Amigurumi : Kodama

En français
In もののけ姫 (Princess Mononoke) we met strange little forest spirid called Kodama.
I made one for my fiancé last Christmas as he is a fan.

Amigurumi : Basic body pattern

En français
So my last and only pattern was to make a nice five-legged octopus. Now I'm going to present you the pattern for the basic body I used to knit the previous vampire and witch.




















Body
Make an amigurumi ring.
1) 5 sc in the ring.
2) 2 sc in each sc around : 10 sc
3) (1 sc in the next sc, 2 sc in the next sc) 5 times : 15 sc
4) (1 sc in the next 2 sc, 2 sc in the next sc) 5 times : 20 sc
5) (1 sc in the next 3 sc, 2 sc in the next sc) 5 times : 25 sc
6) (1 sc in the next 4 sc, 2 sc in the next sc) 5 times : 30 sc
7-21) 30 sc
22) (1 sc in the next 4 sc, decrease once) 5times : 25 sc
23) (1 sc in the next 3 sc, decrease once) 5times : 20 sc
24) (1 sc in the next 2 sc, decrease once) 5times : 15 sc
Finish off

Head
Make an amigurumi ring.
1) 5 sc in the ring.
2) 2 sc in each sc around : 10 sc
3) (1 sc in the next sc, 2 sc in the next sc) 5 times : 15 sc
4) (1 sc in the next 2 sc, 2 sc in the next sc) 5 times : 20 sc
5) (1 sc in the next 3 sc, 2 sc in the next sc) 5 times : 25 sc
6) (1 sc in the next 4 sc, 2 sc in the next sc) 5 times : 30 sc
7) (1 sc in the next 5 sc, 2 sc in the next sc) 5 times : 35 sc
8) (1 sc in the next 6 sc, 2 sc in the next sc) 5 times : 40 sc
9) (1 sc in the next 7 sc, 2 sc in the next sc) 5 times : 45 sc
10-16) 45 sc
17) (1 sc in the next 7 sc, decrease once) 5times : 40 sc
18) (1 sc in the next 6 sc, decrease once) 5times : 35 sc
19) (1 sc in the next 5 sc, decrease once) 5times : 30 sc
20) (1 sc in the next 4 sc, decrease once) 5times : 25 sc
21) (1 sc in the next 3 sc, decrease once) 5times : 20 sc
22) (1 sc in the next 2 sc, decrease once) 5times : 15 sc
Finish off

Arms (make two)
Make an amigurumi ring.
1) 4 sc in the ring.
2) 2 sc in each sc around : 8 sc
3) (1 sc in the next sc, 2 sc in the next sc) 4 times : 12 sc
4-5) 12 sc
6) (1 sc in the next 1 sc, decrease once) 4 times : 8 sc
7-19) 8sc
Finish off

Legs (make two)
Make an amigurumi ring.
1) 5 sc in the ring.
2) 2 sc in each sc around : 10 sc
3) (1 sc in the next sc, 2 sc in the next sc) 5 times : 15 sc
4-6) 15 sc
7) (1 sc in the next 1 sc, decrease once) 5 times : 10 sc
8-22) 10 sc
Finish off

I let you make the hair, eyes, nose, mouth and clothes as desire. Feel free to send me pictures of your work and comment if you encounter any problems.

もののけ姫 (princess Mononoke)

En français
もののけ姫 is an anime from Hayao Miyazaki (1997). The story is based in the late Muromachi period 室町時代 (1336 -1573).

It related the war between the God-Animal such as Moro, the mother wolf (美輪 明宏, Akihiro Miwa) or Okkoto/Okkotonushi, the chief of the wild boar (森繁久彌, Hisaya Morishige) and the human from the nearby forge leaded by Lady Eboshi (田中 裕子 Yūko Tanaka).
At the same time the emperor sends this samurai to collect the head of the forest spirit.
At the time Ashitaka (松田洋治 Yōji Matsuda) a foreigner witnesses the war and try to help both side.
Cinema, Manga, Animation Content

Amigurumi : The witch and the vampire

En français














I got very inspired about witches and vampires and demons and stuff at the moment so I made those two cute Amigurumi. You will probably see more of this inspiration appear on the blog at some point here. I have much work to do on it first.
I have an amigurumi demon on the way as well which will be presented later on as I need to figure out how to make standing wings.




On the Swedish dog post I said that I write amigurumi posts when I'm not really inspired, you'll see on the next one that it's not always the case.

Travel : Seb Travelling

En français
If you like my travel section, you are going to love this.
My fiancé made a web side telling all our traveling adventure called "Seb Travelling".
There you will find the all our travel such as the Iceland Tour, the Big European Tour (that doesn't appear on here yet) and more...
The travels are explain day by day with a lot of photos, more practical information.

