Here’s a plush that I completed last week, Gatomon! It won the vote against Renamon, but only just by a few votes.

During the first week of March, my sister had come to visit with her two kids; it had been fairly busy at our house, and not a lot of crocheting was being done at the time. I had this one completed on the Monday, but I didn’t have a lot of time to put this post together; mainly, I hadn’t been able to photograph the final pictures until now.

As usual, this plush started off running smooth, right up until the details were being made.

The base of the head, body, and legs have become staple shapes that I tend to crochet frequently; I call the head shape the “anime bean head”, and the leg shape the “felix the cat legs”. After several iterations of these two shapes, through various projects, I think I have finally boiled them down to a good formula. Compared to my pikachu, Gatomon’s face is streamlined and has the muzzle poking out in just the right spot. I also see a vast improvement in my ability to embroider and paint on details.

The leg shapes are also more streamlined in that the feet look more solidly attached at the ankle joint. I think I’m learning that these shapes do not require a decrease at the heel to achieve the 90 degree angle; instead, the shapes can be made as the rounds continue to increase.

For the tail, I tried an experiment, where the “stripes” were made with a few long rows twisted into a spiral of alternating colours. I figured that in some parts of the show depicts the tail stripes as a spiral, so I’d do that instead. I think the tail looks alright, but maybe a series of stripes made from short rows would work well all the same.

The paws had caused me to redo a lot of the pieces, because the sizing was hard to gauge. The base arms were originally too small and short, the paw base was weirdly portioned in the fingers, and the claws were too short in the first run. Once these pieces were remade, they came out rather large, but I think that’s a better outcome than if they came out too small. The hands are pretty iconic on Gatomon.

Finally, I got to my favourite part, the tail ring. I google searched the glyphs to put onto the ring, and apparently they represent the katakana for “digital monster” (as “de ji ta ru mo n su ta a”). I had fun trying to embroider the glyphs in, but the spacing had me redoing this part as well. The second time around, I folded the piece in 3 parts so that I knew I had to fit 3 characters per section. I put the ring on like a doughnut, to allow it to stay in one spot.

Once everything was assembled together, the final result turned out like this:

Thanks for reading!

P.S. I made a deposit for a baby bird! The little guy is currently a fuzzy nugget, and I am excited to see him grow up and eventually take him home. I foresee myself becoming a lot busier this year, but I’m determined to keep up!