This is the little valentine's day present to self I referred to. Really, it was more a gift of taking the time to do something I wanted to do, rather than working on the gift-project or any of the ongoing things. I completed it this weekend.

This is "Cuddles."



Cuddles is knit using the Hugs and Squoze pattern from Mochimochiland. I just made the main "big" toy (called Hugs, there), because (a) I just didn't feel like making the little one and (b) I kind of wanted the "hugs" all for myself.

Cuddles is very affectionate.



He seems to love me.

He also loves tea.



And he loves Charmaine-the-Monster, though she's not entirely sure what to make of him:



I knitted Cuddles from some Moda Dea "Cartwheel" from my box of undesignated-but-purchased-for-toymaking yarn (I will buy yarns when there is a small amount on a good sale - like there was with this - if it seems like it might be used in the future to make a toy out of. I have a nice little stash of yarns like these. Which is good, because my one "local" option for yarn (the Mart of Wal) seems to be eliminating their craft department. Which means having a stash is even more important).

The "ears" (They are called horns in the pattern but I think they are really ears; such an affectionate creature must be a good listener) are knit of that Bernat glow-in-the-dark yarn. But they don't glow that well, so I didn't try taking a picture.

The yarn I used - the Cartwheel - is actually a bit heavier than worsted (though it's marked "worsted") and is a thick-and-thin yarn. I used size 6 needles, and so, Cuddles came out a bit bigger than the pattern predicted.

I also made the face different from what the pattern indicated, I wanted more of an "anime cute" face. I think it turned out very effectively; Cuddles makes me smile when I look at him, which is really part of the raison d'etre of a toy, anyway.

The name - Cuddles - is actually taken from the nickname of one of my mother's favorite "character" actors, S. Z. Sakall (Though I see, from that page at least, he apparently disliked the nickname. His "first" name (actually a stage name) was not one I think many Americans could pronounce correctly, though). I think of him first as "Uncle Felix" (the restauranteur) from "Christmas in Connecticut" but I also know him from "In the Good Old Summertime."

Last week's photos (of Tufnel and Hrumph) were not the end of the projects-finished-over-break. There are still a couple of monsters! (And one last thing I'll show later this week).

The two remaining monsters are from Rebecca Danger's "Dangercrafts" line of patterns (She has an Etsy shop)

Meet Charmaine:



Charmaine is a happy monster. She likes peonies and cherry blossoms. She enjoys playing Scrabble and likes silly jokes. She is a very girly monster; she has a "diamond" belly button ring (actually a vintage button from my grandmother's button box) and mascara, and her eyes match her pelt.

I did break one of my little rules here: normally I do not name "critters" the same name as someone I know. But I think the "real" Charmaine - a former co-worker of my dad's and a friend of the family - would not mind; she'd probably be amused.



And this is Tootles Ash. Or as he likes to style himself, The Honourable Tootles Ash. Despite his rather rough appearance, he is quite a scholarly monster and likes to spend time among books. He is also very interested in herb gardening.

Tootles is a particularly cuddly monster; the yarn I used for him is Paton's "Mosaic," which I think has since been discontinued (At least, I don't see it for sale any more). It makes excellent monster skin.

And here is a "family portrait." I've decided that all of these monsters have to be cousins, despite their very different appearance, because there's something about the eyes and the mouth that suggests they must be related:



(Albert is the monster in the middle; he is the first one I made off the Dangercrafts patterns I bought.)

Tomorrow is my blogiversary. (The good news is I don't think it was a cold I had after all, just really BAD allergies. Taking a loratidine tablet and a guafenisin tablet (to deal with the congestion) seemed to stop it). I'll have to keep thinking of something deep or clever to say.

And on to more finished objects.

It was a fairly monster-ish break, considering the toys I knitted.

First off, Hrumph:



Hrumph is a grumpy monster. He is grumpy about just about everything. He is especially grumpy about the current state of television - because he has such stubby little legs, he can't move around all that much, and so television is his main entertainment.

He is knit from a Mochimochiland pattern, using KnitPicks "Palette" in the colors "wood" and "grass" (He may also may be grumpy because he doesn't get outdoors much).

And here's the second Mochmochiland critter:



This is the Evolving Punk. I was originally going to name him Joey (after the Ramone) or Sid (obvious). But after he was completed, he seemed less punkish than puzzled.

So I did a rename. His name is now Tufnel. As in this. (NB, gentle readers: some rude words).

Yes, I know, his namesake was really a heavy-metal musician (after being a skiffle musician and a folk rocker), but Tufnel really seems to fit this little guy well.

He's sad that my piano doesn't go all the way to 11. Or, for that matter, doesn't have amps at all. (Maybe I need to make him a tiny model of Stonehenge.)

He's made of the Palette too, in Navy and (IIRC) Red. (I was trying for British flag colors...the navy's a bit dark and the red's a bit off. But then maybe Tufnel is a bit off himself).

Both the critters were felted as per the instructions but apparently Palette just doesn't felt much. Or maybe I didn't knit to a loose enough gauge to see a big difference.

