Ninja's Attack!

I must admit I am quite proud of my ninja toy adventure. My first ninja came out quite successfully.


Then I thought, well if I can make ninja's, I bet I could make teenage mutant ninja turtles. And so I did. Here is Raffaele. I also made little tin-foil weapons for him, but later decided to throw them out as they weren't very child friendly.




Then I thought, well if I can make mutant turtles, I could probably make mutants. And so I did. This cycloptic alien looks a bit meager on his own, but I think with some other alien friends he could feel quite at home.


And so at that point I decided that I needed to get some more yarn to make sets of ninja toys for kids. So I bought some colourful thread and got to work. This however was when I discovered that I had actually messed up the original pattern I was following on my first ninja (which also explains why my ninja turtle is larger than my ninja). I then spent many ninja-attemps at trying to repeat my original ninja size. Here is my ninja graveyard of failed attempts.


But I finally have it down to a science and here is my first set of ninja toys! Ideally I wanted buttons for all of their eyes, but unfortunately, Micheal's did not have a bag of small black buttons, so I have had to move to felt eyes - which is probably more child friendly.



I also managed to find on-line some of the free patterns from the creepy cute collection. Next up, I'm thinking of making the druid! (see needlenoddles link below)

http://needlenoodles.com/home/?q=node/134

The army begins .....

My friend Jamala is currently taking a knitting course, which amazed me because it hadn't really occured to me that one could sign up for such a course. I mentioned that I also knit (mainly mittens) and that we should get together for drinks, cheesy movies and some knitting. And so we did.....

Of course this meant that I needed to find something to knit, and since it is not really mitten season, I decided that maybe it was time to branch out in to something else. When I opened my knitting bag, a two-needle sock pattern fell out and I decided that maybe it was time to take up sock knitting. Now I must say I'm not terribly inspired by knitting socks, especially since I don't really like wool socks - too itchy and bulky. But it was a nice exercise, and I was forced to learn a few new stitches. I made a concept sock (see below) .... it is oddly shaped because I didn't bother to follow the proper proportions, I just wanted to practice the hard parts.

Test Sock




But all this got me to thinking, maybe I should find something new to make. Somewhat inspired by my friend Catherine who has been posting pics of baby toys she has been making, I decided I should look at fun rather than functional things to make. And that's when I came up with ninja toys!!! Here's what I am now trying to make,



...but of course I'm too cheap to buy the pattern and too crazy to actually follow the pattern if I did breakdown and buy it, so I am creating my own ninja warrior designs. Stay tuned for upcoming results....

BTW - In case you were wondering, Jamala and I decided to watch "The Net".... lets just say, the internet has come a long way since 1994!