I felt a lack of toy-making of late in my life.

So I fixed that, with a project begun over the weekend and completed last night.

Meet Albert:



Albert is knit from the "Albert the Absent-Minded Monster" pattern from Dangercrafts. (The pattern is very simple, very easy to follow. I used dpns for the whole thing though as I don't really care for the Magic Loop technique).

I used some Rainbow Boucle that I got very cheaply at JoAnn Fabrics (I bought it with toymaking in mind but never used it for the intended pattern).

At first, I was not so sure Albert would come out so well - the yarn striped and ombre-d in an odd sort of way. But you know, I think he turned out very cute. That stripe over where his eyes are reminds me of the Naugas. (I always kind of wanted a Nauga, but I can't quite justify the expense to myself.)

I had all these ideas of giving Albert some kind of a grand name - maybe doing some kind of play on words and naming him "Woodbine" or some such (Albert Campion...and woodbine is another name for the campion plant). Or I thought of taking one of the many aliases Campion used.

But in the end, the monster looks like a just-plain Albert to me. So Albert he remains. (Though I have to admit, "The Honorable Tootles Ash" would be an excellent name for a toy. Just one a bit grander than this monster.)

Albert seems like a rather happy little monster to me, despite his alleged absent-mindedness. The sort of monster who's quick with a silly joke when you're down, or who maybe laughs a bit too hard at cartoons, or who just enjoys pottering around the house or garden.

I admit at times I have misgivings about my fondness for, and tendency to hang onto (and to make new, and even at times to buy) toys. I am, after all, 40 years old. And almost none of the "real" adults I know seem to admit to hanging on to even a childhood toy. But then again, this post does seem to encourage me a bit. If she can hang on to "Boosin," perhaps it is not so odd, not so deviant, that I like to have my own little army of toy monsters hanging around.

And it's funny - making monsters is really fun. You don't have to worry about verisimilitude (or at least I don't, not in the way I worry about it when making animals representative of "real" animals).

I was never afraid of monsters as a child. (At least not when I was old enough to be laying down memories). I guess for one thing, I had kind of concluded they were imaginary. (Even my imaginary friends, I knew were imaginary.) And also, I figured there were more urgent things to be afraid of - the dentist, for example. And fires. And tornadoes. (I was just old enough in 1974 - when the bad, deadly outbreak happened in Xenia, Ohio, to understand what was being discussed on the news. Xenia was considerably distant from where I lived but it still did scare me. And a couple times every summer, we would all have to troop down into the basement when they called a warning - me usually clutching my Snoopy doll, and, if the warning came in the middle of the night, the pillow off my bed.)

So monsters, if I ever considered them, I tended to think of them more as a funny and rather benign thing - perhaps that was influenced by early watching of Sesame Street, where none of the monsters (not even Oscar) was really scary. (Though The Count did kind of scare me, with his ability to summon lightning. And I think his weird counting compulsion scared me, too). I guess I envisioned the monster-world as being more like the way it worked behind-the-scenes at "Monsters, Inc." (which is a lovely funny movie and not just one children will enjoy) - "regular guys" (and girls) who kind of went about every day lives not unlike our own.

So I have a certain fondness for monsters, whether they are big and furry like Sully, or lovable screw-ups like Grover, or the many funny creatures I have knit or sewn or crocheted over the years...