Latest circus recruit

Our mouse circus is finally complete with the addition of a girl...er...female clown. Her male partner has been waiting for her patiently for many months.

There are actually twelve mice in the Cirque de Souris designed by Alan Dart but our troupe is complete at ten because we decided not to have the trapeze artists that would require extra rigging.
   Here is a group shot of the entire troupe. Some of them have appeared in previous posts and if you want to see them in greater detail, click on the tag for toys on the right side of the screen.

In case you are wondering, the circus mice travel in Airstream trailers.

I've been asked how big (or small) these mice are. They are just over 5 inches/12.7 cm.

This female mouse towers a 1/4" over her partner, but he is so secure in his masculinity that he doesn't care one whit. The yarn is either Kauni Wool 8/2 Effekgarn or Shetland jumperweight.

Favorite bunnies

   For a long time I thought I was born in the Chinese year of the dragon. Then I realized that the Chinese year is lunar and because of my January birthday I was actually born in the preceding year— under the sign of the hare.

I felt a little deflated but, truth be told, I'm not a particularly brave person. And I really like bunnies.
   I didn't even notice until now that 2011 is the Year of the Rabbit. To celebrate, here are some pictures of some of my favorite bunnies.  They include very small souvenirs from Japan.

 Of course rabbits are fun to knit. One of my favorite toy patterns is the Chubby Bunny by Susan B. Anderson, found in her book Itty-Bitty Nursery.  Here are my chubby bunnies.

Bunnies are probably friendlier with each other than dragons.

WWDD (What would Daruma do?)

I am fascinated by Daruma, the name the Japanese call Bodhidharma, a 5th century monk who was the founder of Zen Buddhism. Images of Daruma are very common in Japan and dolls and figures of him often allude to how centered he was as a result of all his meditation. Legend has it he meditated for so long that his legs atrophied and fell off. There are Daruma toys that due to a rounded bottom come back upright after you try to tip them over. I have a toy that consists of a Daruma figure on top of a stack of wooden cylinders. Using the mallet that is included, one tries to knock each of those cylinders out from under Daruma without upsetting him. This game is almost a form of meditation; one needs to concentrate and center oneself to succeed. The version I have is 15" (38 cm.)

One of my favorite things about Daruma is that although he is so centered, he is often depicted as rather wild-eyed and ill-tempered. So as I waited in line last week to rebook after my second cancelled flight of the day, I liked the fact that a famous holy man could be depicted like this a 3" (7.6 cm) figure.

Even if he felt ill-tempered I imagine he wouldn't have yelled at the ticket agent and neither did I.
   The next day when I got up at 4:30 a.m. for my third attempt at leaving town, I could identify with this small (1 3/4"/4.4cm) carving of Daruma yawning.

Knitting toys

Not all my toys are things that I knit. Some are toys that are themselves knitting. This windup bear has been trying to progress on her scarf for quite some time.

This knitting fox is a carved toy from Russia. When the ball underneath moves around, the fox moves its paws to knit its sock.

Please don't call them cute

Listen, when you're an incredibly strong performing mouse, you don't want to be called cute. That's for sissy mice, mice in tutus maybe.  Yet almost everyone who sees Mr. Rududu's two latest additions to our Cirque de Souris, the Silnymys Brothers,  insists on cooing over them. Have some sensitivity for how these guys feel, please!

First we have the Strong Mouse. Look at those bulging thighs and biceps!
Next there is his brother, the Escapologist. He has to be strong to rip out of the rope tying his hands and to escape from his ball and chain.

Incidentally, although Mr. Rududu has taken over knitting mice for our circus, I still get to do the embroidery. I suggested that embroidering eyes to be covered up with a blindfold was a lot of work for something no one would see. But of course, I didn't know that the Escapologist was planning to peek!

As a technical note on eyes, moving them just a millimeter one way or the other can really change the whole personality of a mouse. So I preview them by inserting pins with round black heads on them and moving them around until the mouse looks just right. I know it's a little gruesome. So is Mr. Rududu's specialty: inserting the wire armature or "bones" in the mice after they are all assembled. It helps them stand up, but I just can't bear to watch it being done.
This circus of mice is designed by the brilliant Alan Dart. See our other mice on Ravelry.

My knitting crawls along

I wanted to knit the Garden Snail from Amigurumi Knits by Hansi Singh. On my first attempt the inside part, called the mantle, was too big for the shell, so it became a banana slug.

The banana slug is the mascot of the University of California at Santa Cruz, so I will send it to a friend who went there. (Fortunately I knit this in yellow, or I don't know what I would have done with it. It would make an extremely odd toy for a child.) On my second attempt, I decreased my knitting needle two sizes and left out a bunch of rows to make the mantle both shorter and smaller around.

As far as crawling along, that's what my knitting is doing right now. It's summer and I have a lot of summer things to enjoy. (Having a big pile of yarn on my lap when it's hot isn't one of them.) But really, the only reason I have knit so many things is because I'm a steady knitter, not a particularly fast one. Perhaps that's why I identify with snails. Sooner or later we get there.

Toymakers' Manifesto

I was recently interviewed by math4knitters for her podcast. One question Lara asked me was about my fascination with knitted toys. Why do two middle-aged people like making small knitted toys? We'll admit to not giving them all of them away. OK, maybe not even that many. Some are too delicate for children; they are more like little sculptures; some we just can't part with.
  So here is my Toymakers Manifesto:  knitting silly toys doesn't need an excuse any more than any other crafty pursuit does. Cuteness is its own reward.
  In celebration of this stand tough approach, we accept the newly completed strongman into Le Cirque de Souris.

 He was knit and assembled by Mr. Rududu. I embroidered the face and provided a little knitting advice along the way. He joins his colleagues the bee trainer, the lady bird trainer, the plate spinner, the juggling clowns and the ring master. There are several more characters we plan to knit, including the escape artist and the trapeze artists.

The patterns were created by Alan Dart. These mice are about the size of real mice so the knitting is quick. However, parts are numerous and are knit flat so a mouse requires lots of sewing up; it's a bit fiddly and time consuming. Mr. Rududu has installed armatures so that the mice can be posed without falling over.

 We knit the mice bodies with Shetland 2 ply jumper weight yarn; the clothing and accessories are in Kauni yarn from the rainbow sequence. It's hardly a stashbusting project but you can use up very small amounts of yarn you might have on hand. I guess every little bit helps when it comes to stashbusting.

   As for the rest of the interview, some of is about what rududu means, about my nether garment and why I knit it, and a large part is very basic hints about knitting in color for someone who has never tried it.  The interview can be found here.