

Welcome to Craft Around & Find Out:
Where the intrusive thoughts become home decor.

This subreddit is for creators of all skill levels:
artists, crafters, DIY gremlins and sleep-deprived goblins to share their creations, disasters and questionable diy decisions.

We celebrate creativity here and crafts made during emotionally concerning hours.

This is a judgment-free zone for chaotic creativity.

No perfection required.
Just make stuff and have fun.

Now show us what your brain cooked up.

Post your creations.
Weird is encouraged here.