I did make a couple of toys over break, both from the Hansi Singh book.

Today, it's Nessie:



Of all the Hansigurumi toys I've seen, I think this is my favorite. I've always liked the IDEA of Nessie (whether or not she may actually exist). Years ago, in a grade-school class, doing a segment on myths, we were asked to make a model of a mythological creature and I made a little stuffed toy of Nessie (I don't know what became of it; I don't have it any more).

The patterns for these toys are pretty complex - you go line-by-line and there is a LOT of short-row shaping to make the body curved. (There's also almost no seaming - you knit the underbelly by picking up stitches on one side, and then Kitchener stitching them to stitches you pick up on the other side. I'm not sure but I'd almost rather do seaming, though it might look less neat. I had to run out and buy a short size 5 needle because it was too tricky to pick up all the stitches on doublepoints). And you pick up stitches on the finished body to knit the flippers and then the little horn/ear things.



I used some Elann worsted-weight wool I had hanging around. I don't remember what I originally bought the green for (the brown, of which I only used a tiny bit, was for a scarf that may or may not be made some day). I used beads for the eyes rather than embroidering them; I think I prefer the more "inquisitive" look that the beads give.

This is the kind of toy I would have loved as a child - for one thing, as I said, I've always liked the IDEA of Nessie. Also, I liked the idea of small versions of giant things (I probably also would have liked the whale amigurumi I made). And this Nessie, scale-wise, would have been the right size to play with along with the many little plastic farm and jungle animals I had - of course Nessie would have been MUCH bigger, but the "real" Nessie would be bigger than, say, a "real" cow in the same proportion as this Nessie is bigger than one of the toy cows.