At-At Walker

I am so excited to make this pattern. It is the AT Walker pattern by Krawka on Etsy. I bought the pattern with a bit of gift card money because it is so damn cute. I had no idea who I would make it for, but I knew I would make one. With the new movies coming out, it was super fun and timely to make for a good friend's new baby. If only I could have figured out how to make it go "pew-pew." Maybe I'll add a voice box next time.

For the At-At I bought one skein of charcoal and one of dusty gray, both Red Heart Super Saver. I thought I would have enough make two at the same time, but it turned out I actually had to order more of the dusty gray direct from Red Heart! So I ordered two extra skeins so I can make Sophie cough*myself*cough one.

All the parts are pretty straightforward to make, there is just a lot of them. 50 to be exact. The only real thing I thought I might have changed was the way to start each straight piece. Instead of working sc into a chain, I bet it might have been a bit easier to sew later on if I had started with a foundation row of single crochet. Just a slightly different technique really...

Really this pattern was easy to make up. I kind of lost my excitement wading through the many different crochet squares, but once I started assembling, all that joy upon seeing the pattern the first time came back. I actually started giggling as I sewed the legs on, and you know it's a good pattern when that happens.

One other note, she had used sport weight and a 3mm hook, I used worsted weight and a 4mm hook, so I think mine came out a slightly bit bigger. This AT-AT stands 12 inches high from base of feet to top of back and 15 inches long from front of cannons to the butt.

Sophie for scale.

I might have to make the next one in time to take it to see Solo with me...

Difficulty: Easy
Time to complete: 50 hours

Kubo's Monkey

If I had my life to do over again, I would have wanted someone to tell me that you could grow up and make things for a living at a movie studio called Laika.

I've been a fan from the start. Coraline brought me on board as I was already a fan of Neil Gaiman's writing, and I even made a yellow coat for the crochet little me so we could be her for Halloween. Then Paranorman came out and won us over with its sheer quantity of details, B movie horror, and humor. I even made a comic and several posts for their #WeirdWins contests, leading to me winning four stunning posters, which I still have framed in my home. Then Boxtrolls, which I will admit I did not love as much as the other two, but still had such warm and loving characters that I had to make my own Fish, complete with box.

When Kubo and the Two Strings was announced, several people said to me "Ang, it's like they made a movie just for you." I was so excited to see it when it finally came out this month. I knew I loved it from the first few moments as the mom crawled across the beach to her son, and I started crying right then. Some people say that Pixar is making fairy tales that grown ups can enjoy, but I feel like Laika has always taken it just one step further, like they are making fairy tales for grown ups instead, that kids can also enjoy. This other way around is somehow more powerful to me, and so much more moving.

Kubo and Monkey

It was only a matter of time, then, that I would make something from Kubo, and Monkey seemed the perfect choice. I don't want to spoil it if you haven't seen it, but I loved the combo of protective, sassy, and wise that she pulled off. The dynamic between Beetle and Monkey was a joy to watch both for Kubo and the audience.

naked monkey face

I made her head, body and legs from some basic Red Heart which yarn I had on hand. The face and ears were from a leftover dusty rose color acrylic I also had in my stash. The taupe brown  of her hands is the same is Vanna's Choice from the beak of my Graboid. Finally I went out and bought one skein of Lion Brand's Wool-Ease in White-Multi, which has a little bit of shiny blue and pink something running through it. I felt it was perfect for her fur, which seemed to shine in many of the scenes.

really wanted to get her chest right

third version monkey paws

After spending a few weeks making body parts and ripping them out again, I finally got some shapes I liked. Then I remembered that Monkey has a left and right hand, and left and right foot, and that I would need to tweak the patterns to get it right. Then came stuffing and assembly, which always takes a few tries to get it all positioned right on the body. After that I added a bit of embroidery to the feet and added a little pink paint to the paws and face.

a hairless monkey!

Finally it was time to add the fur. This part took forever when I did Lion and he only had fur on part of his head and body, not everywhere! I only got about half of her body done when I ran out and needed to go buy a second skein. I spent about 15 hours just pulling the "fur" through. Then it was time to give her a hair cut. This was crucial, and I did use shorter tufts than Lion so I would have less to trim, but she still needed shaping around the face along the arms, neck and back.

looks a bit like when she was poofed by birds

She is finally done after about a month of work. Working on this just makes me appreciate how the Laika makers took the time on every puppet, every detail, just for us to take in without notice. It's amazing. Now she just needs a sword unbreakable...

