Tuesday 26 May 2009

The Underpants Alien

With removable pants! Never let it be said that I don't pay attention to detail (that was the mantra of an old boss of mine actually - 'Attention to detail, team, attention to detail!').

Anyway, it was the Boy's birthday yesterday. I'd made up a 'story sack' for him as a present, rather like the ones they had at school - one fact book, one story-book, and a couple of toys/puzzles, all on a related theme. I chose 'space', got him a Dorling Kindersley kids' book on space, Aliens Love Underpants for the story-book, monster snap and a space jigsaw. Then I thought it'd be fun to make him a knitted alien along with pants to go with it, as he's quite appreciative of my attempts at knitting. So I picked a couple of suitable-looking aliens from Aliens Love Underpants and amalgamated them to make this endearing chap.


I made it up as I went along but noted down as I went so the pattern will be added here when I've deciphered my notes. It's by no means perfect, but I'm quite pleased with it.
One of the things I like about knitting is that as I often knit while watching television after the kids are in bed, my knitting then reminds me of what I've been watching. An example being the alien's felt eye which got sewn on while watching Griff, Dara and Rory messing around in Three Men In Another Boat, and I knitted the body while watching Ewan and Charley's adventures in Long Way Down (as an aside, when are Virgin Media going to stick the last three eps on catch-up? We're missing half of Africa! I'll have to buy the DVD at this rate..). Conversations are the same - I remember bits of conversations from the knitting group when I look at the thing I was working on at the time. It's odd, the way the mind works.