My latest ridiculously overambitious project: an amigurumi Gigantoraptor with its nest! Since I'm going to be a guest at Fall Fossil Fest this year, I thought it would be fun to put together an amigurumi of one of Idaho's native dinosaurs. I love oviraptorids and this was a great excuse to make an adorable plush of one. Ever since I started doing amigurumi, it's been a goal of mine to design some scientifically accurate dinosaur plushies--nothing against the sort of generic green cartoony dinosaur plush patterns you see elsewhere, but as a pedantic nerd I was craving more.

 This fella was a lot of work, and honestly there are places where it didn't turn out perfect--the neck is too thin and too droopy despite a pipe cleaner insert, so I think for future dinos I'll make the neck thicker and try to stuff more rigidly. The arms/wings are also pretty flimsy, so I think next time I'll make four of each wing and sew them together with stuffing in the middle. It also didn't turn out perfectly symmetrically... but honestly I've been really tired lately and I'm pleasantly surprised it turned out as good as it did. I think the head is absolutely adorable though.

For the wing and tail feathers, I attached, tassel-style, some Lion Brand Homespun, which is a notoriously flimsy yarn made of countless tiny acrylic strands. Terrible for amigurumi... unless you brush it out into some beautiful feathers! I love finding creative ways to use scrap and found yarn.

Honestly I don't think this turned out too bad for a first go! I learned a lot that I can apply to other dino species moving forward. My secret goal is to just create an amigurumi Jurassic Park in my house. Except all the dinos are friendly and well-fed.

If you want to make one of these for yourself (or order one from me!), you can buy the pattern or place an order for a plush in my amigurumi shop!

 Where does all that money from Pay Day come from, anyway?

 This was actually a joke the developers themselves put in! An NPC in Celadon City south of the Celadon Department Store says this, poking fun at how the brick pavement pattern in the open area by the department store is pretty disorienting when you're looking at it on a tiny Game Boy screen.

Oh, the old-school days before you could play 3D games on a handheld console.

 The whole point of this joke hinges on the assumption that people remember the small detail that in the Gen II games, when you take the Magnet Train, your character bounces up and down while riding the train. I can only take this to represent the player character bouncing with glee at using mass transit.

 Once a month on Virtual Fossil Fridays, the awesome Ruby Pines comes on and gives everybody an art lesson! This month she did a step-by-step tutorial on how to draw a Gargoylesaurus (which my niece rocked, by the way), but I'm... kind of a maverick, and instead of following along with the lessons, I use them as a springboard for my own ideas.

For example, this time, somehow we got onto the idea of ankylosaurians having whiskers (actually I think I was the one who said that...), and then I just had to draw it. Ornithischians are known to have bristle-like integument, so I think it would be great fun if ankylosaurs had big ol' walrus whiskers. Also just gave it random whiskers everywhere else like an armadillo. I love getting speculative with my reconstructions!

 I really love this one too. With a Pokemon like Exeggutor existing, this joke had to happen. (I guess Doduo could have worked for this too.)

Also, you may notice we're moving through Kanto rather quickly and not touching much on the (admittedly spare) Kanto postgame plot. Part of the reason for this is that Gen II Kanto is more sparsely populated than its Gen I counterpart, and I just couldn't find a whole lot of dialogue I could riff on. In addition, though, I was definitely feeling burnt out on the comic and ready to call it a wrap after the end of this chapter, so I did kind of rush things a bit here. Still, I tried to give it all I could. The Kanto part of Book 2 may be short, but it honestly has some of my favorite comics. Quality over quantity, right?

 One last cartoon poking fun at iffy science journalism! For over twenty years, the question of whether Tyrannosaurus or Spinosaurus was bigger has preoccupied the minds of a startling number of dinosaur enthusiasts. Maybe a dinosaur doesn't have to be the biggest to be cool? #unpopularopinions #teamtherizinosaurus