Difficulty: Intermediate/Hard
Time to complete: 15 hours body, 10 hours fur
Finished Size: 13 inches from head to butt when sitting

Yes, I did write up the pattern, but not sure how I feel about sharing it yet, plus I still need to transcribe it. If there is interest, I will probably share.

Graboid

*UPDATE* 4/2018: Due to a request I now have a written pattern. Feel free to email angela dot skees at gmail dot com for a pdf copy.

Look, I love lousy movies. Like a lot. Ask me which Batman is the best? I'm gonna say the "neon" Batmans (aka Batman and Robin or Batman Forever) with all the bad puns. I love the Godzilla from 1998, and Twister, and Men in Black 2, and Legend. The list goes on. Gotta say though, Tremors might be the number one on the lousy movie top 10.

So when I was laying in bed, trying to sleep, and my brain is chattering away, for some reason I started thinking about bad movies. It's like I can watch them in my head. I was also wondering what next I could make. And it hit me. Why, oh why, have I never made a plushie crochet graboid?!?

A Graboid.

It's like perfect for crochet. Other people have done plushies, which is a help to look at how they constructed theirs. As I was planning to go to a desert-y locale during the summer I jumped on this project to get it done in time so I could take pictures.

First issue was finding yarn. These are subterranean creatures and are covered in dirt and sand throughout the movies so finding a good picture for coloring was a bit hard to do. In the end I decided for a more monochromatic tan color scheme than that graphic above.

I had some Lion Brand Homespun on hand in Pearl. Even though I despise that yarn I really liked the subtle browns and tans going on. I tried to find something similar in a regular worsted as opposed to the fuzzy irregular Homespun, but failed. I found a nice taupe color in Vanna's Choice that really complimented it to create that darker head. The head is actually like bone kind of or a big beak as compared to the soft worm body, so I thought they would make a cool look together. The tongue worms I still haven't found a color I like, but I do have a bit of this dusty sort of pink in my stash that might work. And I will need a tiny bit of a red color for the inside of the mouth where the tongue worms come out.

I started working on the body from the tail up to the neck where it joins. Using the pearl homespun I worked up several rows and then started increasing rows. Every few rows I did one that had some of the spikes come out. I would just sort of eyeball where the spikes should go. The body spikes help it move through the loose soil and I wanted them to stand out a bit from the body, so I started carrying a second darker solid tan (pretty sure it is Bernat Satin in Sable) and switching to it to make popcorn stitches. Sort of like the Daleks I made way back in the day.

I got a good way in and wasn't sure I liked the shape it was making, but kept going. At this point I was writing each round down as I made it. So that I could tweak as needed and still be able to turn this into a pattern eventually. The tough part is that homespun felts together really really fast, so if I needed to rip this out and redo it, it was pretty much hopeless.

As I kept increasing the body, I started thinking about how large the overall plush would turn out to be and how to make it proportional in my mind. I kept feeling like I was increasing too slowly overall. This is gonna be a baby sized graboid for sure, but I still wanted it to be a good huggable size. Also, just to note, I was stuffing as I went along, as the spike yarn was crossing across the inside space.

The body spikes I sort of just placed as I felt they were needed while trying to be roughly symmetrical. I also tried to keep at least three or four rows between them so they had their own space. I also gradually started adding more and more until they met at the top of the back. The belly side is free of spikes so it's easy for me to tell where the top and bottom are. It took me about two months to get the body alone done, but mainly because I was only able to work on it about two hours every two to three days during that time.

Once it was big enough around I felt it was ok to just keep that width for several rows to elongate the wormy body, continuing the pattern of spikes. After that I worked a few rows of decreasing, with no more spikes, for the neck area before the beaked head.

throat piece widening to mouth with tongue worms anchored to base

Next I made a throat and mouth for the Graboid. The throat is just a tube that I inserted into the body cavity and stuffed around so that I could have a place to retract the tongue creatures in. Figured it might also make it eating other toys easier if it could swallow them a bit, ya know for pictures. I widened the tube at one end to the same number of stitches as the last row of the neck and sewed it in place.

iCord body and tube head for tongue worms

I was originally at a loss for how to do the tongue creatures since working a tube of only four sc around is a giant pain in the butt, but after learning the i-cord technique for the Norse Cords, I decided that would be perfect for making the thin and long mouth tongue worm things. I made them all about the same length and then at one end widened up into a round 6 sc open tube for the head and mouth of the tongue guys. I embroidered a little black on the tops for the little horn hooks they have, but it kind of ended up looking like eyes.

