Hairy situations

My dear BF sent me a birthday package that included some fun fur yarn in variegated green, blue, and yellow. It made me think of Muppets. I had some fun fur in my stash already – some black that is waiting to become Barbabeau, and some bright purple and hot pink that, actually, the BF’s mother handed down to me – but this stuff inspired me to actually make a stab at crocheting something now.

My first attempt was with the steel hook I use for embroidery floss (2.75mm), since the main strand of fun fur is not very large. I can’t recommend it. The fluff makes it very hard to see what you’re doing anyway, and also means that even with a larger hook the fabric is solid enough to keep stuffing in. It’s not that I didn’t succeed in crocheting in my first attempt, but the result didn’t look like much. My second attempt was with my trusty E hook (3.5mm) and went much, much better.

I freehanded this because it was just too overwhelming to try to keep track of stitch counts. It started out with 6 sc, then 12 sc, then I increased in every other stitch for a while, then sc’d around a few times, then decreased with every other stitch for about two rounds, then stitched around once or so, then started increasing in every other stitch for a while. Before I’d decreased too much I put in the eyes. At some point in the body I chained out and sc’d back for arms, and later chained out more and hdc’d back for legs, and finally chained out still more, sc’d four times in the first chain and then slip stitched back for the tail. Then I tried to decrease at a rate that would make the bottom flat. The initial yarn tail sticks out the top like a Dr. Seuss drawing; my inspiration was that combined with my image of a Creep or Woodie from the Moomintroll books.

As good as it gets, visibility-wise.

Some things I learned, besides the fact that the hook shouldn’t be too small:
– the “right side” is what would in normal yarn be the back/inside. At least for me. That’s the side the fuzz wanted to mostly be on.
– a magic circle doesn’t work at all – once you’ve got a few stitches into it, you can’t pull it tight because it’s all hung up on the fluff. You have to slipknot, ch 2, and work the first round into the first ch.
– likewise, I didn’t try to do an invisible decrease. It could be done, in the back loops instead of the front loops, but it seemed more difficult than it was worth. Also, the yarn is not elastic, adding that difficulty.
– of course, half the time I sc’d into the back loop only anyway, because finding the other one was too much work. Visibility is poor. On the other hand, no one looking at the finished work can really make out your stitches anyway. Freedom!

And then I discovered all my tips were already available from June Gilbank.

They all end up in trees. In this one you can see the initial yarn end hanging.

The baby I made first.