More anomalocaris!

Ok, the anomalocaris is done!

I had a lot of fun making this. The exciting bit is making the "segmented" effect on the body. The body is knit as a tube in the round, then a few rows are knit flat to make a flap, before casting off these stitches, continuing in the round and picking up an equal number of stitches at the beginning of the flap.
The number of fins (and the sewing required) is a little intimidating, and they all need to be placed quite precisely, so that they hold down the side "segment" flaps, as well as overlapping slightly. Fortunately this turned out not to be as time-consuming as I thought, and I'm very happy with how well this turned out.
I'm not totally convinced by the eyes -- they're knit as little hemispheres and lightly stuffed, to give them a bit of a boggle-eyed effect. I think anomalocaris's eyes were raised, possibly even extended on stalks, so this is fairly realistic, but I don't think it looks good here. Possibly the sharp contrast in colour, when the rest of the body is so uniform, is what makes this look so out of place.

Still, I'm very happy with my new anomalocaris! There are more pictures here, including more from the anomalocaris's expedition into Edinburgh's recent snow.

Anomalocaris

Recently I've been watching David Attenborough's new series, First Life. It's an amazing series about some of the earliest known creatures on the planet, reconstructing some of the earliest developments which made life as we know it possible.
This is full of all kinds of weird and wonderful creatures, one of my favouries being the Anomalocaris. It's one of the first known predators, using a circular mouth and long claw-like limbs to hunt, a system of fins to swim freely and (probably) surprisingly complex compound eyes.
I think what really fascinates me about these creatures, though, is that they were pioneers, just working out which body arrangements would work, developing new senses and entirely new strategies for living. That's perhaps romanticising it a bit, especially since this is happening on evolutionary timescales.

So the, plan is to knit an anomalocarid. The basic structure will be a tubular body , a system of fins on each side, claws and eyes on the front and tail fins on the back. The interesting part will be getting the segmented structure -- I'm planning to cast off and pick up a few rows earlier to leave an overlapping flap for each segment. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out!

Hugh.