Daniel's Daniel Tiger

This month, Sonia's buddy, Daniel, turned two years old.  Daniel is the oldest of the "second generation" of kids in our beloved playgroup, and he is the sweetest little dude!  He is always up for having fun and can put away food like you cannot believe.  For his birthday, his mom (who also crochets) and I kicked around several ideas of items for me to crochet, but nothing was inspiring me.  There is a shocking lack of cute crocheted truck patterns, and I didn't have enough time to come up with my own pattern.  When his mom reminded me that Daniel loves Daniel Tiger (from the PBS cartoon "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood"), I decided to give it a try.

Surprisingly, just like Strawberry Shortcake, no one has posted any pictures on the internet of a Daniel Tiger amigurumi yet.  Yes, it is a fairly new show for PBS (it's a spin-off of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood), but this tiny tiger is so darn cute that he is begging to be crocheted.  I used a basic doll pattern that I have used once or twice before, and just winged it from there.  Behold:

Here's what Daniel Tiger looks like in his TV show:

Now to be nit-picky about how my Daniel Tiger amigurumi turned out: HIS HEAD IS TOO SMALL!!!!  I used an F hook and Red Heart Super Saver acrylic yarn for all the colors except for the orange; for that, I used Red Heart With Love, which is also supposed to be worsted weight, but whatever they do to make it a bit softer than Super Saver also makes it a wee bit thinner.  Whoops.  I should know better than to mix types of yarn, but I really wanted to use this color ("mango"), and it wasn't available at Jo-ann's Fabric in the Super Saver variety.  In the future, if I mix Super Saver and With Love on a project, I'm going to need to make some adjustments to take the difference in yarn weight into account.  As I told the other moms in the playgroup, I crocheted "Daniel Tiger after a visit to the head-shrinking psychiatrist".

I had a bit of trouble with his nose, too-- I kind of want to steal the amigurumi back and re-do it.  But Daniel (the kid) seemed to really love his new crocheted buddy, so he might not let me steal it back.

The other nit-pick comes not from me, but from Sonia.... She was mad that the hood isn't big enough to actually cover Daniel Tiger's head (even as small as that head is-- ha!!).  But if I made the hood big enough to be used properly, it would have looked a bit ridiculous and out of proportion.  In the cartoon, Daniel Tiger's hood is shown just as I crocheted it: unusable.  Apparently, that tiger is interested in form over function when it comes to clothing.

Happy birthday to Daniel!