Mochimochi Friends: Keitha’s Monster Boo

Sometimes a knitter goes so above and beyond with a project, they deserve to be called a hero. Keitha Brannick certainly earns the distinction with this colorful colony of Boos! Then she went REALLY big and knitted an enormous Boo for her front door to delight the neighborhood with. He’s a full 15″ tall with a 29″ wingspan! She had some yarn left over, so she also improvised a giant purple spider, as you do.

I asked Keitha if she would share a bit about how she made her big Boo. Here’s what she had to say:

It was very easy to scale him up. I didn’t have a specific size in mind, just big. I found a bulky yarn that called for size 15 needles. It took three 3.5oz/43 yd skeins with just a little left over yarn. I followed your pattern except that I knit him flat, since I didn’t have size 15 double points, and mattress stitched the pieces together. I sewed the legs into the body as I stitched the body closed.

I wanted a bright surprise when his wings opened so I knit 2 sets of the modified wings, one navy and one purple. I couldn’t find a bulky yarn in the bright purple so I used 4 strands of worsted weight acrylic yarn with the size 15 needles. The smaller yarn made the purple wings slightly smaller than the navy bulky which made a nice edging around the inner wings when I stitched them together. When Big Boo is hanging by his feet his wings drooped so I used thin craft wire to keep them spread out. I bent the wire to follow the curves on the bottom of the wings (which is on top when Boo is up-side-down), and slipped it through the stitches where the curves change direction.

I knit his fangs out of shiny white yarn I had from other projects and stitched them on. I found large crystals meant for jewelry that sparkled purple and white to use for his eyes. I sewed buttons where I wanted the eyes and glued the crystals to the buttons. I was afraid the crystals wouldn’t hold well glued to the yarn but with the right glue they might have been fine. Boo won’t be used as a toy so it’s not as critical to watch all his parts!

Thank you, Keitha, for sharing all about your process!

If you’re inspired to emulate Keitha’s creative genius, you may want to get started now: find the Boo pattern in my shop and on Ravelry. And of course, Keitha gets a $25 credit to the Mochimochi Shop for her brilliance! (Keep tagging your projects with #mochimochiland and the same could happen to you!)