Apart from that, this week I was also fully into… Linsanity!! Somehow, even with all the tech problems, I still managed to watch all the videos of Jeremy Lin’s game-winning streak on Youtube. I was tempted to recommend Linsanity for this week’s recommendation, but pulled back because I’m hardly an expert on the NBA – everything I learned about basketball I learned from Slam Dunk. I may not feel confident discussing basketball, but everyone is getting behind his inspirational story, and the flood of feel-good vibes is leading me to recommend a pretty famous self-help book: Tuesdays with Morrie.

Tuesdays With Morrie
(2002, Mitch Albom)

You may already have heard of this book – it was a massive bestseller back in the day, and a friend of mine recommended it to me. It’s one of those books that isn’t hard to read, is accessible, and most of all, is such a quick and uplifting read that you absolutely cannot say no to it.

Plot
Tuesdays With Morrie is a non-fiction book written by Mitch Albom, a former sports journalist who has fond memories of one of his university professors, the titular Morrie. Mitch’s life and career was just coasting along when he heard that his former professor was in the grips of a terminal illness, and only had a few months to live. Morrie taught Mitch (and many other students) a lot about life when he was younger, so he decides to visit Morrie regularly in his last month, to document the man’s ideas, beliefs and teachings. What resulted from these trips was the best-selling, life-affirming, “self-help” book Tuesdays With Morrie.

Why I Recommend this Book
I hesitate to call this book a “self-help” book, because while I like self-help books, this one goes a little bit further than this. It hasn’t got any bullet-point checklists, any motivational mantras or any “life plans”. It is written in the simple manner of a story, where the writer (Mitch Albom) explains his brief-but-memorable history with Morrie, discovers years later that his professor dying of a terminal illness, and then goes off to chat with Morrie every Tuesday until his death. That’s it. It’s not written in a way that’s meant to be bombastic or emotional. It’s simply the words of a very wise man, who has lived a great life and inspired many people.

It’s also not a particularly long book, which can only be a good thing. These days, if you recommend a “great and inspiring” book to someone and it happens to be more than an inch thick, people will sigh and look like they’re on the verge of being hit on the head with the likes of War and Peace. It seems that people want inspiring things to read, but don’t want to work too hard to absorb those words of wisdom, even though 30 years ago they may have wanted to. It seems that a few things have changed since then, but what hasn’t changed is that everyone still wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to die. Well, reading Tuesdays With Morrie won’t kill you or even kill much of your time, but it may certainly offer a few pearls of wisdom, if not an inspirational story along the lines of Linsanity.

There’s not much more that I can say about this book, except for an anecdote from a few years back. An acquaintance of mine once asked me for a book recommendaton, saying that she wanted to read something “meaningful”. I asked her to be specific, and she said “no fiction”. I pressed her on her interests, and she said she didn’t want to read anything about history, religion, spirituality, sociology, psychology, science, philosophy, anthropology, or anything that ends with a -logy. But, she wanted to read something “meaningful”. Well, guess what I recommended? Tuesdays With Morrie is a book that manages to fill that tiny void beautifully.

This week, I get to put up another free crochet pattern, adding to my budding pattern collection which so far includes the Red Angry Bird and the White Angry Bird. It’s a fan-favourite, the Blue and White Totoros from the seminal Studio Ghibli animations My Neighbour Totoro. If you’re a Hayao Miyazaki fan, you’ll know and love these furry critters. I also have the “large” grey Totoro pattern, but I’ll be putting that up 2 weeks later, on the 25th Feb.

My Neighbour Totoro, with Mei and Satsuki, the heroines.

These crochet patterns are quite small, and you can see the size of the Totoros in relation to my hand. The reason why they’re so small is because I don’t want to crochet large amigurumis, since they take up a lot of time. Since the giant grey Totoro is 38 stitches at its widest point, it makes sense that the smaller Totoros are… small. Either way, these won’t take long to do!

Blue and White Totoro Pattern

Here’s a list of what I used to make this crochet. It’s not a definite list, so feel free to use whatever you have, as long as it’s appropriate. It’s crocheted in the round, like most amigurumi, so only basic crochet skills are required.

NB. This pattern is created by me, so please give a link back to me if you want to use it or if you want to sell your crochet. Please give credit where it’s due. I should also that I don’t own the copyright to these characters – obviously Studio Ghibli does.