Of course, it's also kind of fun to play off the "personalities" of the two little monsters:



"Get offa my lawn, you punk kid!"

*A rather weak, summer-school related joke: "It's only Wednesday and I feel like a whole week has gone by already!" (Regular semester is 16 weeks; summer semester is 8, and we cover the same amount of material. You do the math.

*I'm still trying to figure out the best time to do summer-postings. I don't like going online in the evenings; it eats too much into the limited free time I have (But I'm doing that tonight), also, because of the copious anti-bad-stuff software on my computer, it takes it longer to GET online. (McAfee, in particular, seems to always want to update itself JUST as I am getting ready to do something involving the Web. And because my computer's a bit older and a bit slower, that updating slows things way down.)

*I decided I wanted to start a toy this evening - specifically, Maddox the Mischievous Monster - I had the yarn out, I had the right sized double-pointed needles. And NO PATTERN. Could not find it anywhere. So I figured I'd get the pdf copy I had stashed on my hard drive. Which, of course, meant that McAfee cackled and decided it was time for an update - and then trying to open Acrobat reader while it was going crashed the whole mess. I decided it wasn't Maddox's time to be made yet.

Pity, really, as I had a name picked out for him already: He will be "The Honourable Tootles Ash," which I said a while back would make a rather nice grandiloquent name for a toy. (I did eventually retrieve the pdf file and print it out, which means I'll probably find the original copy tomorrow).

So instead, I decided to start another toy - a crocheted black and white cat out of that "Kyuuto" amigurumi book.

I had forgotten how much a pain it is to crochet with boucle yarn, and how black yarn is even worse. But I will persist, because this toy also has a name already. It will be Oliver Donald Piano, or O. Don Piano for short. (Do I need to spoil the joke by explaining it?).

You know, it's probably a good thing I don't have children, considering the names I give to the toys I make.

*And speaking of ridiculously-named toys - but this one has an "historical" precedent, of sorts, here's another little Hansigurumi toy:

(It was hard to photograph so it didn't look like, um, something I don't want it to look like. And even with this photograph, I'm a little squicked.).

It's the earthworm!



And I named it Clementine the King's Daughter. That is an old family joke...I used to follow my mom around in the garden (and I was young enough at this time that I don't remember the actual event, just being told that it happened by my parents). When she'd turn up a particularly large earthworm, I'd exclaim "Oh, it's the King!" (or the Queen). One day, I declared that one of them was "Clementine, the King's Daughter."

I really don't know where that comes from - for years I wondered if it had been some kind of a bit on Sesame Street (not with worms, necessarily) or some book I had read, but a Google search only turned up one thing related to a French chateau that not only had I never been to, but I had never even heard of chateaux at this time. So I assume it was something out of my imagination.

I've gone back and forth about putting eyes on Clementine. (Real worms don't have eyes, but then again you'd have to name a real worm something like Pat or Chris because worms are actually hermaphrodites and Clementine the King's daughter would also be Clement the King's son, or perhaps the King's/Queen's daughter/son). I kind of like the idea of little embroidered eyes with long lashes (it might also cut down on the slight ickiness of the worm) but I just haven't gotten around to deciding yet.

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.

Well, I been done seen 'bout everything



When I seen an octopus fly!


It's the "Dumbo" octopus, knit from the Hansigurumi pattern. I used Caron "Country," which is a wool/microfiber blend. Though the yarn isn't the easiest to knit up for a toy (it has a cabled construction that makes it prone to split), it has a nice shine to it. The colors here are "spruce" (the darker blue green) and "Ocean Spray" (the lighter color).

You can kind of judge from the photo of me "flying" the octopus how big it is - it's not huge but it's not as small as I thought it was going to be when I started making the legs.

Here's a picture of Dumbo at rest:



And yes, the Dumbo octopus is a really real animal. Which makes it all the more wonderful. (Another amusing picture is here. I interpret it - incorrectly, I know - as the little octopus sticking out its tongue at the photographer).

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...

I don't really have any works-in-progress or finished stuff to show just now, but I think I will share photos of something I made a number of years ago that I never posted about here.

This is one of the little creatures that lives on my bedside table.

Years and years ago - it would have been perhaps 1975 or so - I read a book in school (it would have been first grade for me) about a girl who was part-fairy. She was (apparently) orphaned and was sent to live with her aunt. She had a sort of guardian or fairy governess in the form of a tiny dog named Gloria.

I remembered the book very fondly...I read it, as I said, during SSR ("Sustained Silent Reading") time in school. I forgot the title but remembered Gloria and the basic outline of the story.

And one haunting bit - which I remembered as the end of the story, but I guess was not. Annabel (the girl) had done something that displeased Gloria - perhaps she even denied her fairy nature (?) But at any rate, Gloria did something that struck me and kind of haunted me, because I think it was the first instance I experienced of the idea of self-sacrifice, at least written in a way that would make sense to a child. (Of course, I had heard the Easter - or rather, the Good Friday - account in church, but I think I was still too young at the time for it to make a big impression on me).

