FO: Super Shannon Key Chain

This past month has been a really tough one for my younger sister. Having a horribly dramatic and life altering year myself, it's been very hard to sit by and watch her go through a similar anguish, especially since she lives 1300 miles away. At the beginning of this year, Shannon was honestly one of the things that helped me get through my hard times. She's done so much for me and I will always be grateful. I know that nothing can truly stop the pain of such situations, but any little cheerful thing helps to just get your mind off your problems. After a particularly sad conversation with her, I knew I wanted to do something to brighten her day. This happened to be the day that Anna Hrachovec announced the winners of her recent photo contest for her mini knitting patterns. I put two and two together and decided to finally make a Teeny Tiny Mochimochi, and to make it a special gift to boot.

Meet Super Shannon :) She is made from the Knit Kid and Purl Girl pattern by Anna Hrachovec (it's a free pattern) combined with the kindly written instructions from KittyKat77 on how to make the pattern look like Wonder Woman. I knew this would be the perfect little cheesy gift since Shannon has always been super to me and she certainly saved me :) So what better way to commemorate that fact than a mini knitted Super Shannon? Right?!

Super Shannon was made in about 2 hours (while watching Sense and Sensibility, so it's infused with even more sisterly goodness) and entirely from yarns I had in my stash. The yarns are as follows: skin - Serenity Sock in Soft White; suit, shoes, and crown - Knit Picks Palette in Serrano, Canary, and Blue Note Heather; hair - Golden Sun Bamboo in Brown (bought from China on ebay). Even her facial features were a scrap of Valley Yarns Charlemont in Black from my recently finished Emelie sweater. Super Shannon also has a teeny tuft of polyfil inside. At first I was bummed that I didn't have a more skin-like color, but Shannon is super pale like me, lol, so it worked out fine.

This little lady was knitted on size 2 double pointed needles ... which are basically a set of really long, skinny toothpicks. I've never knitted with needles that small before, and to be honest I am still kind of amazed that I didn't break them, lol. I'm glad I didn't though because now I can make more tiny creations. These things are seriously addicting! I think I've finally found my new quick and satisfying animal making activity.

I picked up 100 of these little key chain pieces off of ebay several months ago when I got it in my head to make Japanese style charms for things - I had never used them until now, lol. If you're wanting these pieces but don't need them very quickly, it is so worth it to go to ebay. You can get 100 of them for something like $1.69 shipped from Hong Kong, but it will take about 3 weeks to arrive. I looked on Etsy first and it was going to cost $1.00 for just 5 plus the shipping cost. Craziness! Anyway, the little lanyard thing has a lobster clasp that I just hooked into a few stitches on Super Shannon's hair so she can fly, but it can be easily removed if need be. Look how tiny she is! It's crazy. I love it :)

So, I hope this little effort brightened Shannon's day a little bit :) Who wouldn't like a little super hero style effigy of themselves to carry around? No one, that's who! So keep on being super, Shan. As Buddha says, "The only way out is through." Things will get better. At least now you have a little super talisman to keep you company :)