• White, black and blue 8 ply yarn
• 4mm crochet hook
• Two pairs of 3mm black safety eyes – 6060 from Etsy is a good place to buy these
• Large sewing needle, to sew the bits and pieces together

Crochet Abbreviations

Here are a list of the abbreviations I use, and what they mean. These are pretty standard, so if you know how to crochet, this won’t be hard to decipher:

• ch – chain
• sc – single chain
• dec – decrease
• * – beginning/end of a repeating part of the pattern

White Totoro Pattern

White Totoro Body (Make 1, white)

Rnd 1 – Ch 2, 6 sc in 2nd chain away from hook (Magic Ring method)
Rnd 2 – *2 sc in next stitch*, repeat 6 times (12 stitches)
Rnd 3-4 – sc (12 stitches)
Rnd 5 – *2 sc in next stitch, 3 sc*, repeat 3 times (15 stitches)
Rnd 6-9 – sc (15 stitches)

Stuff the body now, and add 3 mm safety eyes
Rnd 10 – *dec 1, 3 sc*, repeat 3 times (12 stitches)
Rnd 11 – *dec 1 through BACK loops only*, repeat 6 times (6 stitches)

Bind off, and using a sewing needle, sew a few white yarn stitches around the safety eyes.

White Totoro Ears (Make 2, white)

Rnd 1 – Ch 5
Rnd 2 – sc, then ch 1
Rnd 3 – sc

Bind off, then using a sewing needle, sew the longer edges together to make a thin tube.Sew one end together, then sew the other end to the top of the Totoro, to make the long thin ears.

White Totoro Tail (Make 1, white)

Ch 2, 4 sc (Magic Ring method) and then sew onto the Totoro’s butt area.
Done right, this will help prop upBaby Totoro

Blue Totoro Pattern

Blue Totoro Body (Make 1, blue)

Rnd 1 – Ch 2, 6 sc in 2nd chain away from hook (Magic Ring method)
Rnd 2 – *2 sc in next stitch*, repeat 6 times (12 stitches)
Rnd 3 – *2 sc in next stitch, sc 1*, repeat 6 times (18 stitches)
Rnd 4 – 6 – sc (18 stitches)
Rnd 7 – *2 sc in next stitch, sc 5*, repeat 3 times (21 stitches)
Rnd 8 – *2 sc in next stitch, sc 6*, repeat 3 times (24 stitches)
Rnd 9 – 13 – sc (24 stitches)

Stuff the body now, and add 3 mm safety eyes
Rnd 14 – *dec 1 in back loops ONLY*, repeat 12 times (12 stitches)
Rnd 15 – *dec 1*, repeat 6 times (6 stitches)

Bind off, and thread the yarn through the Totoro. Using a sewing needle, sew a few white yarn stitches around the safety eyes. Then using black yarn, sew the nose on.

Belly (Make 1, white)

Rnd 1 – Ch 2, 6 sc in 2nd chain away from hook (Magic Ring method)
Rnd 2 – *2 sc in next stitch*, repeat 6 times (12 stitches)
Rnd 3 – *2 sc in next stitch, sc 1*, repeat 6 times (18 stitches)
Rnd 4 – *2 sc in next stitch, sc 2*, repeat 6 times (24 stitches)

Bind off, and sew the white belly onto the bottom front of the Totoro. Using blue yarn, sew three “arrows” on its chest.

Blue Totoro Arms, Ears and Tail (Make 5, blue)

Rnd 1 – Ch 2, 4 sc in 2nd chain away from hook (Magic Ring method)
Rnd 2 – *2 sc in next stitch, sc 1*, repeat 2 times (6 stitches)
Rnd 3 – 6 – sc (6 stitches)
** For the arms, sc for two extra rows **

Bind off, and stuff with a small bit of stuffing. Sew the arms, ears and tail onto the proper places of the Totoro.

And Viola! Here you have the two small Totoros, next to my hand to show their sizes.

The other piece of news is… I finally got the Store section up! It’s an Amazon Store at the moment, mostly for American/Canadian buyers; but for the International people, I’m also setting up a Book Depository Store, since that online store has Free International Shipping! The setup process is more complex than Amazon’s, so hopefully I’ll get that store up in the next few weeks.

Zashiki Onna (manga)
(1993, Mochizuki Minetaro)

This week I’m recommending a one-shot manga called Zashiki Onna, which is a horror manga that is light on gore but heavy on the creepiness. Against all that is holy, I am linking to a pirated manga site, because sadly it’s the only way to read this manga in english (for now anyway).

