I got my review copy of Happy Gloves weeks ago.  It's the English version of a Japanese craft book.  It retains all its cute, Japanese charm while adding the bonus of readability.  I reviewed it's sister-book Sock and Glove when I made Ernest the Elephant.

I decided to make the lion and I was looking EVERYWHERE for yellow gloves.  Unbelievably, there are no yellow gloves anywhere.

It's just as well, because when the weather turned cold recently and I brought down the bucket of hats, scarves, and gloves, I found that I had two orphaned gloves.  Well, who says that lions can only be yellow?

Certainly they aren't gray and pink ... until now.  The gray glove is chenille and super soft.  The pink glove is one of those "magic" gloves that looks like it's the size of a barbie glove until you put it on.

The most challenging part was putting on his mane.  There was a lot of sewing and trimming involved.  My favorite part of the lion is the nose/mouth part made from the glove opening's ribbing.  Such a great incidental detail. I also like his mismatched ears and arms.  He's so adorable!

There was much discussion about naming him.  Instantly, he looked like my favorite front porch lion who looks a lot like Rick James to me. But I didn't want to name my lion Rick James.

Then I was thinking I'd love to name him after the much-maligned economist Dr. Doom who predicted this financial crisis in 2006 and was almost universally dismissed and even laughed at ... until most of his predictions came true.  He doesn't do finiancial mathematical models and instead relies on truthiness.  He isn't afraid of calling it like he sees it.  But when I searched for his name, I knew I couldn't call my lion Noriel Roubini.  I can't have a lion with a name like a mermaid magician.

Then Andrew told me about the economist that won the Nobel Prize this year and his name is perfect for a lion, Krugman.  He's not the balls-out iconoclast Noriel is, but he's got a better lion-name.  But since Andrew was telling me about it, I imagined it as "Crugman" so I spell it differently that the real Krugman.

In summary, my lion is named after Paul Krugman in reality, and Noriel Roubini in spirit.  We pronounce it so it rhymes with "rug-man" which I'm 99% sure isn't how you pronounce Krugman plus the whole spelling-it-wrong thing, but, see, that's how I'm Noriel-Roubini-ing the whole thing.

Oh, but this is a review of the book ... ha!  Well, the book is amazing, of course.  It's full of great patterns that use one or two gloves.  If I'd only had one glove to use I'd made the cover image's chipmunk.  Is he not the cutest little thing?!  Or maybe the tiny frog (no pic) ... he's pretty darn adorable, too.

Now that I see the pictures (which Andrew took in between tutorial shots while he was waiting around for me to position my hands just-so) I remember that I used a wonderful vintage button for Crugman's nose that was gifted to me by  LeeAnn of Mint Basil, which is also where I got Ernest's eyes.