As any devotee of Phineas & Ferb (or the parent of any devotee of Phineas & Ferb) knows, these two wildly creative cartoon brothers live for the summer and their adventures are the stuff dreams are made of, at least the dreams of boys like Phineas and Ferb.
To their parents, Phineas and Ferb appear to be ordinary boys playing ordinary games, but as their sister Candace knows, her brothers also live another extraordinary life unseen by their parents. Despite Candace’s best efforts to “bust them” for this other life, her efforts are always foiled.
The two brothers, however, are not the the only characters living unseen lives.
Perry, the family’s pet platypus, looks for all the world like a garden variety pet, but Perry has another life in which he dons a fedora and is transformed into “a semi-aquatic egg-laying mammal of action” going from one adventure to the next in an effort to save the world from the tyranny of his arch-nemesis, Dr. Doofenshmirtz.
Today, my youngest son’s summer officially ended, and on an effort to ease his transition from child of summer to high school freshman, I spent the day finishing an amigurumi homage to Perry the Platypus that I began last year around this time.
The platypus has been described by someone known to history only as “anonymous” as a duck designed by a committee, and my amigurumi homage to Perry the Platypus followed this tradition
I started by using Red Heart Super Saver turqua body inspired by “Sebatian le Hamster” from Narumi Ogawa’s book Mr. Funky’s Super Wonderful Crochet:
Using the same pattern and an indeterminate orange from Red Heart Classic, I also made the future Agent P some feet:
Shifting inspirations, I then turned to the Crochet Works of Sally V. George, using the arms described in the pattern for a mouse in her Pocket Animals collection:
as well as the pattern for the porcupine’s tail in her Forest Friends collection:
From there, I found it necessary to shift gears once again. Here I started as I had with the tail, but made it somewhat wider and much shorter:
As for the fedora, that was inspired by desperation.
The sun was beginning to set, and it was just me with a 3.75 mm hook and some yarn, the future Agent P, and some hungry mosquitoes attempting to get a snack while I worked feverishly to fashion a hat that would transform an ordinary amigurumi platypus into an semi-aquatic egg-laying mammal of action amigurumi.
To my relief, I got the hat done and was able to get these photos before darkness descended:
And for anyone who is not familiar with the theme song for Phineas & Ferb, here is a video of the short version that plays at the opening of each episode:
