Totoro Crochet Mobile

I have some news....

No! Not mine. The Blonde Bombshell aka The Divine Miss Emma has had a delicious little bouncing baby boy cut from her lovely tummy to be unleashed unto the WORLD!

And he's squishily adorable. The Blonde Bombshell has had a little Baby Bomber!
The Divine Miss Emma decided to have a 'My Neighbour Totoro' themed nursery.

My Neighbour Totoro c/o of Studio Ghibli

 If you haven't heard of My Neighbour Totoro, it's a gorgeous anime movie created by a Japanese animation company called Studio Ghibli. They also created other movies such as Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki's Delivery Service, The Secret World of Arriety and The Cat Returns amongst many others. There are loads of them on Netflix at the moment.

My Neighbour Totoro c/o of Studio Ghibli

We love these movies and My Neighbour Totoro is my favourite. It is about 2 little girls and their dad who move to a new house in the country. Their mother is recovering from a long illness in hospital. One of the little girls meet some of the local forest spirits who lead her to the large spirit called Totoro. 

My Neighbour Totoro c/o of Studio Ghibli

It is the most enchanting movie. Even if you're a hardened, grown up grumpy type person, I challenge you to watch this movie and not fall in love with it!

So when The Divine Miss Emma said, "I'm up the bloody duff." I said, "Whaddya want?" And she said, "A Totoro mobile like the super expensive ones on Etsy." And I said, "Sure." 
I didn't need to try and design a Totoro. It's already been done. In actual fact several years ago I made the large Totoro for the Divine Miss Emma for Christmas....

That last pattern was from a designer Lucy Collins. But I didn't want to make a big one. 
Only little ones. A clever clogs called Shehla from blog The Blue Elephants has published small versions of the patterns for all 3 of the forest spirits for free.
There are the 3 'Totoro' spirits: A small white baby totoro, a medium blue totoro and the very large grey Totoro. 
I first grabbed some scraps of coloured yarn to crochet a 'practise' medium one who ended up looking like this. He is not true to colour, and I didn't intend him to be. But I loved him looking like this! Sonofagun No.2 gave him to a friend for Xmas. 

I had loads of felt pieces from some time several years ago when I thought I was going to make all of the things out of felt and didn't. I cut them into leaves and pulled this mysterious machine out from a cupboard. The machine was dusty. It had never seen daylight before!

I made pompoms of different sizes and colours. The black circley things that you see aren't pompoms. They are Soot Sprites from the movie and are made from felt. They are in a couple of other Studio Ghibli movies. 

 I also bought felted wool balls off a local seller on Ebay.

So one of Baby Bombers favourite things to do was to scream his face off whenever he gets his nappy changed. He screams so much that he manages to squeeze a little tear out of his left eye just to make it look like he's terribly traumatised!

Doesn't that sound adorable! 

Since we installed the mobile over his change table his mum has informed me that he has decided not to scream his face off when getting his nappy changed anymore. Because he's totally fascinated in his new mobile!

It's now Autumn and so I have been making a little pram blanket in matching colours from his mobile. I first made a basic swatch...

I haven't followed any pattern for this. Just making up each row as I go along, although most of it was in single stitch.

What do you think? Do you want to make a baby? I don't. I already have two of the buggers who can finally feed themselves, wipe their own bums and I really like sleeping.

If you're just like me and want to make a Totoro instead, pop over to those links and give it a go! 

Thanks for visiting!

Louise

Red Haired Amazona