I love you a bushel and a… err… monster?

As a birthday present to myself I got myself a copy of “Knit a Monster Nursery” by Rebecca Danger. No, I’m not pregnant and secretly hiding the news and letting my purchases hint at it. I’ve been eyeing this lady’s monsters for a long while now, and this was the only one of her pattern books the store had. If you’ve never seen her cute creations you should totally go check her out, and then you will understand why I didn’t care that it was a baby geared book.

I was so excited and just didn’t know where to start first. Ryan solved that by telling me a little after his birthday that he really wanted me to make him a monster after I had told him that it was his turn to have something made next. So I sat down with him and we went through the book, looking at all of the patterns and deciding if he wanted a monster someTHING or an actual monster. He ended up picking out the striped mini-monster (from the monster mobile) as the one that he had to have. To make it a little bigger than the one in the book I went up several needle sizes and double stranded the yarn.

I won’t deny it, at first I absolutely HATED the colors of yarn that Ryan picked out. He wanted camo throughout (it’s leftover from his hat I made him several years back) and he wanted orange and brown as the alternating colors. The boy had no hesitation in picking them, so I’m guessing that he had already had them picked as soon as he decided he wanted a monster. I mention this, because, the main thing I keep hearing (after how cute people think it is overall) is what wonderful colors it is.

Ryan also picked out the mismatching button eyes and decided that they should be at such an angle from each other instead of straight across.

The finished monster ended up being almost the same size as my Kindle – which is good since the one in the book would only measure about 4 inches.

The best, and most important, part is that Ryan absolutely loves and is delighted by it. He even took it to church the night I finished it and then school the next day to show it off. He has even taken to sleeping with it at night.

Now Zach wants one (though not the same pattern one as Ryan picked), Bella says he friend needs one, and Mason wants one too. And Bella wants me to make her a cute pig – but no monster for her please.

I say overall, I did pretty well for my first stuffed cutie. You can get a closer look at the little cutie here: thetrish’s Ryan’s Monster on Ravelry