Anyway, Gloria, having decided that Annabel had no more need of her, sat down in the glass case of mechanical animals (Gloria's aunt collected small wind-up animals), adjusted her gold collar, and willed herself to become inanimate.

Thinking about that as a child made me profoundly sad. And angry at Annabel for her stupidity at hurting what was such an excellent and wonderful friend in that way.

(The book does, as it turn out, have a conventional happy ending. Though what I remembered was Gloria turning herself to stone for the sake of Annabel.)

Anyway. I don't think the book I had had pictures; I always imagined Gloria as a beagle-sort of dog, as that was the kind with which I had the most familiarity.

I forgot the title and the author (and apparently most of the story), but I still kept that image down through the years. And one day, in grad school, surfing bookseller sites I ran across Loganberry Books, where the owner posted information about books people remembered but could not find.

And I rediscovered the book!

It is - if you've clicked the link (or if you were a kid or had kids in the early 1970s and have a better memory for titles than I did) - No Flying in the House, which is apparently far from being an obscure book, is one remembered fondly by many kids (mostly girls, I'd guess) who were of the age to read it in the early 70s when it came out.

(This is also the book where supposedly the hallmark of being of fairy blood is the ability to kiss your elbow. I don't remember trying to kiss my elbow when I read the book but I suppose I did. I think it's a pretty safe test to use as I have never met a human who COULD kiss their elbow.)

So I went out in search of a copy of the book, armed with the title and the author. And almost immediately found a copy at Babbitt's Books, the wonderful used-book store in the town where I lived at the time.

This was a 1982 edition with illustrations by Wallace Tripp. And in it, Gloria is shown as being a terrier sort of dog - perhaps like a white Jack Russel.

And even though I was in my mid-to-late 20s when I re-found the book, I felt the inspiration to make my own little version of Gloria. (I had always wanted a tiny toy of her as a child, but never had quite the skill to make a good one. But as an adult I did:)



This is her side view. She's felt, with embroidered features, and a gold collar (that is an important part of the character).

I also added other details - tiny paw pads worked using a pigma pen



Gloria has "thread jointed" limbs (a technique I learned from making tiny teddy bears and that works pretty well on a toy that's really more for display than active play). So she can stand, sit, and lie down.

Even though it's not "canonical" to the book, at the time I was making some Christmas gifts for people out of a delicate leopard-print polar fleece, so I made a little puffy bed for Gloria out of the scraps.



You may have guessed from the perspective in the photos that Gloria is fairly small. One of the things I really wanted to do was to try to make her "actual size," that is, the size the character in the book would have been if she was "really real." So I think she's about 2 1/2" long. Here's a photograph for scale, with her standing against a standard mass-market sized paperback.



I love being able to do this kind of thing. I haven't done it in a long time but it's one of those funny skills I have - I can start with making a paper pattern of what I want, and then I just cut and adjust and change things up as I go to get what I want. The drawback to this is that everything I make this way is a one-off and I would never even have patterns I could give out or sell based on the creatures I make, nor could I make one just like it. But it's how I know how to do stuff - doing pattern drafting to have a "permanent" pattern is different from how I do things (and not quite as fun or as "loose").

I'm still not done posting on the different items made over my long break.

Here is the third, final, and I think, most spectacular project from the "Taupe Mist" Vanna's Choice:



It is a crocheted version of Edward Gorey's "The Doubtful Guest" (an odd, penguin-like creature that invades a large Victorian household and does things like deposit pocketwatches in the pond for "safekeeping," tear the pages out of books, and collapse in fits of melancholy (unfortunately just outside the drawing-room door)).

(This WAS a free pattern I found via Ravelry but it seems to have since disappeared from there. (But a bit of hunting in my archives turns it up: it's apparently still in existence here))

I used the Vanna's Choice because (a) I had it close at hand and (b) I thought the sort of marled color might capture the sort of woodcut-like quality of some of Gorey's drawings.

I will say this is one of the complexities of 2-D being rendered into 3-D: I think the "nose" (or "beak" or what have you) should by rights be longer and droopier, but that's kind of hard to recreate in crochet, I guess.

The shoes sounded wildly complex but I found that by just trusting and following the pattern, they came out right. (The scarf is my own design, a bit different from what the original pattern author did. I did the narrower stripes because I hate weaving in millions of ends, and I was able to just carry the unused color this way. As it turned out, I like the way the scarf looks better than the original. And it seems like it drapes better.)

Here's a better photo with the scarf:



I think I've mentioned before that I read parts of Amphigorey as a child (yes, I was a strange child). For some reason, I loved the character of the Doubtful Guest - I didn't really see his more sinister sides; he was more like an odd pet that showed up and did funny things. (Of course, I'd be annoyed if I had a real-life one; I'd have to lock up all my books).

I remember making a small toy form of this creature as a child, using an old dark-grey glove: I cut it up and used the fingers for the head and arms and made the body out of the palm section.