throat in with a few tongue worms stuck in

I had some ideas for the beak head shape and set about trying to make and assemble them. I sketched out the shapes on paper first and held them up to the body to see how they would work together. Then used tape to hold the shapes in place and see if they would really work right. Then I set about making those shapes in the taupe vanna's choice yarn. I only did one piece of each shape as it took 5 shapes to get the full beak done. Only after assembling it all and attaching it to the body did I realize that it didnt really have enough structure to hold itself up, so I might have to go back and see if I can't stiffen it with glue and water or something.

bottom jaw pieces

I really like that the soft squishy body yarn has a different texture from the more bony beak like head, and that the body spines have a little sheen to them. All those different colors and textures really made it look like the different parts in the movie.

I super love how it came out. Pretty cute and super squishy.

Time to complete: about 40 hours
Difficulty: Intermediate
Size: About 18 inches from beak to tail, 10 inches around at widest part of body

Iorek's Armor

So last week I made a polar bear named Iorek as in the armored polar bear from the Golden Compass. As it would be fun and challenging to make actual armor for him out of crochet, I went for it.

I debated using felt and sewing together the armor, but that is a bit cheating I feel. The plan was to make armor plating using the crocodile stitch and free form shapes and squares all sewn together. I picked out a mottled brown that I think is Vanna's Choice in Barley that I had on hand.

The first thing I did was make two sets of two scales, vertically for the shoulder pads, as this was a pretty easy thing to make. I used this good reference by Crochet Chiq for the vertical chains of scales.

collar piece, shoulder scales, triangle scale chest and half circle chest piece

For the front I worked a triangle shape of scales, starting at the point then making a row of 2 and a row of three on top. I used just the first few rows of Bonita Patterns's Triangle shawl pattern that I purchased and used a while back to get how to make this. I then made a super large half circle shape that spanned the area across his chest to affix the triangle scales to.

For the back I did a longer set of 5 vertical for the spine sort of armor.  For the back I also made two half circle shapes for the shoulder plates and one more half circle which I then lengthened to go under the spine plates.

front side assembly with shoulders

After all these bits were made I needed something to affix them all to, to hang off his shoulders right. So I did a simple circle of three rounds of single crochet like a large collar and started assembling the armor by sewing it onto the collar.

backside assembly with shoulder plates, back plate and spine

After that I thought he needed a helmet. This was a bit tricky since I wanted his ears to stick out. Sure I could have just made a helmet and sewn the ears on, but no. So I started with a small circle and then just sort of eyeballed out a widening wedge for the back of the helmet. Then I left a few stitches free on each side and worked front side panels of about the same length as the back. Then I added a small ridge on the front with a picot to give that little triangle point in the center of the eyes. After that I made a single crocodile scale to add to the helmet.

Flat helmet piece and its single scale

I used the tails from the sides to sew up the helmet leaving openings for the ears to poke out of and sewed the scale on to the front.

Once the armor was all assembled I realized that I made it sort of samurai-ish... I wanted it to be a but cooler though so I used a bit of leftover super thin Madtosh gold to add swirl filigree to the flat front armor, the back shoulder plates and on the back of the helmet. To keep his armor nice and snug, I threaded a piece of yarn between the shoulder pads and the chest piece like a shoelace and tied it under his arms.

front

backside

feet and bear butt

Overall the armor probably took another 3-4 hours to make, and one more for the filagree.
He's just so dang cute, fierce and cuddly.

Iorek the Polar Bear

As I mentioned before, for my birthday a friend gifted me some yarn from her stash. I actually love to see what yarn others have collected, as it is a sign of their own tastes.

Two of the four skeins she gave me are Araucania brand yarn in Nature Cotton in white. The yarn of course has since been discontinued, but it is a really nice cotton yarn that is super soft. It is classified as bulky, but as bulky yarns have become super popular lately, that classification is not really super helpful anymore as anything from a little thicker than worsted to something the thickness of rope can fall into the bulky category. It is somewhat smooth, but has a hand spun look to it with variations in thickness. Those variations are really disparate, being super thin at some times and puffy at others. Made for an interesting time while working up the rounds, and I am hoping he ends up looking a bit rough... more bear like I guess.

some bits thin, some pretty loose

For some reason I looked at it and thought polar bear and set out to find a pattern for one I liked.
I decided to go with Leopold, the Polar bear by Amourfou. I just really liked his bowling pin shape, super cute ears, and off center nose. The pattern does not specify how much yarn he takes to make, but I'm just going to go for it and hope I have enough. Also, I decided to make mine a little larger than hers, since she used worsted and a 3mm hook and I am going to go with my bulky yarn and a I/5.5mm hook.

