FO: Mini Mike & Eleven

So this project was a sudden revelation a month ago. I was struck with the perfect video entry for the Mochimochiland photo contest one morning, and I would only need to make 2 mini knits to accomplish it :) Sounds good, right? So while I haven't heard anything about the photo contest this year (I'm coming to the realization that it is not happening this year - of course, because I'm actually prepared for it, lol), I wanted to show off my little creations on their own now.

I wanted to make a video based off Stranger Things. I'm not a big tv watcher, but my husband talked me into it and I really enjoyed this show. Now that the show is so popular I figured it would be the perfect subject for the contest since most people would get the references. All I needed were my two main characters: Mike and Eleven.

Can you see the resemblance? I knitted these before the second season came out, so these are based on their looks from season 1. Eleven seemed the most obvious to make first, so I started with her.

I started off with the Mini Ballerina pattern (oddly enough considering my other minis project this year, lol) and made a few modifications to make the characters. For Eleven these were my mods:

• white yarn for feet
• row 14 and 15 of head - changed to light brown for shaved hair
• make separate stockinette stitch rectangle in blue yarn: 14 sts, 5 rows long - steam block as a half circle
• arms: knit 2 rows skin color, 14 rows blue, then 2 rows skin color. Pull through "jacket" and body
• tutu: bind off knit-wise, steam block and attach knit side up

It wasn't really a lot to change, but it was super fiddly since this is so few stitches in such small yarn. I think Eleven took me 2 hours to make. I'm pretty pleased with the likeness though :) Check the back view:

Being that she is Eleven, I had to make her a waffle too. The waffle will play a role in my eventual video (if there is a contest next year, that is), so I decided to go ahead and make one. I just cast on 6 stitches and increased for 3 rows, then bound off. Voilà! Waffle.

Mike was a little harder just from having to pick yarn for his shirt. It seems he's always wearing stripes in the show, but it's very difficult to represent thin stripes in 80s colors on such a small item. I looked through my multicolored sock yarns and liked this one best because it had lots of colors in a small area. This yarn is Yarn Bee Walk Away Sock in the Mamba colorway. I bought this at Hobby Lobby when I first started knitting and it has sat in my stash ever since, lol. I'm glad I finally used some of it (even if it is a miniscule amount). I think it worked great for Mike's shirt. I made the same jacket and arm mods for Mike and just changed the colors for his shoes and jeans, etc.

I'm super glad I had so many colors on hand to make this project happen. That's the thing about these mini knits - they are small but they take a lot of different colors to really give them character. For both of these peeps I used Knit Picks Palette in Oyster Heather (skin), Coriander heather (Eleven's hair and Mike's jacket), and Blue Note Heather (Mike's jeans and Eleven's jacket); Golden Sun Bamboo (from China on ebay) in Brown (hair and shoes), Nude Pink (Eleven's dress), White (shoes), and Butter Yellow (waffle); plus the Mamba for Mike's shirt. That's 8 different skeins of yarn! And all of these skeins are still technically full since I used less than 1 gram of each. Craziness. But when the mood strikes, I'm still glad I happen to have acquired so many colors of sock yarn.

SO there you have it - my Stranger Things homage :) I am really bummed that there is no photo contest this year, but I guess at least I am prepared if (hopefully when) there is a contest next year. And maybe I can get better at video software in the meantime. Yay for planning, lol.