(Another person's remembrance of The Doubtful Guest, with a small photo of the cover of the stand-alone book extracting the story from Amphigorey)

I am not sure why the creature is funny and appealing; I suppose it had something to do with the illogicality of its actions and the fact that it got away with them. As a child, I frequently wished I could "get away with" more than I did, but having "proven" myself capable of logic on a number of occasions when it benefitted me to, my parents wouldn't let me get away with some of the illogical kid things I might have otherwise. I think maybe the slightly anarchic quality of the Guest appealed to me, the fact that he did what he darn well pleased and no one could really do much about it (either he did not understand human speech, did not speak the language of the householders, or, perhaps, like snakes are, was deaf)

Another odd but appealing thing was the fact that the creature wore a scarf (at least until he had adjusted to life indoors) and plimsolls (not unlike Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars, but I think "plimsoll" is a more fitting term here).

Everything about the creature was odd and didn't quite fit. And I think that's why I liked him. (I don't know whether it says anything psychologically about the fact that I usually felt like I "didn't quite fit" among my peer-group, at least until I got to high school)

I suspect also I imagined it as having a certain kinship with the Tove Jansson creatures - the Moomins and such - which I was madly fond of as a child.

(And it's funny that I usually refer to it as a "he;" everywhere in Gorey's story it's just "it" and as the commenter I linked to points out, it's apparently the only one of its species, so gender would not be an issue...)

The 'Guest is ironically enough quite cuddly and nice. It (he?) turned out larger than I expected, nearly a foot tall, and required the purchase of a second skein of the yarn (thank goodness one of the shops in my parents' town had it; I had bought it down here, used some for the manatee and some for the planarian, and when I started making this creature I thought I'd have enough - I very nearly unraveled the planarian just to have enough to finish this).

In Japan, even the food is cute:



This is a little knitted onigiri (rice ball with nori seaweed - that's what the black strip where the "face" is is). It's from a free pattern here.

It's very fast to knit up - most of the knitting on this I did Sunday night while watching "The Bishop's Wife" (which is fast becoming one of my favorite Christmas movies*)

This is perhaps a slight imposter (odd, Firefox treats that as a misspelled word) as rice balls go...it's mainly knit of a soy yarn. I used Paton's SWS for the main body and a bit of wool-ease for the nori strip.

I had originally wanted to fill it with those plastic pellet things but I couldn't find the bag I thought I had, so I just went ahead and stuffed it. I think a set of three of these, maybe with a few pellets for weight, would make a fun juggling set.


(*Heck, I have a LOT of "favorite" Christmas-themed movies: "It's a Wonderful Life" (of course), "The Bishop's Wife," "Miracle on 34th Street" (but I will grumpily observe I prefer the non-colorized version of the original), "A Christmas Story," "Elf" (which is newer but is very cute and funny and has what I think is a surprisingly acynical message for a modern comedy), the various versions of "A Christmas Carol" (though of late I prefer the version with Patrick Stewart as Scrooge), and even "Scrooged" which is silly and a little cringe-y in places but it also has Bill Murray...)

And I also finished the funny little thing that I happened to think of yesterday afternoon. It is a very simple modification of the onigiri pattern, but it has some seasonal appeal.

Meet "Nat":



Nat is, in case it's not clear, a chestnut.

(Why name the chestnut Nat? This is why, in case your mind doesn't make the odd connections mine does:



(And that counts as my Christmas link for today! And this is one of my favorite of the "secular" Christmas songs.)

I suppose I could have just as justifiably (and perhaps some would argue with more justification) named the chestnut Mel, as he is the one who actually wrote the song:



However, for me at least, Nat King Cole "owns" The Christmas Song. (And, I have to admit, I like Cole's voice better than Torme's.)

Something else to be thankful for:

I finished the TARDIS.



This is part of my brother's Christmas present. It turned out HUGE - it is nearly 20" tall including the "light" on the top (and if I had been really clever, I could have used some of the white "glow in the dark" yarn that I got really cheap the last time I was at Micheal's for it. Oh well.)

The colorwork pulls in a little bit, especially around the "windows," but meh. It was a pretty big thing to knit. It's also a challenge to stuff and keep roughly square - if I had really wanted to be perfectionistic about it, I would have either made panels of quilt batting to go right inside the sides, or ironed iron-on interfacing to stiffen the sides, or, best of all, made a "pillow form" out of muslin in the proper shape and just used the knit part as a "slip cover." But I was mainly interested in getting this done, when I realized how huge it was going to be - there would be no flippin' way I'd be able to carry that up with me at Christmas time; it will take up almost as much room as a rolled up sweater in the suitcase. So I'm glad it's done, and I can take it with me when I go for this break.

Here's another shot, for scale. I added in a measuring tape (in inches) and the Little Emo doll so you can maybe get a better idea of just how large it is.



I hope my brother appreciates it.

And no, I won't knit you one. I hope that's the last I see of colorwork for a while. If I were making another TARDIS? I'd do it of cloth and applique on all the various bits using machine-stitched satin stitch. (And use the satin stitch for the "lines" that denote the door panels).