This short, 1-volume horror manga is created by Mochizuki Minetaro, the same guy who created Dragon Head. Those reading manga in the early days of TOKYOPOP may remember this dark story about people trapped in a long dark tunnel, victims of what appears to have been an earthquake. This is an earlier work from him, written in a time where hardly anyone has heard of “stalking”. Perhaps that’s why it’s rather obscure – apart from the short length, it’s also a fairly old manga. But it’s a good one.

Plot
Hiroshi Mori is a typical young man in college – living in a cheap rental apartment and fantasising about a girl he likes. All was fine, until one night when he hears a persistent banging on his neighbour’s door. He pokes his head outside to see what’s going on, which was a very bad move – it was a tall, creepy woman with long black hair, wearing a trenchcoat and carrying old shopping bags. She insists that she was looking for his neighbour, but he claims to know nothing and leaves. The next night she is back again, and it slowly becomes clear that she has shifted her attention from his neighbour… to him.

Why I Recommend this Manga
It’s short, and it’s creepy. If you like your horror weird and spooky, as opposed to gross and gore-splattered, this is the manga for you. It depends on what you find creepy, and in my case, gore doesn’t scare me at all – and sadly (for me), gore is the more common approach to horror in Japanese manga. Just look at my attitude to typical (and prolific) Japanese horror masters: Junji Ito of Uzumaki fame, and Kazuo Umezu of Drifting Classroom. These two manga artists are horror staples who have been around for decades, but their style largely relies on spilling blood, and distorted people doing black-shadows-on-typical-”horror”-face, something I can’t stand. Modern horror stories tend to use a cutesy artstyle, which doesn’t sit well with me either. Which is why Zashiki Onna is such a “pleasant” surprise – it’s style is ugly-realistic, but with dramatic lighting that’s entirely suited to the storyline. I feel safe recommending this to any kind of horror fan, as opposed to just manga-reading horror fans. That says a LOT about this story.

Okay, stalking stories have been around for yoinks, but because of the art style and the straight-forward story-teling, this manga retains a lot of its power. Not that readers understood that this was a “stalker” story when this story first came out. Most readers back in 1993 probably knew nothing about stalkers, and so were probably quite freaked out by what they might have originally thought was just some over-zealous admirer. Even the title, Zashiki Onna, reflects what the true form of the female stalker might have been. You see, this manga marries two of the most enduring horror-supernatural tropes of Japanese culture – a creature called the Zashiki-Warashi, and a famous Japanese ghost story written in 1825 called Yotsuya Kaidan. Without understanding these two cultural references, most readers these days may just think that this is just a “typical stalker story”, and that the stalker was a human. Not so.

In Japanese mythology, a Zashiki-Warashi is a creature who appears in the form of a young child, who often lives in big houses with a long history. These creatures typically bring great wealth to the household, which makes it seem benign… but not really. If a Zashiki-Warashi should leave your house (and they can leave on a whim), then disaster will strike and your household wil lose all the wealth it’s acculmulated. So it’s a creature that is more like a double-edged sword – and the reference to Zashiki in the title of the story may hint that the stalker is a modern, twisted form of the Zashiki-Warashi.

The other reference – that of 19th-Century ghost story Yotsuya Kaidan – is a much more famous reference, due to it having influenced the storyline of famed J-Horror movie The Ring. When The Ring first came out, people waxed lyrical about the story… except people who are already familiar with Yotsuya Kaidan. Even though Yotsuya Kaidan is about a vengeful female ghost called Oiwa who comes back to relentlessly haunt her evil Samurai ex-husband, it’s really about how the re-telling of a story can give it great power. Most people miss the true story of Yotsuya Kaidan, which is about it’s author researching the history of Oiwa legends, and discovering all the various versions of it is giving form to this demonic creaure called Oiwa. Which sounds like the storyline of the movie Candyman, but variations of this idea has been around for centuries. The Ring simply represents a modernised re-telling of it.

All-in-all, if you’re armed with knowledge of these two cultural facts, it may make Zashiki Onna a more interesting read. It’ll certainly help explain the ending, which may confuse some people who don’t realise that the title alone explains that the stalker isn’t human to begin with. Which then makes it not a “stalker story”, but a “ghost story”. And guess what? It’s more successful that way.

I also just finished writing my short story for the Bento comics anthology, titled . The anthology has a Peter Pan theme, and the Pickwicks are the neighbours of Wendy Darling and her family. The story isn’t due until March 15th, in time for release at TCAF, a comics convention in Toronto held on May 5-6th each year, so you may not see it in print until then. It’s just as well – I’m trying something new with this story, so you’ll all see it online sometime after the 15th March.