I started with the body to see how the yarn would look in a large area and see how it worked up. It was a bit tricky and the shape isn't as perfect as it would be if the yarn was a consistent thickness, but I thought it looked pretty good. Some places where it thinned, there is a larger gap in the fabric than there might otherwise be, but yeah, cute.

Since the body is still open once you complete the legs I was able to then make the snout, stuff the body, sew it on, and place the safety eyes, making sure that it was centered to the legs. I like the way the legs are finished, with a disk and sc around, as it lets him stand a bit easier on his own, but I think I might have made them a bit longer so they are more pronounced. As it is, they kind of blend into his bowling ball shape, but that's part of what makes him so cute.

he has legs there at the bottom, hard to tell though.

The arms were a cinch and I set them a bit low just like shown. Love how cute it makes him.

I worked up a simple scarf with some leftover blue acrylic yarn. I gave it a tiny bit of texture with two ribs, and then added a fringe at each end. Once I actually got it around his neck, I realized it was pretty short to do any cool ties or anything, so I just knotted it for the photos. If you are wanting to make one and do cool scarf knots, I would recommend making it doubly long and perhaps use baby weight yarn and a 4mm hook.

Double Ribbed Scarf (for toys) (with 5mm hook, worsted weight acrylic yarn)
Chain 100+1 to turn,
R1. Work 100 sc along length, ch 1 and turn.
R2. Work 100 slip stitch along, ch 1 and turn.
R3. same as r1
R4. same as r2
R5. same as r1, bind off
Cut small strips and loop through ends to make fringe.

Personally, I felt that just making a polar bear was pretty boring. So my sister in law had a good idea: make it an armored polar bear! Hence his name, Iorek, named after the armored bear in the book the Golden Compass. Next week I'll show you his armor.

Iorek took about 6 hours to make, stuff and assemble. Scarf another hour and a half.
Size: About 10" tall
Difficulty: Easy

Pochi Rickman

I'm a pretty big fan of anime and anime movies. Ghibli for sure, but lately G-Kids has been distributing some stellar animated movies. They first came across my radar when a friend introduced us to Summer Wars. I was obsessed with that movie for months and it remains one of the few I keep on my giant iPhone6+ at all times. Then I picked up a movie called Letter to Momo in a Target on a whim and loved it. After visiting a local indie theater, we saw they were doing a G-Kids summer event showing films. This gave us a whole new list of movie titles to hunt down and one of the first that stood out to us was called Welcome to the Space Show.

This movie is on iTunes right now and is described as "surpassing Star Wars in scale". Yeah. After watching the trailer I cannot say that I had any idea of what the heck was going on and it was a pretty refreshing feeling. Seems like a lot of trailers just show you the whole movie! All I knew is that the animation looked cool, it had a voice actor I love, and a space dog. That was enough.

The movie is a little long (2.5 hrs), and is one of those you will want to pause often to take a look at all the stuff going on in the frame. Some parts are visually overwhelming which balance nicely with the quiet scenes. It starts in a pretty standard anime movie setting of a small town school in the summer, then takes you to an amazing space port, then back to a very earth looking planet just long enough for you to get comfy with what you are seeing, then throws you back into a crazy alien smorgasbord battle royale!

The main character is Pochi Rickman. He happens to be a very dog looking alien and is a darling character. My husband said he's like a space dog Indiana Jones. He was so endearing to me, I kind of immediately knew I wanted to squish him for real. That feeling was only enforced when I took to the internet and saw that there is NO merchandise for this show. Nothing on Etsy even. The market has let me down. With that in mind, I of course turn to my skills and since sewing is not one I have, crochet it is!

pochi sketches to figure out the shapes

His colors are tricky I think. Sure it looks like all you need is black and white, but really?? Nope.
While I dislike Red Heart yarn, they had a color that was the only one in the store even close to what I wanted. Most "white" yarn looks a little yellow to me. Most "off white" or "eggshell" colors also really end up like dirty tea-stained doilies... not the right color either. I had some coupons so I bought a Red Heart Super Saver Jumbo skein in Soft White. I also noticed that his nose is a darker black than his ears and paws. That meant that I could use normal black yarn I had on hand for his nose and needed to find a "dusty" lighter black. The only one I liked enough to get was a Caron One Pound of yarn in "black". Held next to any other black yarn and it's easy to see its a little lighter, though. Also, just FYI, I used almost an entire 32 oz bag of polyfil for this guy, so be aware he takes a lot.

