Woolly Zombie Dog Will Win Your Staring Contest. Then Softly Eat You.

Julia is away again, on her covert mission to save third-world orphans from hideous crafts and Madonna.

She is being disconcertingly nice just recently anyway, and so until she makes an appointment for a new injection from Doctor Cruel's huge syringe-full of lime green snark, it falls on me, G. Henry, to humbly serve for another couple of days as your chief steward on the airline of risible handicrafts.

So buckle up and have your sick-bags handy. It might be a bumpy ride.

I promise to get away from crochet and canines next time, but I hope that your patience will not be overly taxed by one more visit to this menacing dual world. I offer you a slight diversion today, anyway; this is not dogs wearing crochet, it's dogs as crochet.

Here are some acceptable examples of the Japanese art of amigurumi, which translates, I guess, as 'making cute woodland and domestic creatures out of yards of yarn and stuff to annoy cynical b*stards who would like to deride them but have no justifiable excuse thereto':


I can't really say a bad word about them, can I? But they are not my cup of tea, to be honest, and I hanker for the days of the original but more callous art of live amigurumi, which, as it name might suggest, was more like origami: 'folding cute woodland and domestic creatures into the shape of a swan'.

This was more easily achieved, of course, if you actually had an actual swan to crease and manipulate, as long as it did not fiercely object and break your arm while you tried to perfect that tricky petal fold on its beak.

Here's another amigurumi penguin. I'm probably supposed to say 'adorable':

And this is a perfectly reasonable dog:


This, however, is a perfectly unreasonable dog:


Here it is again, in case you missed it:


What the hell is going on? And I use the word 'hell' advisedly. To be fair to the crafter, she/he does admit to its demonic shortcomings and declares that this 'crocheted amigurumi dog [...] turned out kinda zombieish looking ... it was really difficult for me because I can't read patterns, so I winged it'.

No kidding.

Despite this disarming (although wholly redundant) honesty, I have few qualms about pointing and laughing because a) it was wilfully and deliberately posted, without appropriate warning, where it can frighten small children, and b) because it has BUTTONS FOR EYES. And BUTTONS are never an acceptable shorthand for EYES. Well, not since that traumatic incident with the knitted bear and the cannibalized cardigan when I was three.

Speaking of small children, I'll finish with a couple of amigurumis (is that right?), which although technically correct are also technically creepy. I present the amigurumi foetus:

Now with added placenta:


Put the needles down, people, and back away slowly.

Yours,

G. Henry