Amigurumi wrangling

I am an impatient person.  With myself, that is.  I like simple makes, that look impressive but work up quickly.  I like crochet for that reason but other than a swiftly made spider for my toddler’s Miss Muffet costume a few years back, I haven’t really been drawn to amigurumi.  It’s relatively slow, monotonous and fiddly and unless you like making toys etc it’s not really very satisfying.  Plus, I have real issues trying to pronounce it.

So there I was last week, going through crochet mags for quick makes suitable for the school fundraiser when Small pokes her finger at a novelty toy donkey and demands I start work.  He was massively cute, and there was enough colourwork to make it interesting.  I also have huge amounts of acrylic to work through, so I thought I would give ‘Pedro’ a stab.

The head and ears worked up quickly but then I had a 30 min + fight with the safety eyes.  How do they expect mere humans to get those washers on? What followed was much swearing, bashing the donkey’s face on a wooden table, some supplementary swearing, squeezing until I had the imprint of two tiny plastic eyes on my thumbs, and then defeat – which involved my strong-thumbed other half.  I then got to watch someone else swearing, bashing the donkey’s face on a wooden table, swearing some more, and threatening to get hammers and pliers.  Finally, after much gurning, the eyes were in.  I had asked an online crochet group what they do in this situation, and the responses involved multiple pairs of pliers and learning to become zen about extreme thumb pain.  I was starting to wonder if I had joined some sort of masochistic cult.

The body was fiddly but ok and surprisingly I didn’t mess up the stitch count. When I stuffed him, he stood up!  I lovingly inserted his mane one strand at a time, and even tried to do my best embroidery on his acccessories.  I confess I stopped doing his full fancy tack, but was pretty pleased.

So now I have the dilemma of do I extend my repetoire or run away quickly? There is no denying the smug factor when you finish one of these is off the chart.  And as a stash buster they are hard to beat:  that little donkey used up a good chunk of a new ball of stylecraft DK plus lots of little colour scraps that needed using up.  But goodness me I won’t weep if I never see another safety eye again, and fringing, tassels, and micro hair transplants are very tedious.