I decided to make my first postbox topper for Hallowe’en 2022. At first I was just going to make something cute and a bit spoopy, but then I had the idea of expressing the things that really scare me in yarn form.
The only pattern I used was Sweet Bee Crochet’s free pattern for a tiny pumpkin. Everything else is freehanded (i.e. I made it up as I went along).
I made this topper during a few weeks when UK politics were so crazypants bonkerballs it was hard to keep up. (An iceberg lettuce famously outlasted Liz Truss‘s run as PM.) I ran out of time or Rishi Sunak would have been on there as a vampire. Also, I would have liked to have done some more detail on the witches’ clothes.
Left to right, we have Therese Coffey with a spoon for poking Tory MPs not voting the right way, and her cigar. Liz Truss in the middle is super excited about pork futures. Suella Braverman on the right has a broom for sweeping refugees and asylum seekers off to Rwanda.
That’s Boris up front, trying to make a return from the grave. (There was a moment where he looked like he was making another run for PM, despite leaving in disgrace.) He has a dangly bead eye and brains showing at the side of his head. The gravestone says, “RIP NHS.”
Some links to the relevant privatisation of the NHS:
https://www.yournhsneedsyou.com/timeline
I didn’t have time to do Jacob Ress Mogg. I’d already made the ghost, though, so I gave it some JRM style eyebrows, a top hat and a monocle. Fitting that he’s a ghost since he was booted out of the cabinet during the make. The gravestone says, “right to protest.”
View from above. The bubbling goo in the cauldron, the cat’s eyes, the ghost, and a little of the fire is glow in the dark. For the glow to work, in needs to get enough UV light during the day, and then be in enough darkness to glow. With the streetlights around it didn’t really work out.
The pumpkins are just pumpkins and the cat is just a cat. I should have done Larry the Number 10 moggy, but didn’t think of that until far too late.
View from the other side. The gravestones say “330 000 austerity deaths”, and, “the environment.”
I found these statistics on the devastating effect of austerity pretty scary.
And as for the environment, there are so many things I could link, but I guess the fact that the Prime Minister couldn’t even be bothered to go to the COP27 Climate Summit said it all.
I guess somebody didn’t love it, because they set it on fire. But because it’s made of acrylic, bits of it just singed and melted a little. Poor old Liz got the worst of it.
That’s the gamble you take putting your work out in public. It has been cleaned up and returned to my stash for future reuse.
Croshady 
Leave a comment