Eskimo Amigurumi

by Kelly

Christmas is funny. So many people stress the importance of 'decommercializing'  the holiday, yet we are continually bombarded by news stories about the importance of stimulating the economy, especially at this 'critical' time of the year.  I can hardly sleep at night for the terrible images in my mind of raggedly clad CEO's of major retail conglomerates selling matches on street corners, trying to raise the funds necessary to stay open for another financial quarter.

Well, my mom doesn't feel that commercializing Christmas is a bad thing. She has always been a big believer in cash for Christmas. To her mind, it's the one present that never disappoints.

Also, she does what I think of as a 'reverse guilt trip', by telling my husband and I that she doesn't need anything for Christmas because we do so much for her throughout the year. She likes 'simple gifts'  because she 'hates to be a bother'.

And so my mom is hard to shop for, because no matter what I buy for her, I am always plagued by doubt. I have this nagging feeling that a shoebox stuffed with the green stuff would have made her happier, especially if the only 'trouble' that I took with her gift was to take care that the numbers on the bills were non-sequential. Not that I've ever felt that my mother was just gathering resources so that she could flee the country. Well, almost never.

So when a  little birdie told me that my Mom wanted a couple of my amigurumi figures for Christmas, I was relieved. So I dug out one of my poor, unwanted bears, happy to be giving the little guy a better home than a plastic bag in my closet. I also made her this little Eskimo.

Now, I know that some might think that this Eskimo isn't especially politically correct, but I swear I was only trying to make him look like he's squinting into the blinding sunlight reflecting off a glacier. And this was my first amigurumi that I made from my own pattern, so I think I deserve credit that it's not a shapeless lump of fun fur.

Anyway, I have a vague childhood memory of owning a  Weeble that looked like an Eskimo that had this same expression on it's face, although a prolonged Internet search failed to turn anything up.

Does anyone else remember Weebles? And after viewing the commercial in the link above, I'd like to say that I had no idea there was so much Weeble swag available. I counted myself lucky to have a slightly cracked Weeble treehouse. Of course, having seen what that thing goes for on Amazon.com , I'd still count myself lucky to have one.