****

And here's another episode of Cute Overload in Amigurumi Form:



Rules of Cuteness fulfilled:

If your tail curls up, it's cute.
If your ears are small, it's cute.

There's also Beady Eye Factor, which is supposedly an anti-cute thing, but in this case, I find it cute.

It's a little mouse, crocheted off the pattern ("Mighty Little Mouse" in Elisabeth Doherty's amigurumi book). I used Vanna's Choice in "Tangerine Print" (which actually looks more brownish to me).

It's actually very similar to mouse-toys that were common when I was a girl - just little round balls of fluff, no feet or legs, with ears and a long narrow tail and a pair of shiny beady eyes. I had several toy mice like this as a child.

I will be very glad when Daylight Savings time ends this weekend.

I leave the house between 6:45 and 7 am most weekdays. This time of year - and again, in April, when DST starts - it feels like the stinking middle of the night out there. The sun doesn't come up until I am already in class. (And some nights, especially those I have evening meetings? I don't even get to see the sun on the back end).

I had been putting on my porch light, but as the city has been NOT AT ALL CLEAR when trick or treating is...apparently some are saying it's "not" Friday night because of football games, and some are saying it's Thursday, and a few people have even hinted it might be tonight, while others have said, "Nuh-uh, it's Friday," I just gave up.

I didn't buy any candy this year. (And Friday is OAS, so I'll be out of town).

The problem is, "porch light on" represents "welcome trick or treaters." And I don't want disappointed kids - and what's more, I don't want disappointed UNSUPERVISED kids who maybe aren't as well-brought-up as some, if you know what I mean.

So I decided that today, tomorrow, and Friday, I have to leave the porch light off, just in case I don't get home in time to shut it off before the kiddos would be out. (And no. I lack the electrical prowess to wire the thing to a timer - it's controlled by a switch so I'd have to actually break into the wiring of the thing and install the timer on that.)

Well, that was a FAIL. Walking down the porch steps, I only got the heel of my shoe on the bottom one and wound up slipping down the last step. I didn't actually fall, but I did get a bad shock to my one remaining good Achilles tendon.

Daylight Savings Time would be fine if we had a society where most people didn't have to toddle out of bed before 9 am, but I am quite sure that the majority of working Americans are either on their commute or at work before the sun comes up. And that just feels wrong. Going home in the dark does not feel nearly so wrong to me. (And yeah, I know, there are people who go to work in the dark year-round because their commute dictates they leave the house at 4:30 am or some insane hour - but even they'd benefit because it would be marginally less midnight-like when they set out on their commute, if we didn't have DST).

Frankly, I think what we need to do is have some kind of time-compression schedule, where everyone works between 9 am and 3 pm. And fix it so there is affordable and desirable housing in urban areas, so no one has those crazy 2 hour commutes. And where everyone gets one day off per week (outside of the weekend). The idea behind the day off would be that that's the time when you take your car in to the shop, go to the pharmacy, do your grocery shopping...leaving the weekend for more rewarding pursuits. (And the day-off would be staggered...that way, there'd be fewer people out, and there'd be a better chance of actually finding a pharmacy that was open on "your" day off.)

If that was the case, then Daylight Savings might be more appealing to more people. But for some of us, the way it stands now, it just feels like an insult...going out in the dead dark, off to work, with the knowledge that a certain percentage of the money I have gone off to earn is actually going to pay the generous salaries of the very people who voted, a couple of years ago, to extend the period of time during which I must drive to work in the cold dead dark with their "Let's extend DST!" Act.

Anyway. If I ruled the world, there would be no DST. Or if there were, it would be intelligently done, with some kind of averaging of average sun-up and sun-down times across all the time zones, to figure out a start date and an end date that would lead to the smallest number of people having to commute in what feels like the middle of the night.

*****

A couple of photos, one an ongoing project, one a finished project:

First, this:



It's the first (of four) panels of the knit TARDIS. I've started the second already. I want to have this done by Thanksgiving so I can take it with me - Christmas will be at my parents', but Thanksgiving I know will require less stuff hauled in the suitcase (shorter time period = fewer clothes required) so there's more likely to easily be room for it.

The colorwork is not as bad as I thought it would be. The purl side is Not Fun (which is why if I were doing another one of these, I'd cast on for all four sides at once, and do it in the round with a purl stitch between each panel to make the corners), but it's not that bad.

There's also a knit-plain top and bottom, and then a little dealie that you knit and fold up to make the light on the top.

And this is something I knit just for fun:



It's from the Bob pattern at Mochimochiland. (It looks like an animal, but the pattern author points out that it is inspired by the shape of a toilet-tank bobber. She also has a pattern for a roll of toilet paper - no, really* and also a couple of electronics parts (Resisty the Resistor and Captain Capacitor)


(*it would be too late for this year but you could make a bunch of these, make yourself a tree costume - like with a brown tracksuit or something - and attach them to yourself, and be a tp'd tree....)

