Your epidermis is showing.

The mouse body is finished and, as I was told I had to name him, christened Graham, and now I'm going to put him in a drawer and never look at him again. No, that probably isn't true, but I have to say that finishing him off gave me a world of trouble. I've always been a bad finisher (cf. backlogue of sock projects) and even when I do come to the end of a project, I tend to rush with the details (cf. failure to proofread papers). I got the head on the body all right, if not smoothly, and the ears turned out okay, but the limbs; oh, god, the limbs.

The pattern directions were simple and straightforward: thread yarn through one arm, pass it through the body, thread through other arm, repeat until secure. I, um, had to improvise with stuffing, and used deconstructed cotton balls instead, and the yarn needle just did not pass through the cotton. I threaded it between the knitting and the cotton instead, which made the arms hang a little funny, and, at any rate, they weren't secure enough for my taste, so I secured them to the body at the shoulder sockets with a few more stitches. The mouse looks like he's about to be crucified, but at that point, I figured I could fix it with the sweater. The mouse legs had the same basic instructions, but I, having learned nothing from the arms, managed to attach the right leg crookedly. I tried to snip it off so I could reattach, but it was impossible to figure out what could safely be snipped without damaging the mouse body, so I did some triage and gave it up for lost. Maybe I'll make him the crutch I linked to the other day and he can hobble around like Tiny Tim.

The sweater, which, as I have noted previously, was my favorite part of the pattern pre-knitting, but, as you may have gathered by now, that didn't go very smoothly either. I used some leftover self-striping sock yarn (DGB Confetti from doublediamondknits.com in gray, light blue, and navy) and made each sweater half. I wasn't happy with the way the colors knit up--since the garment is so small, the stripes really just look like huge blocks of color, and the light blue and gray are very similar--and I was even less happy with the size. The pattern indicated, somewhat vaguely, that the sweater could be made up and then put on the mouse, but looking at the mouse's giant head and childbearing hips, I realized there was no way that was going to happen. Then it turned out that the sweater was too small around the neck to even be sewn on. I tried again with larger needles in cotton Knitpicks Shine and modified the pattern a bit...and, after panicking and making the neck too small, that doesn't work either. I need to think it through again...but not any time soon. Sorry, Graham.

So, in the end, I have a crippled, naked mouse with a Messiah complex.

Never (again) the twain shall meet: