Solo: A Star Wars Crochet Story

I went to see Solo: A Star Wars Story at the weekend, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was exciting, full of humour, action and double-crosses, and it was great to see younger versions of Han, Chewie and Lando (not to mention the Millenium Falcon).

Inspired by this, I decided to crochet those characters as they appear in the film, tweaking the patterns in Star Wars Crochet and Star Wars Even More Crochet.

Han was pretty easy, I just made him with a black shirt, rather than the cream shirt and waistcoat he wears in Episode IV. Then I crocheted him a brown jacket, using the pattern for Finn's jacket. I made it one row shorter and added black sections on the shoulders (it wasn't until I saw the film that I realised that the black panel extends along the back, so I'll have to change that).

Chewbacca doesn't wear much, but the bandolier he slings over his shoulder is a bit different, and has an extra section over the other shoulder. I basically crocheted less of the grey bobbles on the main strap, and did another smaller strap, again with less grey bobbles.

Lando is always a snazzy dresser, in fact in the film you will see that he has a whole room just for his capes on the Falcon! I made him with a yellow shirt and orange belt, and sewed a black triangle at the neck of his shirt. His cloak is black, and he has a thin black scarf round his neck. I gave him a tiny beard as well as a moustache, sewed little sideburns coming from the edge of his hair, and sewed a line into his hair to give him a parting on his right.

I hope you enjoy the film too, just let me know if you need any more info on the changes I made and I'll try to write them up for you.

GDPR - New Data Protection Law

I'm sure you've all been seeing lots of information about GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), a new regulation in EU law that aims to improve data and privacy protection. As a microbusiness (it's just me!) selling crochet patterns I still have to comply with it, so below you will find my privacy policy in detail. To summarise, I sell my patterns in PDF form on three sites, Etsy, Ravelry and Loveknitting. Loveknitting send me no personal information about the people who buy the patterns. Etsy and Ravelry (and Paypal for Ravelry sales) send me an email with each sale which contains the buyer's email address. I only use this information if necessary to deal with any problems regarding the order, and then I retain the email for tax purposes. I do not send any unsolicited emails, and do not run a mailing list.

Privacy Policy:

Information I Collect
To fulfil your order, you must provide me with certain information (which you authorised the site you are ordering from to provide to me), such as your name, email address, postal address, payment information, and the details of the product that you’re ordering. You may also choose to provide me with additional personal information, if you contact me directly.

Why I Need Your Information and How I Use It

I rely on a number of legal bases to collect, use, and share your information, including:

- as needed to provide my services, such as when I use your information to fulfil your order, to settle disputes, or to provide customer support;

- if necessary to comply with a legal obligation or court order or in connection with a legal claim, such as retaining information about your purchases if required by tax law; and

- as necessary for the purpose of my legitimate interests, if those legitimate interests are not overridden by your rights or interests, such as providing and improving my services. I use your information to provide the services you requested and in my legitimate interest to improve my services, and to comply with my obligations on the platform I am selling from.  

Information Sharing and Disclosure

Information about my customers is important to my business. I share your personal information for very limited reasons and in limited circumstances, as follows:

- Etsy. I share information with Etsy as necessary to provide you my services and comply with my obligations under both the Etsy Seller Policy and Etsy Terms of Use.

- Service providers. I may engage certain trusted third parties to perform functions and provide services to my shop, such as delivery companies. I will share your personal information with these third parties, but only to the extent necessary to perform these services.

- Business transfers. If I sell or merge my business, I may disclose your information as part of that transaction, only to the extent permitted by law.

- Compliance with laws. I may collect, use, retain, and share your information if I have a good faith belief that it is reasonably necessary to: (a) respond to legal process or to government requests; (b) enforce my agreements, terms and policies; (c) prevent, investigate, and address fraud and other illegal activity, security, or technical issues; or (d) protect the rights, property, and safety of my customers, or others.

Data Retention

I retain your personal information only for as long as necessary to provide you with my services and as described in my Privacy Policy. However, I may also be required to retain this information to comply with my legal and regulatory obligations, to resolve disputes, and to enforce my agreements. I generally keep your data for the following time period: 7 years.

Your Rights

If you reside in certain territories, including the EU, you have a number of rights in relation to your personal information. While some of these rights apply generally, certain rights apply only in certain limited cases. I describe these rights below:
- Access. You may have the right to access and receive a copy of the personal information I hold about you by contacting me.
- Change, restrict, delete. You may also have rights to change, restrict my use of, or delete your personal information. Absent exceptional circumstances (like where I am required to store data for legal reasons) I will generally delete your personal information upon request.
- Object. You can object to (i) my processing of some of your information based on my legitimate interests and (ii) receiving marketing messages from me after providing your express consent to receive them. In such cases, I will delete your personal information unless I have compelling and legitimate grounds to continue using that information or if it is needed for legal reasons.
- Complain. If you reside in the EU and wish to raise a concern about my use of your information (and without prejudice to any other rights you may have), you have the right to do so with your local data protection authority.

How to Contact Me

For purposes of EU data protection law, I, Lucy Collin, am the data controller of your personal information. If you have any questions or concerns, you will find my contact information by going to my Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/lucyravenscar

You will find the privacy policies of the sites I use to sell patterns at the links below:

Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/uk/legal/privacy

Ravelry: https://www.ravelry.com/about/privacy

PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-prev

LoveKnitting: https://www.loveknitting.com/privacy-policy.html

Jar Jar Binks Amigurumi Pattern

When I went to see the Phantom Menace back in 1999 I loved it. I loved that we were getting new Star Wars films filled with lots of new, exciting worlds and characters. I came out of the cinema, and the first thing I did was to buy a Jar Jar Binks cuddly toy, because I thought he was a fun character with an interesting design. All my friends enjoyed the film, but over the years there's been a lot of negativity about the prequels, and much of that negativity has been focused on Jar Jar.

Now, I do think the original trilogy is better than the prequels, but I still find them entertaining. When I shared my love of Star Wars with my kids, they enjoyed all the films, and they liked Jar Jar Binks. He's a fun, endearing character, who makes a lot of mistakes, and is in contrast to the highly-skilled Jedi.

So, if you or your children love Jar Jar, maybe you'd like to make him in mini crochet form. My new pattern is now available on Etsy and Ravelry and lets you make the friendly Gungan in the same scale as my other Star Wars characters. He's one of the taller characters, and will be approximately 11.5 cm/4.5 tall when finished.

On the other hand, if you're one of those fans that really hates Jar Jar, you can always make him and use him as a pin cushion!