Finally, Lunar is revealed!

From today onward, you can sign up to participate in Lunar the Lemur’s CAL! Click here to see frequently asked questions like, “What is a CAL?” and ” When does it start?” Lunar’s CAL is also available on Ravelry.

I’ve also posted a new video on my YouTube channel today, which will teach you the new colour-changing technique that I came up with, specially for Lunar’s fingers. In the video, you’ll also get to see Lunar live in action and hear more about the CAL. Watch it below, or on YouTube.

If you haven’t heard of Lunar yet, she’s a fully articulated, life-sized amigurumi lemur that I’ve been working on since April 2020, whose pattern will finally be ready to meet the world on 4 June 2021 in the form of a CAL (crochet along). Click the purchase link at the top of this post to find out more about what the project entails. Lunar is roughly the size of a human toddler, as you can see in the images below (that’s me sitting with her, and I am a human adult ?).

She has a handmade wire armature inside that supports her and makes her fingers, tail and neck bendy. Her arms and legs are attached with large buttons so they can swing. All together, she’s ultra pose-able and if you balance her carefully on 2 legs, using her tail like a tripod, she can stand up straight. Headstands are easy!

Lunar took me forever to design because I really wanted to make the best amigurumi I could possibly squeeze out of my brain, but it turned out I didn’t have the skills to make the shapes I wanted, so it took a huge learning curve to figure things out. I started off with her hands because I knew I wanted to add a certain amount of detail while keeping them as small as possible, so I decided to make them first and then make all the other parts to the scale of her hands. I moved on to her feet, arms and legs next

Then it was time to make her head and facial features… ???? Cue countless trials of making noses , muzzles and heads!!! I really struggled with these pieces because I wanted the nose to have nostrils and the mouth to be open, but I also wanted to minimize hand sewing for aesthetic purposes, so it had to all be crocheted in one piece. What an impossible nightmare! There were many nights of wanting to give up and going to bed crying ? During this phase, I noticed that one of the muzzles almost fitted me like a mask, so due to popular demand, I went off on a tangent and designed my Sundog the Tiger face mask followed by a set of matching ears! That side project helped me to understand more about the jaw shapes and since completing Lunar, I’ve designed two more amigurmis with nostrils and open mouths (see sneak peeks of those two coming projects on my Instagram)!

As if it wasn’t hard enough to get the shapes right, they also had to match the scale of the hands and limbs that I’d started with!! The first few heads turned out too large and I was already on my smallest hook for the yarn I was using, so I couldn’t scale down, I had to redesign! See the head’s evolution below, including two cases where I pinned discarded features together (plus a Sundog the Tiger mask) to mock-up a baby calf and a tiger’s face just for fun.

Once I finally got the head right, it was time to make Lunar’s tail. I’ve always been scared of fur yarn from bad experiences with it, but Lunar’s tail ended up being the easiest part to design! With the method I’ll show you in the pattern, crocheting with fur yarn can be easy and stress-free! With the wire inside, Lunar’s tail can almost support its entire weight, allowing for fun pose-ability!

After the tail, the rest was pretty straightforward until I got to assembly! I had a rough idea of how to make her articulated but I didn’t know if it would work until the end! I tinkered with some ball joint ideas for her neck but they didn’t work out on such a large scale so I opted for plain wire and that worked fine to at least enable her neck to bend enough for her to stand on all fours or on two legs. The rest of her body parts took a bit of trial and error but you can imagine my relief and excitement when she finally went together and could MOVE!

When she was finally assembled and finished, I was so tired and fed up that I didn’t even want to see her ? But after a rest it settled in that I’d finally conquered this crazy project and she had turned out pretty cute! Then the pattern was off to the testers for several months and I have been bouncing off the walls with excitement to show you how she looks and get this CAL started!! Finally, she is revealed today and the CAL starts in a few weeks! Thanks for following my journey, now it’s your turn to join the adventure and make your own crazy lemur! Luckily I’ve already done the hard parts so all you have to do is follow the pattern and HAVE FUN!! Click here to join.

As you can see, I had way too much fun posing Lunar, so here are a kajjillion more just-for-fun pics to browse. Feel free to Pin, share and repost your favorites!

Thanks for visiting, I hope you like Lunar (let me know!!!) and I hope to see in you in the CAL!!
xxx
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