For my "Bobbette" (Well, she's a girl, you know), I used one of those silly novelty yarns. It's Red Heart "Bijou" which is a fluffy yarn with sparkles. Except the fluffy isn't as soft as you'd think it was.

One thing about this pattern is that the shape is fundamentally pleasing. The curve of Bob's (or Bobbette's, in this case) back feels good in your hand - the toy is a nice size to hold. (I actually think it fits an adult's hand better than it would a child's).

You could also make little "costumes" for Bob to transform him into different animals - big floppy ears would make an elephant, a big bushy tail and tiny little ears would make him an anteater, small pointed ears and a curly tail for a pig...

Thanks for the comments on Rupert. Yes, I do agree, he looks a bit like the "animagic" (or whatever term it was that Rankin-Bass used for their animation style) reindeer in the Rudolph special.

I think Rupert is going to have to hang out under my Christmas tree when I do my decorating this year.

****

It was a fairly productive weekend. I got some "housekeeping" type stuff (making review sheets for exams, updating the online gradebook) for teaching, I got to a "real" grocery store (drove down to Sherman to go to the Kroger and wow, do I miss shopping there when I don't have the chance).

I also pulled out the Airy Cardigan and de-stalled it:



I still have several inches to go on the back before I even think about decreasing for the shoulders. And I really need to sit down sometime and crunch the numbers for the sleeve re-do. (The pattern makes 3/4 length sleeves and I want full-length sleeves, so I have to figure out a new pattern of increases, figure out how many stitches I need at the start, and work from there).

This sweater sat for months on a little bench next to my knitting chair, silently reproaching me for not working on it. (I was actually afraid that at this point I'd have forgotten where I was in the pattern and mess up, but I was able to figure it out).

I also made another toy:



It's knit from the Bright Spark pattern by Kate Jeffrey.

I love ridiculous things like this.

(And oh, the jokes a person could make....the visual joke of a "bright idea" - holding the light bulb up over head; the sarcastic joke of "Here, hold this up and see if the world revolves around you to screw it in" to someone who is self-centered, and of course, the many good old light-bulb jokes. (Favorite one: "How many mice does it take to screw in a light bulb?" Answer: "Only two. But don't ask me how they got in there." Thank you very much. I'm here all week. Don't forget to tip your server.)

I decided to name it (and yes, I am aware of the ridiculousness of naming a toy light bulb) Livermore, after the famous Livermore Centennial Light (That is one well-made light bulb. I am sure the filaments used now are much cheaper material, which is probably in part why this one has lasted so long. I also think bulbs used to contain an inert gas (argon) that they don't know, and that contributed to longer life).

I like how embroidering the "filament" on makes him look kind of like he has a Fu Manchu mustache.

One of the things that is nice about making toys is that you really need so little material to be able to do it.


In a way, Livermore and Oshi-dori (the duck) have common origins...I knit Livermore using the leftover yellow yarn from Oshi (and a bit of grey Wool-ease). A few balls of a not-very-expensive yarn in the right colors, and you can make bunches of toys from it. And you can dig things out of your stash when you find a toy pattern you like.

Some months back I posted one of those half-awake, half-asleep (and therefore, usually something more than half stupid) thoughts I have:

Cute Overload in Amigurumi Form. Where different CO posts would be re-created as knitted or crocheted toys: a little Snailio Iglesias, crocheted "snorgling" cats, etc.

Well, over the weekend I was moved to re-create one of the creatures that's graced CO recently. (No, alas, it's not a pattern of my own design; it's an existing pattern made "in honor" of one of the CO critters....or actually "in memory" of, which will clue you in to which one it is, if you're a fairly rabid follower of CO like I am).

It's not done yet so there are no pictures yet. But it pleases me immensely, and it is one of those things that is so cute you almost can't look directly at it.

Once in a while I get so seized by a project that I put everything else aside to work on it. This project is that way (except, since it's crocheted, I have to take breaks to let my hands rest. Crochet is harder on the hands, especially the tight-enough-to-hold-its-shape crochet used in amigurumi).

Maybe I *will* make a little Snailio Iglesias someday. (There are enough different snail patterns out there, but I think in terms of correct size (the Snailios on CO are tiny), Anna's from Mochimochiland would work the best.)


(Edited to add: even if I DO do more "Cute Overload in Amigurumi Form!" I will NOT be doing a "cats n racks" (or "any other animal n racks") feature. Sorry.)


In other news, it is 18 degrees C in my office. (For non-metric types? That's less than 65 F.) I've decided that there's something worse than my office being 84 degrees.

Well, this evening is shorter than it was originally planned to be.

My former student - the one supplying us with data - was supposed to come back to do more work tonight (and I mis-heard her; I thought she said she'd be here at 5 and it turned out she wasn't going to get here until 6.) I stuck around for a while and finally my colleague who was working with us told me of her later planned arrival, and I decided I just HAD to get home for a few minutes.

(Part of it was I wanted to do at least one load of laundry).

