"It's so fluffy..."

Those of you who have seen "Despicable Me" will get that.

(Despicable Me has become one of my favorites among "recent" movies. It's funny but at the core it's sweet, and I like that combination. And there's maybe a little theme in there about the transformative power of love - and not even romantic love, love of a parent for his children. I haven't seen Despicable Me II; there is not a theater in my town any more and it seems too far to drive to Sherman for a movie. I figure it'll be out on disk soon, and on one of the cable channels shortly after that)

Anyway, one of the bits in Despicable Me is that Agnes, the smallest girl, loves unicorns. She has a unicorn toy that inadvertently gets disintegrated (don't let your children play around your mad-scientist supplies....). The Minions try to replace her unicorn with a bath-brush that has googly eyes and an ice-cream-cone horn added to it....but later on, at a fair, Gru "wins" her a big stuffed unicorn. And so, one of the tag-lines of the movie is born:

"It's so fluffy I'm gonna die!"

Anyway. One of the amigurumi pattern designers (Anna Paula Rimoli) came up with a pattern for a unicorn not unlike the one in the movie (rewatching the movie the other night, I saw a couple differences, but they're minor).

So I bought the pattern. And I bought yarn before my trip. And I made the unicorn.

It took a lot longer than expected and it's a lot bigger than I envisioned. She said "12" tall" but obviously I used heavier yarn because mine came out bigger. Also, I had to shorten the body by a few rows, and I made the hooves on the back legs a bit longer (to conserve the white yarn that was running out). As it was, the ears had to be made of a different yarn, but fortunately, that doesn't really show.

I used some kind of a boucle yarn sold for baby garments. I have the ball-band at home so I don't remember what the brand is now, but I know each ball had 84 yards....so if you plan to make this critter, you better have more than 200 yards of the body yarn for it. The hooves and nose were a microfiber/acrylic blend, the pink is a Brown Sheep sportweight, and the horn is a bit of Berroco Vintage.

I chose the white boucle because I wanted a "fluffy" yarn, and that was the fluffiest to be had on short notice.



See how large it came out? Over a foot in height easily. (Yes, the shape is a little odd, but the shape of the unicorn in the movie is a little odd).

One nice little touch that I'm not sure is true to the movie: the unicorn has a bow on its tail.



And, of course, you can re-create the scene from the movie, after Agnes gets her unicorn:



"It's so fluffy, I'm gonna die!"

I decided to name the unicorn Agnes (it is unnamed in the movie) after the little girl.