Today, I get to show you something Nintendo-related I crocheted a while ago – Kirby.

The star of his own Nintendo games, this Kirby is from a free pattern at iceblueberries’ blog, and I added 8mm safety eyes to him instead of crocheting the eyes. Amazingly, this seemed to suit Kirby a great deal, and he looks a dead ringer for the “real” McCoy!

Step 1: Crochet Kirby's body. This is only 30 stitches at its widest point, so it was done in no time.

Step 2: Added 8mm safety eyes, instead of crocheting the eyes. The eyes were a perfect fit for this size!

Step 3: Sew his little mouth, and give him rosy red cheeks!

Step 4: Crochet his hands and feet, and sew them onto his body. Straight-forward.

And here we have, THREE Kirbys…

I also noticed that I haven’t made a Recommendation for a while, so I’m recommending a no-brainer manga-but-not-quite today: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (manga)
(1982-1994, Hayao Miyazaki)

If you’re familiar with the work of Studio Ghibli, then you probably know that Nauscaa of the Valley of the Wind was the studio’s first full-length animated movie (a big success for the time). What many may not know is that the director of the film, Hayao Miyazaki, actually started the story as a serialised manga, and continued to write/draw the manga over a period of 12 years, long after the animated film was finished and screened. The end result is two separate stories that start the same, are different lengths, and also end vastly differently. Needless to say, due to the length of the manga, the themes tackled in it are alot more complex than it was in the animated film.

Plot
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is set in a post-apocalyptic world, where massive pollution has rendered much of the air poisonous to humans, and giant insects ruled the world. What’s left of humanity huddle together in tiny pockets, constantly at war with each other and with the denizens of the insect world. Much of this world is covered by a gigantic, poisonous forest known as the Sea of Corruption, where much of the giant insects live, but where the humans need to don gas masks to survive.

In this setting lives the main character Nausicaa, who is the princess of a small coastal kingdom called the Valley of the Wind. The sea air protects this little hamlet from the poisonous air, but trouble comes when an aircraft full of refugees escaping from the powerful kingdom of Torumekia crashes near the Valley. The aircraft was carrying precious cargo – a stone that can activate a powerful biotech monster that the Torumekians were planning to use (possibly against their arch-enemies, the Doroks). When the stone comes into Nausicaa’s posession, she becomes drawn into the battle between the Torumekians and the Doroks, under the command of Princess Kushana of Torumekia.

Why I Recommend this Manga
Well, it’s Hayao Miyazaki’s work. What more can I say? The man has crafted a complex eco-fable here, a highly-enjoyable piece of science fiction irregardless of which side of the global-warming fence you’re from. Perhaps the biggest joy for me was to read more about the characters I knew as a child from the animated film, and appreciate how Miyazaki was able to carve two different-but-similar stories from the same mould, each being self-contained and with a satisfactory ending. For that reason, I suggest watching the 2-hour animated film first, then reading the manga. The manga fleshes out fully what the animated film cannot, due to time constraints.

Apart from the complex story, the art is also worth a big mention. Animators always make interesting manga artist, probably because their methodology of story-telling comes from a slightly different place from those who only draw manga. I find the sequential art of animators simultaneously more complex and simple than that of manga artists. By that, I mean that while their character and world designs tend to be more simple, the way they place their characters and the details they place in their environment tend to be more complex. Miyazaki’s work is a perfect example of this.

If you’re familiar with his style, then you’ll know the man’s not particularly great at drawing faces. He has a simple style that is adequate for distinguishing different people, but that’s about it. Where he truly excels, is in his backgrounds, which are present in nearly every panel. Animators-turned-manga-artists almost never do the “character floating in a void” thing that some manga artists do. There’s also the incredible detail on the planes, the machines, the dress, the flora and giant insects that inhabit this fantasy world. The characters don’t have an awful lot of complex clothing designs on them, but they’re designed in a way that lets you know, at a glance, what faction they’re from. Either way, I have no complaints about his art.

His story-telling is also worth mentioning, since there is so much stuff happening on each page that it hardly feels like a Japanese manga. Infact, his style seems more similar to European styles, where the cinematic quality is in the detail of the individual panels, not so much in the panel-to-panel transitions. This gives the feeling of an extremely-compressed story, which may take some time to get used to. While I wouldn’t do this kind of story-telling myself, I must mention that it’s not at all a bad thing, because it’s consistent. Miyazaki is a consistent story-teller, and while things may get confusing in action sequences, there’s never any mistake about where he’s heading with the story.

