So, the second book is to crochet Hello Kitty characters for the delightful child in you so that you don’t spend $30 on a small little plush toy that is barely 3 inches high. (I totally wouldn’t know this by experience, I never cared for Sanrio plushies.)* What is an added bonus to the book, is that links to Quirkbooks are enclosed if you want to pursue the other additional accessories there if you want to expand upon that.
The author, Mei Li Lee, runs a blog of purely Hello Kitty crocheted dolls – amiguruMEI. She is also the author for Craftypedia, a biweekly column for Malaysia’s English-language daily. She has constructed this book full of instructions and picture guides for to create different components for the head, arms, feet, and accessories. The amount of reference and referring back are specific enough, but it reminds me of the scene in Gravity where she lands in the Chinese re-entry pod and she’s trying to figure out all the Chinese instructions and moon runes. Yes, it’s that complicated, and unless if you read the reference to the shorthand at the beginning – you’re lost. So, read the damn manual. It will save your life, or at least save you some money from the Sanrio beast.
I must really remember how OCD in Asia they all are in regards to detail and simplicity and it makes me hurt inside when I mis-stitch a stitch.
I perused one of the instructions for “Dear Daniel”. I must say it’s cute enough, but the tagline kills me:
I could so make some Justin Beiber jokes there too. He would look like Justin Beiber if he was a cat. And if he was made of crochet with pink brads on his youthful cheeks.:
I feel like in a lot of these recipes, you do have to deal with the specifics, patterns of the craft itself. I can’t really fault Lee for making this seem complicated. I think she really made that effort to take something that could be completely complicated, use reference points, instead of printing the whole thing over and over again.:
I also have to credit Lee as she took painstaking care to reproduce the Sanrio characters without them looking like cheap knockoffs like this one:
Of course, I’m exaggerating but you’d be surprised at how easy it is to draw Hello Kitty all screwed up. I tend to make the Hello Kitty fat heads. I figure they must have a gauge at Sanrio, much like NASA’s measuring down to the nanometer of how her head and face poportions would be. As I stated, drawing or creating Sanrio anything just is a trip down OCDland and it hurts. It so hurts.
However, you do get to make yourself a character that is true-to-life like the real thing. You’ll feel like Daniel-san from the Karate Kid when he masters “wax on, wax off”.
*I am completely and totally lying. I have bought Sanrio plushies shamefully and surreptitiously.
Good Job!!! 🙂
Good Job!! 🙂