As far as I can tell, most people who knit Mochimochi Land toys do so because everybody loves toys (at least in my fantasy world they do!) and they’re quick and inexpensive projects to make. But sometimes I hear from people who have really interesting stories behind their desire to knit a toy. I recently heard from a woman named Tunie who lives in Australia. She had a very special reason to make some Baby Gators (or in her case, some Baby Crocodiles)! Here’s her story:

My husband is a volunteer aviation safety/maintenance teacher for sport aviation and last July was flying over the Kakadu National Park where there are salt water crocs. Some of his students in the Darwin area told him they carry licensed firearms because if you walk away from a forced landing near the crocs, you won’t stay alive long unless you have a gun. YIKES!

As he was flying over the park, our engine failed (due to a broken rocker arm, which is very rare) and he was able to land the plane without injuries to any of the four on board. They barely made it to a small airstrip in Jabiru where they had to spend several days taking the wings off and making cradles to put it in a large cargo container for the trip back to our hangar in the southwest.

Wow, right? To commemorate her husband Fred’s bravery and the team’s successful avoidance of dangerous crocs, Tunie wanted to make them all some toothy knitted crocs from the Baby Gators pattern in Knitting Mochimochi. (The pattern is also available for free on my blog):

For the larger one, she doubled the yarn and used larger needles. Smart!

And here are the passengers on that flight, each with their own new little friend.

Looks like they far prefer the smallish soft version over the real things that they might have encountered!

I love Tunie’s story, and I bet there are other toy knitters out there with awesome stories that I don’t know about at all. If you have a Mochimochi toy with an interesting background, please share it with all of us by adding your photos to the Mochimochi Friends Flickr group! You can also always email me about it at info [at] mochimochiland [dot] com.