Monday, October 15, 2007

Lemuragurumi



Amigurumi (編み包み? lit. Knitting a stuffed toy) is the Japanese art of knitting or crocheting small stuffed animals and anthropomorphic creatures. Amigurumi are typically cute animals (such as bears, rabbits, cats, dogs, etc.), but can include inanimate objects endowed with anthropomorphic features. Amigurumi can be knitted, but the vast majority of amigurumi are crocheted.

Amigurumi are usually crocheted out of yarn. The simplest designs are worked in spirals. In contrast to typical Western crochet the rounds are not usually joined. They are also worked with a smaller size needle in proportion to the weight of the yarn in order to create a very tight-looking fabric without any gaps through which the stuffing might escape. Amigurumi are usually worked in sections and then joined (some amigurumi have no limbs whatsoever and the body and head is worked as one piece). The extremities are often stuffed with plastic pellets to give them a life-like weight, while the rest of the body is stuffed with fiber stuffing.

The pervading aesthetic of amigurumi is cuteness. To this end, typical amigurumi animals have an over-sized spherical head on a cylindrical body with undersized extremities.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

how amazingly intricate! great find!

Linda said...

I love those! Someone in the Land of Cute should start making them.

Anonymous said...

How interesting that there is something like that, that is so cute. Cute knitting. Makes the idea of knitting more fun.

Anonymous said...

It may be knit, but it still looks like an alien. But then, who says aliens can't be cute. Your cute might be my alien.

Christine said...

I would like to learn how to knit little cute animals, too. Maybe a chicken.

Speaking of cute, I went into my laundry room tonight and was started by a mouse who was startled by me. He had a single kernel of hard field corn in his mouth (probably from our fall decorations right outside). He stopped and watched me then went about his way walking on the wires near the rafters into a hole in the insulation. So cute. But so not going to be a permanent resident. How much is a live trap and a one-way ticket on the next freight train out west?

Sophia Varcados said...

Wouldn't it be cute if he had a little dufflebag and a knit hat to wear as he shipped out west.
Trap $4.99
Cheese bait $1.00
Greyhound Ticket to Tulsa $80.00
Cute mouse in outfit priceless

Anonymous said...

I love the last bit of the description. Same language with a bit of "land of cute" sensibility. You need to create a "cuteness" T-shirt. Oh, love the lemur.