Castle Crashers Etsy Treasury

To honor craft Castle Crashers fans, I created a treasury.
Check out the awesome-ness here: Castle Crashers Treasury.

PATTERN: Install Ball Animal Orb

Install Ball:

Yarn: Worsted Weight. I used Caron Simply Soft Black yarn for the middle and White for the embroidery, and their Brites Lime for the rest.

Hook size: 5.5mm

With black, 12 hdc into magic circle
1: 1 hdc, 2hdc into each st - 18 sts
2: 1 hdc, 2hdc, rep - 24 sts
3: With green, 2 hdc, 2hdc, rep - 30 sts
4: 3 hdc, 2hdc, rep - 36 sts
5: 4 hdc, 2hdc, rep - 42 sts
6: 5 hdc, 2hdc, rep - 48 sts
7-11: hdc around - 48 sts
12: 4 hdc, hdc2tog, rep - 42 sts
13: 3 hdc, hdc2tog, rep - 36 sts
14: 2 hdc, hdc2tog, rep - 30 sts
Embroider white & start stuffing
15: 1 hdc, hdc2tog, rep - 24 sts
16-18: hdc2tog, rep - 12/6/3 sts


Obviously, the install ball is easy enough to do, haha. You could also use sc instead of hdc and just do a few more rows (1.5 more, I imagine!).

Castle Crashers!

This past month, I've had a couple of people ask for some custom items that I'd never done before for the game Castle Crashers.

First, I made a custom animal orb, Install Ball:

The finished product!

The image from CastleCrashers.com that I had to work with.

Then, a bit later, I had someone order 3 custom hats. The first was The Industrialist, the second the Ninja and the last was the Bear (Bipolar Bear, Bear Shaman... whatever you'd like to call him!). The Industrialist was probably the most difficult of the three for me and my least favorite of the hats (though Brian, my customer, was pleased with the results! :) ). I couldn't figure how to keep the pointed top of the hat from being a bit limp and teletubbie-like.


The Ninja was much easier and I quite enjoyed making the skull & crossbones for it. :)

And then there was my favorite, the Bear. I wanted to give him the furry texture the bear in the game so obviously had, but hadn't had much luck with any textured yarn I had tried (I had previously tried both Lion Brand Homespun and Joann Sensations Boucle and hated them both). So I researched a bit to see if I could find a way to pull it off. I was considering some of Red Heart's yarn and then wound up getting some I'd never even heard of before. My husband was the one who discovered it when we were at Michaels and I'm so glad he talked me into trying it out! I bought Red Heart Buttercup in white (tell me that color isn't being discontinued! I can't find it online anywhere... But I have bought about 8 skeins of it, just in case!).

At first, I was not enjoying the yarn any more than I had the others, even with my new 8.0mm bamboo crochet hook
(the recommended hook according to the label). But then I had an epiphany - the yarn was
textured and you couldn't really tell where the stitches was. Which was my problem, of course. But if I couldn't tell where the stitches were, how could an untrained eye? So I sort of fudged my way through, not always going through both front & back loops or even necessarily going through either properly. And, before I knew it, I was actually making the hat! Eventually, I did find my stitches more clearly and crocheted properly, but I do think that helped me get used to the tension to use and get over my frustrations.

Out of curiosity (and after running out and buying more skeins of this wonderfully soft and plush yarn!), I tried out some Homespun again, with the 8mm bamboo hook (despite having tried it and a 10mm hook previously). And I was able to make a bunny hat with it! I am so overjoyed at the fact that I can now use Homespun!! I've always loved the colors, the texture, and the softness (though not the squeakiness you get when you use aluminum or plastic hooks) and thought that was such a tease since the yarn was horrible to work with. And now I know how to use it properly!! I intend to use a bunch of it for hats in the near future and will no longer pass it up when I see the mill end bags for $6 at Big Lots.

And, just in case someone stumbles upon this because they are looking for any of the above, I may or may not have them listed in my etsy store, but that doesn't mean I won't make you one! Just convo me on etsy or e-mail me or leave a comment here!

I'm now, officially, an aunt!

Caron Simply Soft Collection Autumn Maize and Eco Ocean

And so, now, I am making all sorts of things for my nephew (my sister-in-law's infant son), Orion Augustus.