I put the laundry in and dispiritedly started to cut quilt pieces - the only thing I could think of that I could do a little bit on, then turn around and go back to school. About five minutes later my colleague called - my former student called him, she was having problems with completing the data compiling and wouldn't be able to get down there tonight.

So thank goodness, not another 13 hour day.

She's coming in Saturday which is actually better for me, because I'm not beat at the end of a full day.

So I'm going to take a shower and decide if I want to do more quilt-cutting, or if I want to sit down and do something else. (And I have to get some dinner in in the middle of it. Probably just something simple like a big salad and a hard-boiled egg.)

But I'm really grateful to have that time back and to be able to stay home when I'm tired. (I'm glad my colleague called, it would have stunk to have trucked back to school just to find out that our data-person wasn't coming).

****

One other thing I finished on my short break:



It's a crocheted "Maneki neko" or beckoning cat. I used this pattern. Mine doesn't look as nice as hers because I was just using some leftover yarn I had on hand, and the stripes came out a little wonky. (Also, I don't have any "trinkets" to put on this one...I don't have any Japanese coins or little charms to add to it. Maybe next time I'm out somewhere that sells craft supplies).

This is a maneki neko with his right paw up - the "handedness" has different meanings. Right paw is for good fortune in the home (or some say, to attract visitors). Left paw is more commonly seen in businesses as it is supposedly a money-attractant.

(I remember the last time I was in Hawaii - in Waikiki - a great many of the merchants had left-pawed Maneki neko in their shops).

The "beckoning" looks funny to Westerners because we typically beckon with a crooked finger; I've read that in Asia, the beckoning gesture is to turn the hand so the palm is down, and then wave all the fingers together - so the cat really IS beckoning; he's just beckoning Asian-style.

Supposedly different colors mean different things (though the Maneki neko I saw in all the shops were white, or painted to look sort of like a calico cat)

White cats are for positive things to come, green cats are for either health or success in studies, gold cats are for wealth (naturally), black cats ward off evil...but there is no purple cat in the traditional pantheon; the closest is pink, which is "love, relationships, and romance."

(Though frankly these days I'd probably rather beckon "good health" or "success in studies," if research counts as "studies." Perhaps I need to make another one that's green).

Traditional good luck charms of different cultures interest me (It's also said that in Japan a small frog figure is used for "safety while traveling" because the word for "frog" and the word for "home" are very similar).

While I don't seriously believe there is such a thing as good luck and bad luck - perhaps the closest I'd say is that your attitude affects how you react to situations and sometimes you "make your own luck," I have to admit I wish there really were such things as good-luck charms, or warder-offers of bad luck.

Sometimes, it is good to be a little silly.

("A little nonsense, now and then, is cherished by the wisest men")

This is something I started on the other night and finished last night



I used the "Grass" pattern at Mochimochiland for it, and just inverted it and made it out of white yarn to be a tooth.

(No, that was not an idea original to me; someone did it for her first photo contest).

The tooth is Princess Toof. You see - she has a "crown"? (I'll laugh harder about that once I'm able to open my mouth all the way again).

I did it partly as a lark - to have some small, easily finished thing - but also partly as (hopefully) a good luck charm for no further dental pain.

Here is the third of the little amigurumi toys I spent my break making:

Her name is "Sakura," which is Japanese for "cherry blossom." (And also is the name of a company that makes craft supplies, specifically Pigma pens.).

She is made out of Shire Silk- a 100% silk yarn by (IIRC) Plymouth. It's kind of a raw-silk yarn, it's sort of "crunchy" and textured. It's really nice to crochet with, or at least I found it to be.

I was originally going to give her a Hobbitish name ("Shire" Silk, get it?) but when she was done, nothing came to me, but Sakura seemed to work.

The finished bear is tiny - as you can see from the photo - she's maybe 3.5 or 4 inches tall. The yarn feels really nice made up into a toy, firm but "squishy" enough to be pleasing to hold. One of the things I like about making these little toys is that you can use lots of different yarns and see how they look and feel. After completing the bear I went back to the shop and bought another skein of the pink (I had about half of the first skein left over) and two skeins of a pale green that coordinated well with the pink and am making single-color granny squares to make a little scarf out of. (I'm nearly done with the granny squares but then they must all be sewn together).

Making granny squares is fun. The pattern's easily memorized (and I guess there are different variants of it out there) and they go together quickly. I do think doing them each in a single color looks a bit more "up to date" than the multicolor kinds (which for me are reminiscent of the 1960s-70s craft books my mom had when I was growing up).

