There are children around the world who are addicted to animi shows and even more who have special little toys made in the orient that seem to have magical powers, for the children at least. These toys take on talisman status and many children can't leave the house without either stuffing it into a pocket or lunch box, or ensuring that it has been safely hidden.
My younger sister had one such toy, a tiny baby doll that would fit in her 6 year-old hand. It was jointed and according to today's standards wouldn't have been suitable for any child as it had more choking hazards than you could shake a stick at. But for a period of two years, she had to have that doll with her at all times. Unfortunately it could only be purchased at a toy story in Evansville, Indiana. When it lost one of its legs and it was determined that it could not be satisfactorily repaired, we all piled into the car for a three hour road trip with the purpose of doing anything humanly possible to shut my sister up.
I enjoyed the trip, even though I didn't get a toy, because at that time they had a live dancing chicken in a glass-boxed vending machine at the store. If you put a quarter into the machine
the chicken would dance. I didn't learn until much, much later that the chicken danced because the quarter sent an electrical charge through the floor of its glass cage.
So right now you're saying to yourself, how horrific! Encouraging children to torture an animal in a toy store?!? That's monstrous!! Well yeah it is now, but then it was cute. And there are more than a few adults out here who will testify in court that being forced to go to a toy store with any child is cruel and unusual punishment.
The thing is I have noticed that the majority of cute things in this world are also at least mildly repulsive on some level. Troll dolls, baby-dolls, amigurumi of all sorts while irresistible to children do make me slightly uneasy. It's probably the flip side of the clown-thing in action. A perfectly harmless fellow in grease-paint and floppy clothes is hilarious to adults and terrifying to children.
But as I mentioned earlier, the Japanese have harnessed the power of perky with their Hello Kitty and Animi and now their amigurumi, so a Box-Store-Agoraphobic Crafty Person had best learn a thing or two about creating cutely.
An Example of Proportion
Here, I have made myself "cute," starting with a photo in the upper left hand corner and then running counter-clockwise to the baby doll version of me in the upper right. I painted over the original "cute" version of me, because it was just too devil-doll creepy-crawly for me, but here's the basics of it.
Take any normal adult image and draw a line from the top of the eyes to just below the bottom lip. That whole area will be collapsed and will be the basis of the face. Onto your re-sized "face" you will paste the eyebrows at normal size. Increase the size of the eyes by 50%. Reduce the size of the nose, mouth and body to 50%.
So How Do I Use This?
When designing amigurumi, on the face of the poppet the forehead and eyes should take up 75% of the area. The head of the poppet should be at least 30% of the total height of the toy and up to 50%. Any more diminishment of the body, frankly, makes the thing look like a tick to me. Enter something creepy-crawly that has been rendered cute via crochet. My Amigurumi Medusa Monster.
Like many amigurumi, the body of the poppet begins with a spiralling circle of at least three rounds of crochet. By employing stitch increases of varying frequency, your circle will lie flat. If you think of the body of the toy as the bottom of a cup, once you have the base diameter you need, you create the sides of the cup by stopping any increases and just crocheting up. Googling "crocheted circle" will send you to several sites that will explain how often you should increase in order to get a flat circle.
When Medusa's body cylinder still seemed "chubby to me I changed from white yarn to some "camo" yarn I'd picked up while studying planned variegation in dyeing. I crocheted a single row in camo, and then began creating tentacles by:
Chain 9 stitches. Beginning with the second chain from hook, slip stitch in each stitch back to the base. Single crochet 2 stitches. repeat.
The slip stitching makes the chain curl and writhe like a snake. As you're working your way around the second row, you begin setting your "snakes so that they lie between those already crocheted in the row below which means that you may need to crochet 1 stitch between snakes and sometimes 3. Additionally at this point, you'll want to start decreasing stitches.
