After I saw The Dark Crystal for the first time as a child I totally fell in love with Kira's adorable and occasionally grumpy pet Fizzgig. Who wouldn't love that ball of fluff? And then, when the prequel series Age of Resistance was released last year, I fell in love with the whole world of Thra all over again, with its multiple Fizzgigs in different colours, including one with an eyepatch!. I've already posted about making a Fizzgig for myself (here) and the trip I took him on to see The Dark Crystal exhibition in London (here).
After that I decided to write up the pattern but I immediately encountered a problem. Fizzgig's fluffy fur is made by working the loop stitch, cutting the loops and them brushing with a wire pet brush to separate the strands. The yarn I used, which had a mix of light brown colours and a loose twist, was perfect for this, but was unfortunately not being made any more. I then had to experiment with other yarns and found that Hayfield Bonus DK and Robin DK brushed out the right way, and so I chose different shades of light brown, beige, honey and gold yarn, and used two colours alternately to give the right look. I found that Stylecraft Special DK does not brush out well, but I would recommend that anyone who wants to make a Fizzgig tests the yarn they've chosen. I've used 100% acrylic yarn, which works fine, and acrylic yarn mixed with wool or alpaca should work, as I think would 100% wool or alpaca. Cotton yarn would not brush out in the same way.
Fizzgig have four feet...
...which you can just see peeping out under their fur.
They also have long, fluffy tails.
Luckily mixing two yarns together worked, and gave a nice result. I tweaked my original pattern a bit and made it slightly taller, as well as giving Fizzgig the correct number of feet (four). I decided against trying to make a version with an open mouth, as this would probably have to be a puppet, and I was more keen to create a solid toy.
Large and small versions.
Brushing the yarn to make it fluffy takes a fair bit of work, you need to sit down with a fun TV show or podcast and just work at gradually brushing a few strands at a time. Because of that I designed a smaller version that would be quicker to make, and still be just as cute. The larger version is about 22cm/8.5" tall, the smaller one is about 16cm/6.5" tall, and the pattern includes details to make eyepatches for both sizes of Fizzgig. You can buy the pattern on Etsy or Ravelry.
