Tiny Mr. Skeeses & an Elephant

In the continuing vein of the Mr. Skees Bears and chibi Mr. Skeesbear,
we now have tiny Mr. Skeeses.

Made these for this past Christmas for two students who graduate recently. I figured a disapproving teacher might be helpful for college. These are nicely palm sized and really great for lobbing at people while shouting "disapproving mr skees!"

I get a little silly when making these.

I used a basic head and body pattern and changed colors appropriately to make a head, shirt and pants. A pair of tiny arms and a pair of safety eyes completed the base.

Bases complete

The hair was kind of a shortcut (ha!). Normally you would sew each strand down over and over to make hair, but that is time consuming and I was making two of these. So instead I used a hook one size up from the one I used to make the doll to make a hair cap to cover the head. The last row of the hair cap was made up of different stitches to get a kind of hair line for around the face.

A little embroidery for eyebrows, a frowny mouth, collar and tie completed the details. Sewed the hair cap down and I was happy to call these finished.

Resistance is futile.

Time to complete: 5 hours for the pair
Difficulty: Easy


Making Christmas presents for certain kids and not their siblings (who also are friends of ours) is no bueno. This person had sent me a picture a while back of AllAboutAmi's Elephants, squeeing as to their cuteness. I saved the pattern down and figured I would make one for her eventually. Now seemed a good time.

After discreetly asking which color she preferred, pink or gray, I found an almost full skein of light gray which I believe is a Bernat Satin yarn. I know the pattern calls for a 2.75mm hook but as that seems absurdly small, especially for, if thin, worsted weight, I decided to go with a F/3.75mm hook instead.

The body is a bit difficult simply because most of the rows do not repeat around. I found it helpful to keep my cursor over where I was at in the row to make sure I did not skip any instructions or increases. It felt a little dangerous to cut the yarn and move on to the tab since I was running out of yarn at this point. Creating the leg chains was also a little odd, but once I got them done I could see how they would work.

Body bottom with leg chains and one leg done. You can see where the trunk goes and the tab.

Working on the first leg I realized that in order to follow her diagram I needed to work in the opposite direction that I had worked the body in. That meant that the legs had a slightly different texture to them than the body since it was the backside of the stitches that faced out now, but maybe that is something you can only see with a trained eye. I hope so. Finishing the other three legs and trunk was no problem after that.

The belly piece is a simple circle. I stuffed pretty full then sewed up around half of the belly to the back legs. I added a bit more stuffing and finished sewing around. This completed the body.

Instead of sewing fabric into the ears, I used a little light pink to make little ovals to add on. Those little ovals are actually just the first four rows of the ear pattern. I bound them off and sewed them on to the finished ears with gray, so that you wouldn't see the stitches.

so you can see the pink

from the side

 Once the ears and tail were attached he was done! So cute and fat.

Time to complete: 8 hours
Difficulty: Medium... making all the leg chains and working them up is a little challenging if you haven't done something like it before.

So there you go, quick and cute homemade Christmas presents!