For the next project in my series of amigurumi Star Wars characters from the instructions from the Star Wars Crochet craft kit I decided to make the Han Solo.

As I suspected after my last figure, this turned out to be some good practice with more color transitions. I'm pretty sure I got the hair pattern closer to the intended design on this one. The biggest headache I had here wasn't related to patterns or crochet technique, but for some reason I had a really hard time getting the center-pulls started on my yarn skeins so the yarn was a bit of hassle to deal with.

Due to the “vest” element of the design there were a lot more horizontal color transitions on this one than in my previous projects, and I think they worked out reasonably well (I may have gone one stitch to far with one of the white sections near the bottom, or maybe it's just not the smoothest crossover).

The instructions for this one called for embroidering the mouth on after the torso was already crocheted, but I found that to be pretty difficult, I wanted to be able to more easily access the back of the face. To avoid a similar issue with the red stripe on his pants I decided to do that a little earlier in the process than the instructions call for, while the bottom of the “cone” was still fully open. I think that made getting the red line on a bit easier, but I didn't quite get them aligned on the sides of his legs perfectly, they're a little far back. C'est la vie.

I also tried experimenting with my approach to vertical color transitions with the belt area. Previously I've mostly been trying to crochet over the tails, but with the belt I didn't do that, I left them loose and wove them in behind later. I think crocheting over the tails looks like it gives nicer blocks of color, so I'm probably going to stick with that in the future, even though it makes things a bit fiddly.

I also noticed that I have a bit of a “twist” in the overall flow of the stitches. The torso doesn't have any increases or decreases so I suspect the stitches are all supposed to line up above each other and get nice vertical lines for the sides of the vest/shirt area, but mine are a bit slanted. I can see how that might be an element of technique, like maybe pulling the stitches too tight so the next round ends being a tiny bit offset relative to the previous round. It's not a huge deal, but maybe points to some more areas where I can keep improving.

Overall I was pretty satisfied with the results. I think I improved on the skills I was hoping to improve on, and I'm still seeing where I can use some more practice. Overall this was fun once I got it started, for some reason I was in a bit of a funk earlier in the week and had a hard time convincing myself to get started, but once I did it went pretty smoothly. Here's Han standing with the rest of the ever-growing collection.

The part that gave me the biggest kick is that my Luke is indeed noticeably shorter than Han. I don't know how much of that is the result of the designs embedded in the patterns and how much is due to the individual variations in my implementation working out that way, but Luke, unlike Han, really is a little short to be a stormtrooper.

What's next?

I haven't completely decided on my next project. I might do the Princess Leia, to complete the set of human-looking characters from the set. I could also go for the R2D2. I've ambivalent about trying those because they call for using “silver gray” yarn and the I think the gray yarn I have is a little darker than that. And from skimming the patterns it looks like the Boba Fett has some more complex techniques in it, so that would probably be the most educational, but matching his colors would be difficult with the yarn I have. I'm still enjoying the process and like the results I've been getting (and the feeling that my skills are improving), so I'm almost certainly going to do another one.