New Challenge : Spanish

En français
I always feel like I would have to learn Spanish one day out of necessity. Well that day have come, on the 21st of November I'm going to Peru for holiday.
So the new challenge is to learn as much Spanish as humanly possible or to have enough Spanish skills to be able to communicate with the local population.
I also want to work a great deal on this challenge before the beginning of November as I will have an other challenges starting on the 1st of that month (see detail later).
So I'll try to update how it goes regularly (difficulties and such).





















Here is the list of my Spanish material for beginning:

-Pimsleur Spanish (3 months)
-FSI language course (basis and programmatic) available here
-A very old Spanish text book from my father
-Almodóvar's movies : Volver, Todo sobre mi madre
-Other movie : El Laberinto del Fauno, Nueve Reinas, L'auberge Espagnole (but that one contains a lot of -French and English)
-Music : Mano Negra, Manu Chao, Ska P (5.36h worth, minus the english song I'll find in it for sure)
-A small French-Spanish dictionary
and of course everything I can find on the web such as this interesting blog ¿Donde andan estos?

Spanish is probably the only language I never intented to learn for some reasons, so that's quite limited but that's probably going to be enough for the next month and a half.

Step 2 : Get the attitude !!!

En français
Wah, it has been ages since I release the step 1 and everybody was probably waiting eagerly for this one. I'm really wondering why I didn't get deadly comments.
Anyway, here we go, Step 2 : Get the attitude !!

I guess that's probably more difficult but since you have already mastered step 1 we won't go back to it.

In this step I want to talk to you about the people around you.
Obviously not the ones telling you: "Go for it !", " You'll make it for sure :D" or "You're so good !". No, here I'm talking about the others, the nasty ones, the ones that want to be realistic, the ones that truly believe that they are right and that you are crazy. I'm going to separate several comments that got from different people.

"I wish I could do that but I'm too busy, (I don't have time)."

I love that one, seriously, that's probably my favorite crap sentence ever.
Did you realize how often people say it? Each time you're trying to do something new, it's there, waiting in a dark corner to jump on you. It looks pretty inoffensive said like that, but if that particular day, you are in a low mood, like tending to give up it's going get to you mind.

What this inoffensive sentence is implying if you think about it from the point of view of the person saying it (which is what you do in major cases) is that you should be better working or do something with your life than trying something funny like that, that you will probably fail anyway. What the guy is thinking is that he/she has way more important things to do than trying to do that, which you don't. So that makes you feel miserable and maybe immature.

So now let me tell you what it is supposed to mean and that is going to make you feel way better, I promise.
That actually means that this person even with "her wish" to do that never takes the time to do it, obviously in the real world (my real word) you only got the time that you take. Liberating time for what you want just leads you to be more efficient, (good bye procrastination) and at the end of the game you will be the one with something left.

Personally, I never have time problem for what matters to me... strange.

"You can't do it that way, it won't work go do it like MrX he knows exactly what to do."

Well if MrX knows so well, why isn't your friend doing what MrX says. Because he isn't doing what you say either because he doesn't want to bother doing it.
You have done research on your things, you know how to do it, you created your method, you experienced it...
Why do you thing that MrX will know better ? Because someone who doesn't know what he is talking about say so ? That makes me laugh.
Be confident.
It's like people who doesn't have a clue about English (or whatever is involved in speaking an other language) are telling me, "Isn't it to difficult to speak in English everyday ?" (I have been living in the UK for more than 3 years now, and wrote my thesis in English) "You should meet that guy, his English is so good."
How do they know ? they don't understand him anyway as well as they don't understand how you feel and learn and live because they haven't been through it. And you probably met guy talking English better than he is and you possibly speak English better than he is too.

"You can't do it, seriously just be realistic it's too difficult."

What I like in that sentence is the word realistic, re.a.lis.tic. Why ? Because the person saying it is all except realistic. He/she is just copy and pasting the general opinion others have. Saying "It is too difficult".
Let me tell you one thing, NO IT IS NOT.
And the reason is, if someone did it before, you sure can do it. You just need to try hard enough. People assume they know a lot of thing about stuff because they heard somewhere (they don't even know where) that it was such and such.
Is that knowledge ? Of course not, knowledge come from research on one particular topic in every direction until you can create your own opinion about it. So let them talk, they don't know and they don't know that they don't know. Don't try to tell them they won't listen, just laugh for being so wise.

Now you are probably seeing the point of this post. People around you, most of them unfortunately, aren't going to be supportive (whatever their reasons might be, and I'm not saying they are doing it on purpose, sometimes they are not.)
Let them talk, if what they say really bother you write it down and analyze it, it will make you feel better. That's what I call get the attitude, make sure that nothing, not even a little grain of sand, is coming between you and your goal.

Back to step 1
Back to introduction
Forward to step 3