Actually, I wonder when granny squares first originated? I associate them with the "hippie days" because they were in fashion then but I suspect they're older than that. (1930s, maybe? It seems like a lot of "good craft things" came out of the 1930s). When we were up visiting family near Traverse City, my mom and I took a morning and went to the Grand Traverse Lighthouse (which is interesting but rather expensive to get into - you have to pay for a state park pass and THEN pay admission to the lighthouse) and it was decorated in the style of the time (early 1900s) that it was an active lighthouse. And there was a large granny square afghan on a chaise in the living room. And I wondered if that was an anachronism or not (like a lot of museums, the interior decor was largely assembled from purchases of things that "might" have been used at the time, rather than everything being inherited of-a-piece from the original owners). So now I'm curious when granny squares were first used...whether they were the product of a particular designer's mind, or, if like so many of the basic craft procedures we use, one of those things that just kind of appeared or evolved on its own.

Another use of granny squares is to use different colored ones as "pixels" to make pictorial afghans. There's the "Color Bars" afghan (representing the RBGCMYK test-pattern from color television) in "Happy Hooker" and I think I've also seen a Super Mario afghan out there. (But you could do anything, if you had graph paper, a good imagination, and the fortitude to make as many single-color granny squares as required.)

I think once I finish the scarf I might start on that "Color Bars" afghan, now that I've found how "friendly" granny squares are to make - if you're doing just a single color, they're pretty portable (all you need is the yarn, a hook, and something to cut the yarn with as you finish the square) and they're something easily enough done when you're attending to other things (like trying to read the map for your father to help him avoid bad construction).

Here's the second critter. This is the little duck from that "Kyuuto: Japanese Crafts - Amigurumi" book. It's the same pattern that Michelle made her "wonky ducky" from (one picture of him is on the particular post I linked).

More than most amigurumi, this duck is pretty expressive.

He can be happy:

Happy, I suppose, because I decided on a name - Oshi-dori - for him.


Or he can be sad.

Perhaps because, "Life out here can be hard for us little ducklings, but I'm trying my best" (As the caption in the book reads. I assume the captions - some of which are a bit odd - are direct translations of the original Japanese).

He can be gabby - as noted on the Mimoknits blog:

Telling you his life story, no doubt - I'm sure it wouldn't take very long even with embellishment as he was only "born" on May 26.

He can also be shocked.

Really, some people just should NOT watch Discovery Health.

Here is the first of the amigurumi I made over my break.

His name is O-tako, which incorporates one of the Japanese words for octopus. I made him using the Octopode Pandemonium pattern, except I made the legs 14 rounds long rather than 12. I used Vanna's Choice, which is one of the Lion Brand acrylic yarns.

I thought after completing him to add a mouth and eyebrows but then I decided I liked the more ambiguous expression that just having a pair of eyes gives. What is he thinking?

It was very tedious making all those legs but the pattern is not difficult; it would probably be a good "beginner" amigurumi pattern. Probably the biggest challenge is sewing all the legs and the bottom on and getting everything even.

One thing I have noticed - as the other two ami's I made this break were of different fibers (one a rough silk and the other from wool) - is that acrylic tends to give a much harder finish and a much firmer critter. (And of course, depending on the stuffing used, you could toss it in the washer - important if the critter is a child's toy that might get dragged through a sandbox or spit up on).

I do not find acrylic necessarily easier to work with than a firmly spun wool, though - I know some amigurumi makers complain about wool's splittiness but the little duck (to show up here later) that I made using Lamb's Pride was perfectly easy to make. And maybe a bit less hard on the hands than the acrylic.

Chittavritti: The book I was thinking of turns out to be "The Cloudspotter's Guide." I don't have a copy of "Cloud Atlas." (And I think I'd get lost in it easily; that's a problem I have with many-POV books).

Ellen, I had not heard of that study but that is very interesting to me. "Read more books" as a New Year's Resolution (OK, I know, it was "Shakespeare") is actually a resolution I could get behind...

****

I do still knit.

Here's the start of the Bird's Nest shawl. Most of this knitting has been accomplished while invigilating exams.

(Yes, I think I am going to use that word now instead of "proctoring.")



It's a relatively easy pattern to memorize but it's also easy to lose attention and forget to make one of the yarn overs. (Fortunately there's a way to "fudge" them on the return row).

I also finished the little elephant from the Knitting at Knoon "Safari Friends" pattern.



Originally it was going to be a girl elephant and be called something like Posey, but as I finished it up I decided it had to be a boy and be named Algernon.

(People who've never made toys may not get this. But it happens - you'll be working on something and its "personality" will come out and you will wind up naming it something totally different than you intended).

He is knit from Paton's Classic Merino in a pale blue. His eyes are "vintage" black buttons (I am not sure how old they are; they were on a card of 12 I bought for a buck in an antiques store. I'm guessing pre-1960s as the card is unlike typical button cards that started in that era).

Yes, I'm aware that he bears some resemblance to Max Rebo. (And I had to search for that. The name was nowhere in my memory...if the creature was even given a name in the movie. I searched on "Star wars blue elephant creature" and that brought it up).

Oh, I see further down in that article that Max Rebo is merely a stage name. The creature's real name is "Siiruulian Phantele." Remarkable how fleshed out what was essentially a throwaway group of characters have become.

If I had bothered to learn all this information during the time when the "original" Star Wars movies were out, I probably would not have had enough brain-space to actually complete a Ph.D....