By day, Brenda K. B. Anderson makes mascots – their costumes, at least – and yes, it’s as cool as it sounds. Her work has been used by professional sports teams and touring shows like Sesame Street Live. By night, she designs knit and crochet patterns. Occasionally, her creative outlets overlap.
That was the case with Mister Whistle, a sly-faced softie featured in Interweave Crochet Home. From his pinstriped pants to his handlebar mustache, Mister Whistle is an old-fashioned character with lots of charm. Brenda picked our Vintage yarn for the project – using a range of colors to add playful details.
How did you come up with this design?
I find it really freeing to design creatures that aren’t supposed to be anything in particular – you don’t have to be limited by reality! Often times I will think about a particular expression, mood, or feeling, and come up with a creature based on those thoughts. With Mister Whistle, I wanted to make a creature that looks like it is pretending to be innocent, implying that just the opposite is true.
Why did you choose this yarn?
I love using Berroco Vintage for Amigurumi – it is easy care and it looks so nice crocheted at a tight gauge. I especially love the color palette! Mister Whistle really needed to have a skin tone that was a classy blue – something saturated enough, but not a color straight out of the rainbow, a grown-up color to balance his silly silhouette.
Any funny crochet stories?
My mom taught my sister and I how to crochet when we were very young. I suspect she was trying to keep us out of trouble. We would spend hours racing each other to see who could make their crochet chain reach to other side of the living room first.
If you could make something for anyone in the world it would be…?
I’d really like to finish knitting my husband the pair of socks that I started for him over two years ago! Is that super-lame? It’s just that they’ve been pushed aside so I can work on so many other projects and I’m starting to feel really guilty!
Do you have a cool design you want to share? Or did you recently finish a project with Berroco yarn? You can email Ashley: apalumbo@berroco.com or post it to the Berroco Lovers forum in Ravelry.