And another amigurumi

I love making these things. Never mind that they don't really have a practical purpose, they're fun and they make me smile and they are almost-instant gratification because they work up so fast.

I am calling this the Not-so-Big, Not-so-Bad Wolf. The pattern is from Reneegurumi - she has some free patterns on her site and some for sale, this is one I purchased a while back. It's a fairly detailed pattern though the assembly instructions were maybe a little less clear than the crocheting instructions. (At any rate - I assembled my wolf in a different "position" than the pattern showed - on the pattern, the wolf was leaning back onto his hands, and had one leg cocked over the other. I couldn't get that to look good so I went with a "neutral" position)



I'm pretty fond of the result. As I said earlier, even as a child I suspected the "big bad" wolves in the fairy tales were getting a somewhat bad rap (perhaps early ecological understanding, perhaps influenced by my mother?) (Though then again, I never lived in the Russian or German forests of the 1700s...) Also, I remember a cartoon - one of those one-off ones that was based, I think, on a book - called something like "The Big Good Wolf" (I am not sure of the exact title, but I remember it was shown on The Great Space Coaster - anyone remember that show? - and that the wolf was named Cuthbert.*)



However, I'm calling my wolf Burt, because it seems to suit him, and it's also a little bit of a pun.

The original pattern doesn't really specify the yarn weight, but I'm thinking it was a fingering weight (it referred to the yarn as "4 ply" which is sometimes Brit-speak for "fingering weight" and also the size of the crochet hooks was small enough to suggest this. And the wolf's vest was to be made of embroidery floss.) I used a worsted weight - just inexpensive old Vanna's Choice (yes, THAT Vanna), which is actually pretty nice for making amigurumi out of. And the vest is a tiny bit of a sportweight sockyarn that I had actually left behind at my parents' house a couple years earlier when I finished a project I was making of it.

I'm particularly pleased with the eyes I used - I didn't bring my "bag of eyes" with me on this trip but I had a few pairs in my knitting-needle box, and those bright green cat's eyes turned out to be just right. The eyes on my wolf are larger than on the one pictured on the pattern, but again, I think that gives more of a benign appearance...I really can't think of this wolf as being "big" or "bad."

*(Edited to add: it was called "So nice to have a wolf around the house" and you can find it on YouTube. (It was originally a book by James Marshall, but I know it best in the video version). part 1 is here, and part 2 is here. I'm pretty sure the narrator/voice guy was the same person who did the "Teeny Little Super Guy" segments on Sesame Street.)


Also, a bonus photo. I got the first small harvest of beans from my garden today! I don't know how many more I will get (beyond the ones that have set and begun developing; it's hot here now and it looks like the flowers are mostly withering. Oh well. The packet of seeds was cheap enough even if I only get a few meals out of it.



They're fairly small thin beans - the colander I have them in is about 6" across. (And that colander is one of the most useful small kitchen tools I've ever bought - I use it for draining the small amounts of pasta I cook, and for washing salad, and for draining canned beans, and for rinsing off vegetables and things like berries. Because it's so small I can keep it up with my salad bowls so it's easily accessible.)

I like beans that small; usually the grocery store and even farmer's market fresh beans are picked at too mature a stage for me. (These are a stringless variety - I grew up eating the "stringless" beans, and also picked small. It was a disconcerting experience the first time I was eating string beans and found one that the cook didn't get fully de-stringed. I think I was at a church dinner so it was compounded by the fact that it was difficult to gracefully and politely get the string out of my mouth and onto the plate (And no, swallowing it was out of the question. I would have gagged, which would have been more uncouth)

When they're this small and fresh, usually all I do is briefly boil or steam them, and then put a tiny bit of butter and a tiny bit of lemon juice on them at the table. I think I'll have these with another bison burger patty (I found ground bison at the grocery and wanted to try it - it tastes good, better than hamburger, but it does get a bit dry. I think this go-round I'll try soaking some breadcrumbs in milk and mixing them with the meat before I cook it.)