Tall Tales: More Amigurumi Experiments

Since my last post I improved the foot design and made a few tweaks to the pattern. First, I did follow up on the idea from last week of using the invisible-decrease stitch to try to reduce the small gaps and holes where the head curves toward the neck. I also modified the feet slightly, previously I was concerned they were slanting toward the toe, so I figured I would try to heighten the "heel" a bit. To do that I essentially did an extra round below where the "flap" for the top of the foot starts, so then when I crochet back along the side of the flap it joins in to the back part of the foot lower down. Overall it worked out great, when my newest version seemed kind of rock-solid stable I figured there must be some other disaster waiting, but it seems like it was just a success.

One thing I did notice was that the new one seemed to be a little shorter than the previous iteration, but I wasn't sure if that was because I skipped a round on the legs while I was experimenting or if I needed to modify the pattern to account for the changes I implemented.

So I figured I would do another one, but also make a few more tweaks, such trying a three-down-to-one invisible decrease for the "chin" area. I had also noticed some asymmetries on the previous one, but I wasn't sure if they were mistakes or if the pattern wasn't doing enough to take into account the "twist" caused by the continuous-rounds amigurumi style, so I wanted to work on that. The new version was mostly a success, and just as stable, but I did notice at least one area where the stitch-counts in the pattern didn't line up, so it was a little aggravating to realize I still need to do a few more small adjustments. (And the height issues with the previous one seems like it happened in implementation rather than at the pattern level, since I was theoretically following the same pattern for the legs and feet but this one turned out taller).

In a comment on the previous post @flowertron suggested trying different leg lengths, and I thought that would be a good idea. I decided to go a little extreme with it, and make a really tall one with longer arms and torso as well. I still had some symmetry issues on this attempt, I think I may have overcompensated and "fixed" things enough that it ended up twisted in the other direction. Also I made a mistake on my first attempt at the second leg and had to unravel a lot of it, so I lost count of the rounds and had to just try to match lengths with the other one (I'm not sure if I got it right or if I'm off by one). Even with the issues though, it is stable enough to stand on its own! It's a little more delicate than the small ones but I think it's kind of amazing that it works at all.

I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do next, but here are some things I'm pondering:

• I'd like to figure out if I can improve the arm and leg joins, right now the way I'm doing it leaves a small slit. It's not a huge issue because they're hidden unless you're looking for them, but I'd be happier if the problem didn't exist at all.
• Once I get all the mistakes worked out of the pattern I'd like to do one with a lot of process shots so I can post a full pattern and tutorial.
• I want to try working in some color changes and other cosmetic elements to see if I can make some nice characters.
• It might be worth exploring tweaks to the pattern so the body shape reads more feminine for use with female characters, and possible other body variations.