T.A.R.D.I.S. - Inspired Hat Pattern

Before I started making my Dalek hat, I had actually started making a T.A.R.D.I.S. hat to go with my T.A.R.D.I.S. gloves.  I had decided on the design - I wanted something to represent the T.A.R.D.I.S. that still worked well as a hat.  There are a number of designs that do a good job of looking like the T.A.R.D.I.S., but are very square on top and/or have the light bulb, so aren't my idea of everyday attire!  

So I took the most distinctive elements - the windows and the colour, and put them together into a normal-ish hat.  After running out of wool, and then getting side-tracked with SO MANY projects for christmas, I finally got to finish my idea:

It's very similar to the gloves - the window panels and the bottom cuff are the same.  The pattern is available both at my etsy store, or on Ravelry.  The pattern is of intermediate difficulty, and is for a medium men/large women's sized hat, with instructions to make smaller and larger sizes.  I also have an already one on etsy, and am happy to do custom orders

Dalek-Inspired Hat Pattern

It's been a nearly a year since I first made my dalek gloves, so I thought I'd have a try making a matching hat.

There are several versions of hats that look like the top of the dome of the dalek, so I thought that making another one of those would be a bit redundant.  It's also really hard to make a version that has the bobbles at the bottom due to the need to taper the hat at the top.  Instead, I opted for a more abstract design where the bobbles and the stripes are side-by-side.  I think this makes for a more subtle design that still has the elements of a dalek in it.

Unfortunately, making the pattern of alternating squares requires a number of strands of wool to be in use at a time.  It also means that there will be a LOT of ends to tuck in when you're done.  The pattern can be worked with just two strands, but it leaves the back a lot uglier, and you have to be really careful with tension.

The pattern is available both at my etsy store, or on Ravelry.  The pattern is of intermediate difficulty, and is for a large women's/medium men's sized hat, with instructions to make smaller and larger sizes.  I also have a couple of already made pairs on etsy, and am happy to do custom orders

T.A.R.D.I.S. - Inspired Fingerless Gloves

After making the Dalek gloves, it was only a matter of time before I got the urge to make a pair of matching T.A.R.D.I.S. gloves.  After several false starts (making horizontal lines that stand out in crochet is quite difficult!), I ended up with something I'm happy with.  I couldn't decide whether to make them with the sign on the door or not, so I made both.  I like the look of the pair with out best, but the ones with the sign appeal to my sense of accuracy.

The pattern is available both at my etsy store, or on Ravelry.  The pattern is of intermediate difficulty, and is for medium/large women's sized gloves, with instructions to make smaller and larger sizes.  I also have a couple of already made pairs on etsy, and am happy to do custom orders

Gluten-Free Dalek Smash Cake and Lemon Sour Cream Cake Recipe

My partner and I have our birthdays two days apart, so the last couple of years we've had a joint costume party.  Last years theme was video games, and I spent weeks making decorations, about half of which are still up a year later.

If I remember rightly, the guitar hero song was Sweet Child of Mine, on the basis that it always has to be played ad nauseum at parties, but I didn't want to actually listen to it at mine.

(I was dressed up as Toadette.)

This years party was movie-themed, and I dressed up as Sara from the labyrinth.  I made the waistcoat by getting a plain white vest, stenciling on the pattern in pencil then painting over it.

My favourite part of the night was the cake.  It took me three days to make (mostly because I was organised and made it in stages), but ended up amazing.  It was a Dalek smash cake, which I made following the instructions here (I know that Doctor Who is technically not movie themed - though the eighth Doctor was in a movie.  The cake is just too awesome to care!).

If you don't know what a smash cake is, basically the top half of the cake is a hollow chocolate dome that is supposed to be smashed open before eating the cake:

Inside there were the brains of the Dalek.  Delicious, gummy brains!  Plus, the entire cake (which was lemon sour cream) as well as the 'plunger' and the eye were gluten-free!  It would be just as easy to make it dairy-free as well by using dark chocolate, the right sort of cookie and making an appropriate cake.  My Dalek is a bit on the short side compared to the one in the tutorial, but that has more to do with the fact that I had to use a rectangular pan rather than a square pan for the base so did not have a lot of mix to give it height, rather than it being flat because it's gluten-free.

Because he was so short, I couldn't use chocolate buttons as the Dalek bumps.  Instead, I just piped them using chocolate icing.  I also didn't use liquorish for the black bits.  Liquorish contains wheat, plus it's gross.  I added black food colouring to the chocolate icing and piped that on as well.

I found the recipe for the cake somewhere online a few years ago, but I can't seem to find it again so I thought I'd post it here as it's a really good one.  To make the Dalek, I made a double batch.

GF Lemon Sour Cream Cake

Ingredients

2 eggs

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup (125 g) sour cream

1 1/2 tsp vanilla essence

zest of 1+ lemon

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/4 cup melted butter

1 1/2 cup gf flour - 2 parts rice, 1 part corn, 1 part tapioca

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp xantham/guar gum

1/2 tsp salt

• Whisk eggs and sugar together until it gets stiff and forms ribbons
• Add sour cream, vanilla, zest, juice and butter and mix through
• Add dry ingredients and mix well
• Bake at 180°C for 30 min for cake, or 15-20 min for cupcakes

Icing

1 cup icing sugar

Juice of 1/2 a lemon

~2 tsp oil

Food colouring

boiling water

• Mix icing sugar, lemon juice, oil and food colouring together
• Add boiling water slowly until icing is reasonably thick

This cake is also really good with cream cheese icing (Definitely my favourite icing)

250 g cream cheese

3 Tsp butter

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 Tsp lemon juice

2 cups icing sugar

• Mix cream cheese, butter, vanilla and lemon juice together until smooth
• Add icing sugar and mix well

Dalek-Inspired Gloves

A few months ago, I saw a pattern for an awesome pair of knitted Dalek fingerless gloves (which you can find here).  Being a big Doctor Who fan, I thought they were awesome, as I said.  However, I really don't like knitting.  In the last five years, I think I've only knitted two things - a replacement pair of gloves for a colleague who lost one of her favourites (for which I got paid), and the platinum square of the knitted periodic table (I'm doing a PhD in chemistry, working with Pt.  I had to do it!).  I'm also planning on making some knee-high Doctor Who socks in the next couple of months.  It takes something special like my love of both knee-high socks and Doctor Who to out weigh my loathing of knitting.

Given this, I decided to try and make a crochet version for a friend's birthday present.  You can see the finished results below.  The wrist has a series of 3D "Dalek bumps", while the hand has slightly raised ridges like the bottom of the helmet.

The pattern is available both at my etsy store, or on Ravelry.  The pattern is of intermediate difficulty, and is for medium/large women's sized gloves, with instructions to make smaller and larger sizes.  I also have a couple of already made pairs on etsy, and am happy to do custom orders.

Dr Oodberg!

Ever since I started crocheting the Goth Vampires, my boyfriend kept on bugging me to make him a crochet Zoidberg.  After putting it off for a while, I decided to make one for him for Valentine's Day.  It took a bit of scheming, as I had to make it in secret, and a fair bit of trial and error to get the tentacles right (I used a mix of patterns from Creepy Cute Crochet), but I was reasonably happy with how he turned out.  However, I only had black eyes, so he ended up looking a bit like an Ood from Doctor Who.  Not that that's a bad thing (I might actually make an Ood properly one day...).  So here's Dr Oodberg!