Flying Spaghetti Monster

My sister and I have (what I hope is) a very cool collaborative project to post about.....the mysterious project is now at her house to be painted....I'm really excited to see how they turn out!!!

In the meantime, I have a couple of things that I've been working on, off and on.  One of them is a FSM semi-commission (I say semi, since a friend suggested it, and my hubs has claimed it as his own, even before it was done!)

What is an FSM, you ask?  A Flying Spaghetti Monster!  What is a Flying Spaghetti Monster?  Well, kind of exactly what it sounds like....

He's a little wall-eyed in this picture, but I suppose that is not altogether unexpected for a
being comprised solely of noodles & meatballs.....

And now for the details of the project:

Supplies:  

~Almost an entire skein of "Buff" Red Heart yarn (never again.  I'm spending the extra dough to get yarn that won't make my eye twitch!)

~A few yards of "White" Red Heart yarn (see above)

~A few yards each of solid marooney-red Red Heart & reddish ombre Red Heart

~2 safety eyes (which my friend kindly donated!)

~A few handfulls of batting

~Package of pipe cleaners (I don't remember exactly how many I ended up using...each of the noodly appendages have a core of pipe cleaners so they are fully posable)

~3 wooden skewers (for the support legs.  If I were to do this again, I'd probably make them out of heavy wire, so they're not so straight and un-cooked-noodle-looking)

~Hot glue gun

~Embellish Knit cord making machine, without which, this project would have never happened!

Directions:  (As much as they can be, since I can't write a crochet pattern to save my life....)

I made it up as I went along, and had I not ripped out and changed my mind a hundred times, this project probably wouldn't have taken nearly as long as it did.  That being said:  Never underestimate the amount of time it takes to make enough noodly appendages!  Also, I kind of wrecked my Embellish Knit about a year ago, trying to find a useful application for the gadget I had cluttering up my workspace - if the machine had been working properly, the noodles would have gone a lot more quickly!  (Note:  Embellish Knit will not work with wire.  Ask me how I know.)  

I crocheted an ovally shape for the middle, using single crochet.  I batted around the idea of doing a loser double crochet, but decided that with all the stuff it would have to support, single would be the better option.  (I think I was right!)  Stuff firmly with batting.

Then, I made to kinda cup-shaped pieces for the meatballs, crocheting two strands of yarn as one (made it nice and firm!)  I tacked the meatballs onto the ovally body piece.  The eyeballs are just a slightly flattish ball in single crochet with white yarn - don't forget to insert the eyes and batting before closing up the ball!  At this point, I should mention that I used pipe cleaners for the eye stalks.  At this point, I hadn't had the idea of the skewers, and I should have replaced the stalks with skewers, and the skewer 'legs' with wire.  Ah well, live and learn!!

It's surprisingly difficult to find a picture on the internet of the back of the elusive
Flying Spaghetti Monster.  This is what I ended up with....

There are three basic kinds of noodles - flaccid, hollow body pieces, pipe cleaner pose able noodly appendages, and the tripod.  They all start off the same, but as I created the beginning of the knitted cord, after about an inch, I carefully inserted the pipe cleaner/skewer.  (It's important to have some started before trying to insert the pipe cleaners, or they'll just keep falling out.  Conversely, if there is too much noodle, and you try to shove the pipe cleaner in, it'll stretch out.  So....kind of a trial and error thing to get everything right.  Oh, and a detail about the pipe cleaners/skewers/wire - towards the end, when I was working on the skewer portion, I realized that the ends were going to poke out pretty easily.  So I did a little blob of hot glue on the end, and it worked great.  Were I to do this again, I'd do a blob of glue on the ends of the pipe cleaners as well!)

I sewed all the posable noodles on the body, and glued the skewers on (the skewer goes all the way through the body, and is glued on both ends....the knit cover only goes up to the body.  Does that make sense?)

Then, I spent the next week and a half messing around with how to do the noodly body.  The first time I messed around with it, I got pretty good results, but wasn't perfectly satisfied, and I ripped everything off.  Repeat X infinity.  I finally settled on instead of carefully trying to weave each individual piece together, that each piece can be knotted and woven into a flattish piece of 'noodle', which I then hotglued to the body.  And I think it turned out quite swell!  I think that unless you look really, really closely, you can tell that there are 4+ separate sections in the pic below!

And a close-up of His Noodliness...

Now, you may not know this about me, but hot glue has been crafting heresy for me.  Before this project, I have probably hot glued 4 things in my life.  And never crafting projects.  Yes.  Hi, my name is Noelle, and I'm a hot glue snob.  If it can't be sewn, nailed, or screwed, it's not happening.  But I had a breakthrough with this project.  I love hot glue.  L-O-V-E it.

This is what my husband has to say about the FSM addition to the household:  "Every time I go upstairs, I lock eyes with the Flying Spaghetti Monster.  We sit there, fixed in time, for a few moments, then go about our respective days."  That'll do.  :)