After last week's big project update with the woven rug, this week's update is quite a bit smaller, because the Easter weekend didn't leave a lot of time for knitting, or crafting, or doing much of anything other than having fun with the family.
But oh, what fun we've had!
I'll try to do an update about all the things we got up to in the next few days, but for today I want to introduce you to the newest member of our family...
Meet Totoro!
Isn't he cute?
He's actually absolutely huge. I don't quite know if it was the yarn (actually, it probably was - I think it was supposed to be DK but I used aran...), but he's LARGE.
I stuffed him with everything I had available. I had a tiny bit of toy stuffing left over, and that went in first. You couldn't even tell. Next went in some shredded left-over batting from my last quilt. Totoro absorbed all of that too, without looking the least bit chubby. Seriously, by that point I thought I must have accidentally constructed a Tardis (bigger on the inside, and all that...).
I then went through my basket with sewing leftovers and I am so glad that I'm such a pathological hoarder, because I found a whole bunch of off-cuts that anyone in their right mind would have thrown out because they were too small to even make the tiniest of quilting patches, but which I'd kept on the off-chance that I'd need them to stuff something. Like a huge Totoro shell for example.
I crammed a whole lot of sewing off-cuts into the main body and finally the chubby Totoro shape started to emerge. Little bits of fabric also went into the arms, ears and tail, and then I assembled it all and stitched his little face on. Tadah!
The boys LOVE him.
(I also sewed the sofa cover - that was a little project that DID get done. There are two chair-beds under there and they kept sliding apart. It drove me insane! The cover isn't quite finished yet, though - I have to hem the bottom edge all around)
It's quite funny to see for me, because they are not normally the stuffed toy type and even when they were little didn't pay much attention to Teddy Bears and other soft toys at all. Clearly it makes a difference if it's something made for them and they were able to observe the whole process, start to finish.
I had meant to make this one for boy#3 but it looks like boy#1 has claimed it instead. Orders have been received for more Totoros. I may be crocheting Totoros for the foreseeable future...
Also, for Yarn Along - I'm currently reading The Long Song, by Andrea Levy, which is a harrowing but also utterly riveting read. This is what it says on the inside cover:
"You do not know me yet, but I am the narrator of this work. My son Thomas, who is printing this book, tells me it is customary at this place in a novel to give the reader a little taste of the story that is held within these pages. As your storyteller, I am to convey that this tale is set in Jamaica during the last turbulent years of slavery and the early years of freedom that followed.
July is a slave girl who lives upon a sugar plantation named Amity and it is her life that is the subject of this tale. She was there when the Baptist War raged in 1831 and she was present when slavery was declared no more. My son says I must convey how the story tells also of July's mama Kitty, of the negroes that worked the plantation land, of Caroline Mortimer the white woman who owned the plantation and many more persons besides - far too many for me to list here. But what befalls them all is carefully chronicled upon these pages for you to peruse.
Perhaps, my son suggests, I might write that it is a thrilling journey through that time in the company of people who lived it. All this he wishes me to pen so the reader can decide if this is a novel they might care to consider. Cha, I tell my son, what fuss-fuss. Come, let them just read it for themselves."
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