A Robin is for life, not just for Christmas

You hear the expression "Victim of your own success" occasionally.  Have you ever wondered what it means or how that could manifest for someone?  Well, I found out when a friend spied all the knitted creations for the Big Knit that I was making and asked if I would make something for her.  When I asked what, she said to let her think.

A few days later, she returned and said, as it was not long until Christmas, she would like a robin.  When I said that would be fine, she explained further.  She wanted a robin that could sit on her couch taking up the space of a person, to act as huge festive decoration.  Could I do it?  Why not? What would it take bar a lot of yarn, some needles, a pattern?  Did she have a preferred pattern?  No, so first task was to find the pattern!

I looked some out over the weekend and took them to her to look through early the following week.  Once she selected her preferred pattern, I set about knitting it up.  This served several purposes:

• make sure she liked the pattern (she did)
• make sure I was comfortable knitting it (I was, with a few modifications) 
• find out what size of robin it resulted in (about 3 inches tall). 

The next challenge was scaling up from 3 inches tall to approximately 24 inches tall.  Essentially I took a little cheat here.  The original pattern was knitted using double knit yarn (8 ply to those in Australia, worsted to those in America).  The easiest way to make something bigger is to use heavier yarn and larger needles.  I knitted the pattern again, this time using chunky yarn to determine the actual scaling up that was needed.  I will be honest here, I cannot recall the size of the robin that resulted from this and I did not note it but suffice to say it would have been somewhat bigger than the one in double knit though still well short of 24 inches tall.

Once I knew the size of the chunky yarn robin with the original pattern, I got out my squared paper and pencil and drew up the original pattern.  I then drew out a scaled up version of the pattern.  Why did I bother to draw up the original pattern?  With that I could see the proportions of the original pattern to make sure that the scaled up version was similarly shaped and proportioned.  No good making a large robin that does not look like a robin.  That is not what the lovely lady would want to pay for!

I estimated from the chunky weight yarn used to make the original pattern how much I would need to make the huge robin and purchased the yarn and, of course, stuffing.  It would be no good knitting it and having nothing to stuff it with. 

Now a 24 inch tall robin was going to need an immense amount of stuffing and I was concerned that it would be difficult to ensure it had structural integrity.  I puzzled on this for some time and eventually decided that what it needed was a structural core.  Something to build on to plump it out to full robin shape.  But what could I use?  From somewhere the idea came to me - I would use a ball.  You know those soft children's balls that you see at supermarkets or the beach in summer?  No, not a beach ball as I could not risk it bursting.  Imagine coming down Christmas morning and finding your robin wilted on the sofa.  No, no.  I selected a lightweight pastel coloured child's ball to be the robin's core.

As you might suppose, the couch robin took some knitting.  Whilst constructing him, further modifications were required, particularly for his legs and eyes, but finally he was complete - knitted and stuffed.  I arranged  a date with my friend to present her with her couch robin.  I was excited, as I thought it looked pretty true to the original robin, and anxious, in case it was not what she had imagined it would be.  I imagine she too was excited after the wait and anxious in case she did not like it.  Neither of us needed to have worried.  She was absolutely over the moon with it, though initially I think a little lost for words.  Can you imagine being faced with a toddler sized robin!  

That's my boy!

She immediately took Robin and his dad (that is the original one knitted to make sure she liked the pattern - hey, without him there would have been no couch Robin), packed them in her car - Robin had the seat belt on - and took them over to show her mum and dad.

I pondered over what she would do with Robin after Christmas.  When I asked, she said he was so amazing that he could sit on the couch all year round.  That troubled me - a Christmas robin, all year round!  I thought about how he could be made year round appropriate and decided all he needed was a change of hat.  So I made him three more hats -  a Busby, a sombrero and a Robin Hood hat - all of which affixed to his head with Velcro.  I borrowed Robin back briefly to add Velcro to his Christmas hat and his head.  Finally he was a year round Robin.  

I am sorry to say I only have this one photo of Robin with his dad but I do know he is still happy and brings joy to those who see him.