I made him a ribbed hat that was striped with Caron's Simply Soft Collection Yarn: "Autumn Maize" and their Eco "Ocean" that was for a 3-6mos old rather than a newborn. I made some before for my friend's newborn and little Kami grew out of them within about 2 weeks, so I'm likely to err on the side of older from now on! I modified this pattern to be 30 FSC instead of a ch of 25 and then did 36 rows (17.5").

Orion's Stegosaurus Hat,
also available on my Etsy Page

The other two hats I made him were inspired-by that I just played around with until I got it how I wanted it. One was a newsboy cap made with cotton yarn and a wooden button from my collection. The other a stegosaurus earflap beanie, a bit of a test run for the hat I intend to make little Kami. It was my friend Sarah who showed me a photo of someone else's hat and gushed over it that inspired me there. :)

I've been busier on Etsy lately for some reason! Unfortunately, not necessarily a lot of crochet orders, but many, many origami lucky star & lucky star strip orders. I have, however, had a lot of interest in my Castle Crashers beanie and the animal orbs, which is great! Love spreading the Castle Crashers love!

One thing that has also kept me busy (besides my adorable shih tzu, Wicket, and my other crafting!) has been the starghan I made for another friend's baby shower. Everyone knows I love stars plus it's a more interesting and unique afghan than many I've seen, so I have decided that is going to be my standard baby shower gift, haha. I've already given 3 away so far! This one was fun because it actually went with the nursery theme - "Starry Night". I made it with pastel blue, yellow and white and put a "cloud"/shell border along the edge.

More Castle Crashers Hats!

So I got a few more requests for Castle Crashers hats! I didn't get to snap a photo of the beanie I made (no ear flaps or tassels), but it's recipient was happy with it, so that's more than an enough for me. :)

These hats were made for someone in a forum who requested them. It took me 4 days to make these 3, the beanie and a kindle cover, but I did it! I was a bit of a factory this weekend! :D

Get your own custom Castle Crashers hat from my shop: CrazyStars Handmade

Castle Crashers Knight Beanie

This was a custom hat made for an Etsy customer. Upon making it, I realized
1) I have gotten MUCH better at crochet and my stitches are much tighter (yay!)
2) The eyes are a bit wonky as in the original pattern, so I changed them for this and have updated both the PDF and the post with the new eyes.

© Samantha Bilodeau/SykoSam
PDF available here (Please message me for the pattern!): CrazyStars Handmade

Get your own custom Castle Crashers hat from my shop: CrazyStars Handmade






My husband had a bit of fun and put the hat on a big plush lion, hehe. :)

Rammy (Castle Crashers Animal Orb)

Crochet_Rammy02, originally uploaded by SykoSam.

Rammy is my favorite animal orb and so my first animal orb would of course be Rammy! :)

If you like this pattern, please “Like” CrazyStars Handmade on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/CrazyStarsHandmade


Edited 02/01/2012: This pattern has been removed because some people don’t know how to respect others… If you leave a comment on my facebook page, I may send it to you, but I am otherwise making it unavailable.

Castle Crashers Knight Beanie

If you like this pattern, please “Like” CrazyStars Handmade on Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/CrazyStarsHandmade

02/01/2012: It has come to my attention that people are using this pattern to make hats and sell them on Etsy. As a result of that, I will no longer be offering this pattern on my blog. It makes me sad to do it (I can't even express just how sad!) since I know so many people used it to make gifts or hats of their own, but it makes me feel even worse to see people taking advantage of me and not even doing the decent thing and giving me credit! (If you leave a comment on my facebook page, I may still send it to you, but I am otherwise making it unavailable.)

For those who are selling hats made from this pattern: This pattern is protected under Creative Commons and is copyrighted, which means that what you are doing is not only unethical, but illegal. You obviously don't care, but shame on you anyway. It's people like you who are what's wrong with the world.

© Samantha Bilodeau/SykoSam

Get your own custom Castle Crashers hat from my shop: CrazyStars Handmade




Castle Crashers Crochet Beanie by Samantha Bilodeau is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Inspired by character(s) created by The Behemoth. Please check out Castle Crashers on xBox Arcade and the Playstation store.
Do not use for commercial use (either pattern or projects produced using pattern) without explicit written permission.