His head shape was nice and easy, as it is a large cylinder. I then made an oval snout about half as long and affixed it to the front of the face. His nose was next and I tried to make it a nice triangle shape that I could add a little stuffing under. I followed that with the eyebrows and then the ears. Finally I used the dark black yarn of the nose to embroider a smile. The head alone took about two weeks of work to get the shapes right and assemble.

ear and eyebrows

assembled head

I'm using a 5mm H hook for Pochi, but I think I got a little ambitious with the size of him. I did not intend to make him life-size, but after finishing the head, that seems to be what happened. I guess if you wanted to make one yourself, you could follow my pattern, but maybe with a thinner yarn and a 4.00 mm hook to make a more reasonably sized Pochi. I thought about ripping it out and starting over, but certain family members said his head was too cute and perfect and that I shouldn't...

So, I made the body next. Since he's just a big white bean shaped dog, I could mess with the shape as I was making it, without needing to worry about changing colors or doing too much detail. I kept holding it up to the head to try to get an idea if it was right or not. Gave him a bit of a wide butt and tapered it up to the neck to match the head opening so it was easy to sew together.

After the body was done I made a quick tail which was a super easy shape. Then, I was able to start work on the arms and paws which were the most challenging. I started at the paw and worked up to the shoulder. I tried a few different paw shapes, but I settled on making a large oval and embroidering the separations between each finger. I left a large hole in one side of the paw that I then came back and added a thumb on to.

After that I did the fore arm and upper arm, and I tried to use strategic increases to give him a bit of an elbow joint shape. Then I had to figure out how to reverse my pattern to do the other arm so they both bend the right way and have the thumbs facing in. Also one arm is all white and the other is half white/half black and it was important to make sure I got them right.

Next was the legs, thank goodness they are the same. No thumbs to worry about and the same color scheme of half and half. These I made in three parts. First, an upper thigh round shape tapering from wide at the hip to a bit smaller at the knee. Second, a "transition cylinder" shape to join the upper leg to the paw and lower leg at the right angle. And third, the paw and lower leg piece. It was hard to tell if I was making it too big or small, so I had to go ahead and just commit to finishing one and see. I thought it looked ok so I went on to making a second.

It was about this time that I remembered that I never used the recordable voice box I bought for Groot since I was never able to get a clear sentence out of the film. So I dug it out and with some expert pause/play action from my husband, we were able to get a fairly good recording of him introducing himself early in the film.

The recording says "My name is Pochi. I'm from planet Wan-Bau in the Animal Stellar Region."
Since the only thing I had not yet finished was this one leg it went into his foot. I tried to keep it in the middle of the foot so I would still have room in the front to embroider his toes, but keep out of the heel where it would be harder to activate. Once the box was in the foot/lower leg section I was able to stuff up and finish the second leg.

its all in the details

With all the limbs done I used a little pink paint to add paw pads to his hands and feet, as well as inside the ear. Then it was time to add his eyes to his face. I used felt and tried to get the shape just right. I made a base plate to sit the pupil on to get that anime eye look. The tiny perfect circles were made with a hole punch, which only works since this felt is really stiff.

Finally I had to tackle attaching the limbs to the body. I had a few thoughts on this. Originally I had planned to just sew them on in place, but then I had the idea to use a button to make a kind of spoke and washer through the shoulder so it could move around a little. Looking at how much yarn and fluff I would have to get through to make this work I didn't think it was the best solution. Plus they would be seen and that would ruin all the work I did to make him look right. Wandering around my local Joann Fabrics I saw these giant 30mm snaps and realized that they might work out well... I could pose his arms and legs at will with these! I used white crochet thread to attach them to the limbs and body and snapped them into place.

Unfortunately I did not like the finished look when I tested it out on one arm. There was a ton of space between the arm and body where the snap was and you could see it quite easily. It did allow for movement at the shoulder, but the arm was way to heavy for the snap to keep it posed in any way. So I went back to basics and just sewed them in place.

Done! Pretty on model I think.

I never thought I would make another plushie as large as Blathers is, but as as you can see he is, in fact, larger. If less complicated to make. Pochi does resemble K.K. Slider a bit, you know?

Difficulty: Intermediate
Time to complete: 80 hours to experiment, write and make from scratch
Finished size: 22 inches from butt to ears. 29 inches tall "standing" up

Note: As with Lion, I have written out his pattern, but sharing it would make this post even longer. Email if you want a copy to try out.