Wait, what?

The Stormlight Archive: Secret History

“Teaching kitten to use a scratching post.”

Look out friends I know there are so many crochet Baby Yodas out there, and plenty of crochet Baby Yoda patterns, but I’m about to add mine to the mix!  As always, if anyone uses this pattern, please link back to my page, and tag me or send me a picture! I’ll always reblog! Like the rest of you, I’m obsessed with this little sweetie and want to see as many as humanly possible! 

From what I can tell, my pattern is one of the smallest designs out there. So, while lacking in detail (I love the tiny hands and facial features people are able to make!), the trade off is, look how SMOL he sits in my hand! Make a dozen of them! Fill a candy dish with them! Put one in the manger of your Nativity scene!

So, the secret to a tiny Yoda is, in part, using tiny yarn. I had this perfect ball of light green yarn in my stash and I have no idea what it is or where I got it (possibly inherited from my grandma?), but you can see it here compared to the Red Heart Super Saver “Buff Fleck” yarn I used for his coat. Also, for his head and ears, I used a 2.5mm crochet hook, while for the body I used a 3mm crochet hook. I think it makes a difference! I’m vaguely curious if this pattern could scale up, maybe with worsted weight for the head and a chunky yarn for the body?

^ Head: 

To make sure his head has a more oval shape, I didn’t do multiple rows of the widest diameter (counter-intuitively, to crochet a sphere, you need multiple rows of the widest diameter, it’s just some property of how the yarn stretches!)  

6 sc in a magic circle

inc 6x to make 12 stitches  

(1 sc, inc) 6x to make 18 stitches

(2 sc, inc) 6x to make 24 stitches

(2 sc, dec) 6x to make 18 stitches

Add 6 mm eyes between last two row, stuff

(1 sc, dec) 6x to make 12 stitches

dec until closed off

^ Ears:

 This is a challenging one since you are working with such few stitches. When making a narrow cone like this, I find it helps to stick my hook into the cup and press it out, to make a more sharp point and better expose the stitches I need to work with.

3 sc in a magic circle

inc 1 to make 4 stitches

(sc, inc) 2x to make 6 stitches

2 rows of 6 sc

flatten ears and sew shut

Sew the ears to each side of the head, making sure they stick out mostly horizontally. Having them too high on the head really changes the silhouette and makes him look less Yoda-like! 

^ Coat:

As you can see, I was actually experimenting on his little potato sack at the same time I was working on the head, because I wanted them to have good proportions to each other. I ultimately went with a slightly larger size than you see here. I know in amigurumi often the head is much much bigger than the body, but here I wanted him to still look a bit like he was swimming in his cute little sack.

foundation single crochet 14

connect the ends in a loop

sc 14

sc 13 (decrease once in back)

sc 12 (decrease once in back)

tie off leaving a long end

^ Collar: 

This is such a crazy important piece of his costume! I wanted him to look cozy and snug but not TOO tightly wrapped up. I didn’t get a good picture of the collar pre-attached, but it really is so simple:

chain 14, turn, chain 2

double crochet in second chain, then 13 double crochets across

I would recommend experimenting with the number of stitches though, depending on how tight they are - you want it to be able to wrap around the neck of the coat with a little left over to form the overlap. To attach the collar, I carefully sewed it AROUND THE OUTSIDE of the main body of the cloak, NOT directly to the top of the coat, as then you can’t attach his head! 

Here’s the two coat/collar combos I experimented with, which was possible since I attached the collar before I attached the head. I don’t think that’s strictly necessary, as it does make sewing on the head harder because you have to reach down through the collar (making sure the head attached to the coat, not the collar!). But it is doable! (The smaller body had 12 stitches in diameter at the base of the coat, and the smaller collar and half double crochets - I just think it looked more squished and messy.)

As for stuffing his body - I kinda didn’t! there were enough loose ends of the various yarns that basically tucking them in provided enough structure - he doesn’t have any feet (it would be easy to make some though, if you wanted), but he actually stands up great like this! 

I mean, he stands up great, but don’t think that means he doesn’t also love to be picked up and held! This is a better view of the back of his collar, which comes up so cute and snug around his ears!

Children need to be able to socialize with same-age peers, and they need to do it without adult supervision to form independence and mature into self-sufficient adults. 

“Appropriate control becomes overcontrol when the mother restrains her child ten years later, long after the child is perfectly able to cross the street alone. Children who are not encouraged to do, to try, to explore, to master, and to risk failure, often feel helpless and inadequate. Over-controlled by anxious, fearful parents, these children often become anxious and fearful themselves. This makes it difficult for them to mature. When they develop through adolescence and adulthood, many of them never outgrow the need for ongoing parental guidance and control. As a result, their parents continue to invade, manipulate, and frequently dominate their lives. The fear of not being needed motivates many controlling parents to perpetuate this sense of powerlessness in their children. These parents have an unhealthy fear of the “empty nest syndrome,” the inevitable sense of loss that all parents experience when their children finally leave home. So much of a controlling parent’s identity is tied up in the parental role that he or she feels betrayed and abandoned when the child becomes independent.” from Emotionally Toxic Parents by Susan Forward

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kGkS8Bvrvc

“Have an appointment this week to adopt this little guy!”

I live in a state where you “have to” report anyone you suspect of being undocumented (that wonderful hellhole of Arizona). Now in practice this law has fallen far short, thank goodness. But if you live in such a place and they start enforcing it, here is how you get around it:

Assume everyone who doesn’t speak English is visiting.

Never ask about their job, because if they tell you they work here then you know they’re not visiting. You see them a lot for several weeks or months? Hm. Someone in the family must be ill. That’s terribly tough. They always dress in old, ratty laborers’ clothes? I feel you, my dude, I can’t afford new clothes either, and my dad has the fashion sense of an aardvark, so sometimes it’s not even about “affording” them. They say they’ve been here for years? You must have misunderstood. Spanish isn’t your first language, after all. First and last name? It never came up, or you don’t recall–you meet a lot of people.

Don’t do more than is expressly asked of you, and do what you are asked with such an intense attention to protocol that not asking you at all becomes more effective than even bothering.

In this case:

“Have you seen an illegal immigrant?”

“Could you describe an illegal immigrant, officer?”

*officer describes a person who is in the country without appropriate paperwork, or who has crossed the border illegally*

“No, sir, I haven’t seen any illegal immigrant.”

1) Even someone who’s working could be here on a migrant (or other sort of) visa (hey, there are a few thousand per year, and *someone*’s got to get them, right?) or could be waiting for their case to resolve in immigration court, after having come to America to join a born or naturalized American family member. 

2) Even people who are working improperly could have come into the country legally – and just overstayed their visa or be violating the conditions of their visa, and you have no idea what the niggly little regulations that govern that might be. 

3) If a law enforcement officer asks you about a neighbor/friend/etc., take this moment to remind them that, unlike them, you cannot ask a random person off the street for their ID and be entitled to a response. 

4) Even if someone has told you that they are undocumented, you still don’t know, do you? Humans lie all the time. How could you know for sure? You can’t, because they can’t prove that they have a lack of papers. Just because you haven’t seen papers doesn’t mean they don’t exist! 

5) Don’t ever talk to cops in general. Why are you talking to a cop? Stop that, as soon as it is safe and feasible. 

Love,

me: wait

me: im not enjoying it hard enough