What creative projects have you been working on?

It is once more July! That means everything else I've been working on gets put on hold for artfight, the yearly event where artists are split into two teams and we attack one another (an by attack, I mean you just draw other people's characters).

This year I have taken it upon myself to do at least two crochet "attacks" (so I'll be crocheting someone's character). I'm working on a frog like character. They're a frog but more... Loaf like? Beany babyish body? I'm not sure how to describe it. But I've gotten a base pattern for the body and have been working on that. I fucked up my stitch count the first time I worked on the body, so when I was working on the decrease to close it, I had the incorrect amount of stitches, so I decided to frog it (hah). The second time, my tension was waaaay too tight so it was pretty misshapen looking and I hated it. So instead of ripping it all out, I just cut it off from the working yarn and began anew.

Third times the charm! I'm being much more careful about my tension and stitch count. I've been obsessively checking both to make sure I'm not messing it up. A little tedious to have to do this three times but that's how it be.

The other crochet character will be a human, and I've found a doll pattern I liked to base that off of. I was wondering how to do the eyes, but I've come across a lot of really neat eye patterns that are crocheted, so I'll likely so that. I would like to be able to embroider the face, but I'm not very good at that yet lol.

A little off topic, but how A LOT of people are embroidering/crocheting the eyes, it makes them look like they're going in opposite directions with a 1000 yard stare. The biggest thing is they seem to try to evenly place the irises, but because it's going to be on a 3d head, they should be over correcting towards the center. I'll be fussing with my own for a few days, and hopefully it'll look okay... Hopefully.

Decided to start building a Voron.

This might not be a "creative" thing, but it feels like it belongs here moreso than the technical project thread.

I have yet to make any major purchases for this project beyond two spools of ABS filament. The reason for it is that I need to build the parts out of ABS because it's basically the only material that will withstand the stress and temperatures it needs to. The problem is that the printer I have is not very well equipped to print in ABS, especially since it has no enclosure. It took weeks just to figure out how to get the parts to stick to the bed; the only thing that seems to work is a toxic slurry of melted ABS in acetone. Thankfully some of the upgrades that I have purchased have made things considerably easier then it could have potentially been.

Of course, it's great that I managed to solve the sticking problem, but now the largest problem is time. Voron parts are the definition of overkill; they have 5 layers on each outer shell and 40% infill. Which is to say that each part is essentially completely solid. That means that prints can take forever; last night I put together a buildplate full of parts, and it estimated that the build time was going to be 1 day and 3 hours. And so far it seems to be accurate. I have a thicker nozzle that could potentially increase my print speed by at least 20%, but since the community who designed it say it's better not to I will be doing things the slow way.

This whole thing will be a long, slow, and expensive process, but what's making this worth it is that I will be able to say that this is a machine that I made, that the quality is great because of the work that I put into it, and it's going to be one of the best printers an average person could hope to own. It's going to be like building a 1970 Ford Mustang from scratch.