Over the past week I've been continuing my journey into the world of crochet via the patterns from the Star Wars Crochet kit I've been working on. The kit included all the yarn I needed for the first two projects, but for this one I needed to branch out and get some yarn that wasn't included in the original kit. I had some Amazon gift card balance which I used to purchase a set of mini-skeins of yarn in a variety of colors, as well as some more plastic eyes. The yarn was a bit thicker than the stuff I had been using that came with the kit, so I decided to crochet a swatch with each using the hook I've been using to see how they would compare. They seemed similar enough to me that I thought it should work fine (I don't think they're supposed to curl like that, but since they both have the curl I think it's more likely an issue of technique on my part, e.g. crocheting too tightly).

The yarn assortment doesn't have a good fleshtone color, so I knew I would have to mix and match with some of what I had as well as the new stuff. I decided to go with the Luke Skywalker pattern (based on his look in ROTJ) because it had some of the color transitions that I've wanted to work on to improve my skills, and because I thought I'd be able to use mostly the new yarn rather than the original batch (which might have proven precious if the new stuff didn't work for whatever reason).

The head has the most interesting color transitions, and I think I got them to work much better than on my previous projects. Because the rounds below the hairline involve two colors (fleshtone in the front, yellow in the back for his blond hair) it also involved learning how to carry the yarn behind, which I think worked out well.

Getting the face/hair transitions to line up properly was a bit tricky since I didn't know exactly how it should look while I was doing it. I tossed my first attempt out as a false start when I noticed some obvious mistakes due to how I was pulling the yarn inside and breaking up the blocks of color. This final one gets the blocks right, but it turns out that in my effort to compensate for what I thought were mistakes in stitch-counting resulted in the hair lining up differently on the left and right side. There's a “pixel art” aspect to some elements of crochet, and because I wasn't accounting for the possibility that the “angle” of the hair was being done over two rounds of vertical for each “pixel” of horizontal I assumed that I had miscounted and tried to align via color, which resulted in one side being angled and the other side being straight up and down. Woops! But part of the reason I'm doing this is to learn, and I think I did that even if the final result doesn't perfectly match the intended design.

Because I remembered that I had issues getting the legs to work right on my stormtrooper, I tried to get more separation between the left and right legs on this one. I think it's an improvement, but I'm still not confident that it's working out as well as the pictures in the book.

I think I'm getting better at the arms (in a fun “oh yeah, that's right!” detail the pattern calls for the right arm to be all black since Luke wears a black glove on his artificial right hand in ROTJ), although I think the torso had an extra two stitches of circumference than it was supposed to (possibly due to knock-on effects of my “fixes” with the hair) so he's probably a little bulkier than he's supposed to be.

The lightsaber was pretty tricky, especially since the pattern tells you to do the hilt first which is essentially only tree stitches long so it's hard to get a sense of how the technique is supposed to work because the first and last stitch in a row almost always look a little strange so you only have one data point to extrapolate from. I think I figured it out better after doing the green part and then redoing the hilt (although I'm still not 100% sure I'm doing it right). They say that building your own lightsaber is an important step in one's training as a Jedi, and if this crochet version is anything to judge by it certainly does involve mastering some frustration and rage.

And here's a shot of my ever-growing collection of amigurumi Star Wars characters.

What's next?

As I was working on this one I started getting a little paranoid that I'd eventually run out of the “pale peach” yarn that I used for the face, which would limit what characters I could create in the future. On a few of my morning walks I've stopped off at some stores to look for more yarn in the appropriate thickness that's the right color but haven't had much luck. The other day I took a walk to a different craft store and found some that I think might work. All the pink yarns seemed way too pink to read as fleshtone to me, this one is more of a tan but I don't think it's terrible, and there will probably be something tan I'll want to crochet eventually so it's unlikely to go to waste even if it turns out not to work for this. Since I now have this yarn another human character is probably next on the agenda, most likely Han Solo since his hair design seems similar to Luke's (in a different color, of course) which will let me take another crack at it. Plus he's got more color changes, since he wears a vest rather than a solid-colored outfit, and that will let me get some more practice with that.