All-in-all, there isn’t much more praise I can heap on Hayao Miyazaki, whether his work is in film or on the page. It’s just a matter of find his work to read, in a form that does justice to the details in his artwork. My Nausicaa books is printed in A5 format, which is smaller than I recommend. This work was originally printed in A4 format, which I believe is the best format to read it in. If possible, I suggest you find the bigger size.

In other news, I get to show you my Shark amigurumi, shown here chewing happily on some unlucky Australian surfer (with tasteful amounts of blood).

This pattern is originally from here, and I altered the original to make the shark a bit bigger. So it can fit a surfboard and surfer in its mouth, ofcourse!

Step 1: Crochet the top half of the shark in grey, as with all amigurumi

Step 2: Crochet the bottom half of the shark in white, then sew the 2 hemispheres together, leaving a space for the mouth.

Step 3: Crochet the fins and tail, and sew it onto the shark. I used size 14mm safety eyes (huge).

Step 4: Crochet the legs and surfboard, then stick them in the shark's mouth while sewing the shark's mouth together. Due to the stuffing inside, this took a while

And here we have the final Shark, from a few more angles to capture the bloody moment:

Ah… here we be.

So I proudly present to you the trailer for the first single off the new album project Twisted Tales… Dorothy. It’s a subversive take on the tale of Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy discovers that her magic shoes will no longer return her home, as she is a cosmonaut lost in space in this story.

Twisted Tales is an international collaboration between Yunyu, myself ( flying my New York Times #1 bestseller Manga Artist flag) and awesome animation collective The Commonist.

It is an exciting Music, Manga and Animation album that asks the question of what happens when Fairy Tales come to live in our modern universe.

The music video for Dorothy will be released at the end of this month. My own art contribution to the single will also be online in a few week’s time. Meanwhile, enjoy the Dorothy Teaser Trailer!

Today I’ll be showing you some art I did a while ago, for a Latin-American music CD. The font was already chosen before I started, so I decided to go with something bright and colourful. Using a brush pen was definitely the right choice for this, since I don’t think a G-pen (with its fine lines) would have stood out amongst the bright colours.

Here’s the original computer files, click for a better look:

Happy 2012!!

So this week, I leave you with the last of my felt cakes – the last one I had in the line of kits I bought. It’s the Fruit Custard Tart!

Step 1: Here's the last kit I had in the series for felt cakes. I think this was meant to be a mobile phone charm.

Step 2: Take everything out, check that it's all there. Usually I have no complaints with Japanese kits.

Step 3: Sew the base and the strawberry on top. Make all the little berries.

Step 4: Add the berries onto the top of the base, then start sewing the custard bits together to surround the base.

This is the end result. Pretty complex compared to some of the other felt cakes:

This week I’m showing something I did for my musician friend Yunyu. She’s been re-writing Christmas songs to suit her darkly subversive world views, and along with Zombie Christmas, this year it’s Were-Santa. The song takes the hot-button issues of this year, specifically werewolves and misbehaving Wall Street CEOs, and mixes the two together to create… something you can troll people with at the upcoming Christmas parties. Hey, I consider this song a happy song. And ofcourse, I created some appropriate album art for it.

To get your FREE copy of the song Were-Santa, join Yunyu’s Mailing List and it will be sent to you!

You can also listen to the song and download it at SoundCloud.

Lyrics

It’s the crap-crappiest time of the year
My head’s jingle belling,
And hippies are telling me
“Be of good cheer”
It’s my most sorrowful time of the year

It’s the crap-crappiest season of all
When I become Santa,
and no I’m not mental
I just want a cure
from this crap-crappiest sickness of all

I was making a killing
In stock market trading
Cashing in on all the loopholes
I’m worse than Charles Ponzi
I took more than Madoff
But hey you’re not perfect yourself

It’s my most sorrowful time of the year
A were-santa he got me
he bit me that bastard
and now once a year
I’m transformed into this ponce with the bells

I’ll pay anything for a cure
for this sickness
and swap this for lycanthropy
And anything’s better than riding with sleigh bells
and giving my fortunes away.

It’s my most sorrowful time of the year
my pockets are echoing
my world is ending and
Don’t you dare cheer
It’s the most sorrowful time
It’s the most sorrowful time

It’s the most sorrowful time of the year