commence creation dance

An example of a culinary creation dance.

The most beautiful children's film that I have ever seen is Hayao Miyazaki's "My Neighbor Totoro". If you haven't seen it yet, watch it, if you have children, show it to them.

A spirit, the "keeper of the forest" named Totoro playes a big role in this film. Actually, there are three of them, the big Totoro (O-Totoro), the smaller Totoro (Chu-Totoro) and the smallest Totoro (Chibi-Totoro), mirroring the humans in this film, the father, Satsuki, the older sister, and Mei, the younger sister. I think ultimately Totoro is supposed to be a Tanuki, but that's not very important.

There are many, many, many fans of Totoro and there are many knitting and crochet patterns for making one. I won't list them all here, just do a pattern search on Ravelry for "Totoro" and you'll find a multitude of things, from stuffies to mittens to dresses to sweaters. I always wanted to knit one, myself. But toy knitting is fiddly, involves sewing and is definitely time intensive. And while there are many Totoro items on my queue, while watching anime it's just easier to knit a big lace shawl (at least to me).

Then a dear friend of mine wanted to get rid of one ball of super bulky yarn. It was bright blue, with turquoise and purple variegations, very pretty. And since I'm a collector of single balls, I took it and knew I'd figure something out. I don't remember exactly how I got the idea of making a Totoro out of it, but that's what I did.

The construction wasn’t difficult: magic 8 cast-on, 14 stitches on each side, keep knitting back and forth on one side until you have a rectangular patch, then start knitting in the round, picking up 8 stitches at each side. Keep knitting in the round for a while, then decrease 4 sts per row on the sides (paired decreases). Decrease 16 stitches overall (I should have timed them better, but who cares), then knit straight up.
 

Once you’ve knit enough, do shortrow patches on the sides for the ears. Over the spot where the decreases are located, do shortrows on both sides, first with five stitches between the wrap and turns (I used Japanese shortrows, because I like them best), then with three, then bind off. Originally I wanted to felt the body, but although the yarn says handwash, it didn't felt - even with a pair of jeans. Probably not enough agitation.

For the eyes I took inspiration from my Mountain Goth slippers and knit two out of my trusty Nuvola and handfelted them. But with the stomach I ran into trouble. I did knit it out of Nuvola as well and handfelted it, but it seems that larger pieces of Nuvola will not felt as well and develop icky scratchy fuzzy knots! And a Totoro with a scratchy stomach is not good. So I knit another stomach patch out of Nuvola, this time on 2mm needles and let it be like that.

Now I had all the ingredients, but hit the roadblock of sewing it all together. Things got incredibly busy and poor Totoro stayed like this for a while. Then I bought a shirt that needed altering to bring out its full potential. So I altered it and in the process discovered that sewing maybe isn't so bad after all. I just needed to do it while either listening to music or while watching a film I already knew.

So I took up Totoro again and started sewing on the stomach patch, which came out slightly off-kilter. Never mind. Then I searched for yarn to do the markings on the stomach and took apart some of my purple super-bulky alpaca for those. I sewed on the eyes (one slightly higher than the other, but this I did correct) and used the alpaca for the nose as well. I faced the problem of the mouth, which is rather distinctive and did manage to make a mouth shape that pleased me, but he just looks better without it. Finally, I needed the right color for his whiskers - originally I wanted to use leftovers from the butterfly fingerless gloves that I made a while ago, but couldn't find any, so I found some light blue yarn, which worked just as well.

 And here he is!

 

 That's my Totoro.

 

For the stuffing, I unravelled an old project made almost entirely of plastic yarn, took an old pair of blue tights, put it inside Totoro and stuffed him, distributing the yarn to make the ideal Totoro shape. He's actually quite heavy, so he's able to stand on his own without a weight at the bottom.

Here you can see the decreases quite well - I should have made them higher, so that the illusion of arms comes out more, but on the whole, I'm very pleased with him as he is.


 



He's definitely the new star of my collection - and stands out quite a bit. When I think of all the fun places I can take him, I'm getting giddy ... and ok, maybe a little embarrassed to be telling you this. But since there are no comic or anime conventions to go to in Vienna, I must find my anime nerd outlets somehow :)