Showing posts with label Etsy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Etsy. Show all posts

Thursday, February 27, 2020

Big Hair Claire!




Just ordered this beautiful lady today from Etsy (Lucretia's Lair, my favorite custom/OOAK troll store). This is courtesy of the Canada Council, who once in a while remembers that I published three novels and sends me a cheque in compensation for my total poverty.


Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Pokemon: should I stay, or should I go?





I barely know anything about Pokemon, except that here I am making gifs out of the characters. I made two, in fact, to try to prove/disprove something.





I recently discovered a trove of Pokemon knitting patterns on Etsy (and I'll give you the link right now: these are just the coolest things! - as well as a link to each individual pattern. Believe me when I say, inventing these was a work of knitting genius, and I never could have done it myself.)

LittleWhitsKnits on Etsy

I have no idea at this point if I am going to make any of these. Right now, I just want to look. I like Pikachu (who could NOT like Pikachu?), and that cat is kind of cool, but I have no idea if my grandkids would go for these. They're getting a little old for any kind of knitted thing.

To me, Pokemon means beat-up old cards that you kept in a book, and traded. Kind of like Beatles bubble-gum cards. Now it means something entirely different: walking around the park, not looking at anything or enjoying anything around you, just looking down, and occasionally falling down a hole or running facelong into a utility pole. Or another person, if you can figure out what THAT is.

But we still have these characters, though I have no idea of their relevance in that game where you walk around.

I was not quite clever enough to get my two gifs to run in order at the same speed. Jesus, people, what do you want?! I was born in 1954! To have gotten this far in technology is something of a miracle. These little slide shows are no small matter to a person who had to learn everything from the ground up. I am still on manual/mono/analogue on most things, including my brain.

So why don't we (Jesus it took all day to get these photos formatted so let's use them) just compare them side-by-side, or not side by side exactly.








Now this ain't bad. This is Meowth, a kind of Unicat or Caticorn. Either that, or he has a bee on his head. But I like his friendly expression. This one I might make.







I am not sure why this character (Bulbasaur)  has a giant clove of garlic on its back, but it does. I am sure the kids would love it, and I would too if I understood it in the least.








This is Eevee, one of the harder-to-translate Pokemons. The original character has a classic anime look with big shiny eyes and huge ears. The bottom one is more like a chihuahua wearing a banana bandanna: but hey, could I do any better? I am sure I could not. Some of these things don't translate as well to the medium of wool.







In the case of Jigglypuff, the opposite is true: the knitted version is far cuter and cuddlier. The original has kind of disturbing, push-button eyes and a thing on its forehead like Dairy Queen Soft Serve. Knitted, the robin's-egg blue eyes with their shiny highlight look downright innocent, if not friendly. 







This is a duck with attitude, and - to be honest - a lot more charm and character than the original. Psyduck even bears a resemblance to a living creature, which isn't true of all of them.







Such as this one. Poliwag is some sort of made-up/cobbled-together thing made from leftover parts from the Jurassic period. The knitted stuffy looks to me like a sweet little bluebird with innocent eyes. 







This guy looks just a little TOO innocent for Pokemon, like something you'd knit for a 3-month-old baby. A nursery toy. But for all I know, Squirtle IS something babies play with, probably on Baby's First iphone.

I wonder if anyone ever designed a Gamera knitting pattern? As in: the Atomic Turtle from Space. Might be in the Godzilla section somewhere.







Oh. . . God. . . how many more?? There must be 500 of these. This is a very nicely-adapted-for-knitting blue radish called Oddish. I've knitted veggies before, but not with eyes.







And this is the last one, I hope. I saved Pikachu 'til last because he is the only one I am even remotely familiar with. This was the one they originally asked for, but it was quite a while ago. And oh God, I just realized I am NOT finished yet, because. . .







. . . there's still Charmander! I'm not sure why I'm not as keen on this one, though the stuffy is perfectly all right and even cute. But I know I'm not going to knit this one, in spite of his jigglypuff-y toes. Maybe I knitted too many dinosaurs for Ryan when he was five. Or I'm just suffering from knitting fatigue.