For those of you who have never decreased while crocheting, it's a simple matter of:
Pull loop up through first stitch and hold on the hook. Pull loop up through second stitch. Yarn Over and pull loop through all three loops as if to single crochet. In this way your reduce one stitch.
Before I had the top of the head completely closed, I rolled some bubble wrap very tightly and inserted it to create stuffing.
Another Kind of Cute
My sister's baby doll wasn't misshapen as Amigurumi is. It was just tiny, and that is the second part of cute and one that is more age difference friendly. I have always found sock monkeys hilarious but have been leery of purchasing or knitting socks specifically for the purpose of cutting them up and sewing them into a doll.
It occurred to me that it should be fairly easy to knit a tiny Sock Monkey, and if you have metal double points, it is. I chose size 2 metal double points and Red Heart worsted weight acrylic for this pattern, so you can already see that the knitting was tough work on it. But the monkey is so tiny ... not much bigger than a standard business card ... that it's quickly finished.
Cheeky Monkey Pattern -- 4 to 5 Dbl. Point Knitting needles and 2 different colors of yarn.
For the legs, using double pointed needles cast on 3 stitches in white and in first row, increase one in the center stitch so that you have 4 stitches on the needle. Knit I-cord with white for about 1/2", change to brown and continue until I-cord is 2" long. Leaving your first leg on one needle, give yourself about 3" of yarn to use to sew up the crotch later, and cut the yarn. Make another leg. TIP: I used a Russian join to join the white to the brown so I wouldn't have any ends to secure later, so their little feet don't match exactly, but what the hell.
When you've finished the second leg, don't cut yarn. Cast on 2 stitches for crotch, then knit across first leg, and cast on 2 more stitches for butt. You're going to start knitting the body in the round now, so space your stitches on three needles and then join up to leg one.
(If you have 5 needles in the same size you can add the tail and arms as you knit, otherwise just get some safety pins handy to use as stitch holders.)
Knit your 12 stitch tube for 3 rounds. On the butt side, using a safety pin set aside 2 stitches for the tail, and cast on 2 stitches to replace. Continue knitting in the round for 1 inch. Then on the left and right side, directly above the legs, set aside 2 stitches each for the left and right arm, casting on 2 stitches to replace them.
Continue knitting the tube for 3 more rounds.
Reposition your stitches so that the 6 front stitches are on one needle and join the white. At this point you knit a short row mouth.
Short Row Mouth:
Knit 6 stitches white, turn
Slip 1st stitch, purl 4, turn
Knit 5 stitches
Purl 6 stitches
Rejoin brown.
Stop at this point to lash down your mouth white yarn ends on the inside of the monkey's face. You don't have to be fussy. No one's going to see it.
Knit in brown for 3 more rounds.
Before closing up the top of his little head you'll want to add the French knot eyes, ears and mouth. For the eyes, I whip stitch attached the white to the inside of his head then did one 3 wrap French knot for each eye, then ran the rest of the white through the backside of a couple of stitches to hold it. For the ears, I did 7-10 wrap French knots on either side of the mouth. The red of the mouth is just some red yarn in a lining stitch across the center of the white.
Stuff all your yarn ends into his head.
Closing his head: knit 2 together around. 6 stitches remaining. 3 needle or Kitchener stitch bind off.
For the arms and tail, leaving a 2 or 3 inch tail of yarn, pick up the 2 stitches you set aside on a safety pin. Knit 1, Make 1, Knit 1.
Arms: work brown idiot cord for 1", change to white and work cord another 1/2", bind off.
Tail: work brown idiot cord for 2" in brown and bind off.
When done, use the yarn tails on the arms and tail to close up any gaps and firmly attach the arms and tail to the body. Since you're doing some serious whipping here, you can get away with leaving the tails loose on the inside of the monkey's body.
Stuff 3-4 cotton balls into the monkey and sew up his crotch with the 2" of yarn you left on leg one.
That's it for this month! Hopefully next month will be a bit more timely!
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