By Maya Russell
My project is making a crochet doll of Lucifer from Paradise Lost. It is made of 100% cotton yarn light (three) weight with a 2.25mm hook. The hair is the same color red as in the Alexandre Cabanel painting The Fallen Angel. It is curly and medium length like a cherub to show that he was an angel once. I started to make black feathered wings but time did not allow me to finish them. They will be created in the future but sadly only I will probably be able to appreciate them.
Lucifer is described as being very large, “Thus Satan to his neerest Mate // With Head up-lift above the wave, and Eyes // That sparkling blaz’d, his other Parts besides // Prone on the Flood, extended long and large // Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge // As whom the Fables name of monstrous size,” 192-197 I am not making him that big. The reason for this is because I don’t know what I would do with a two foot tall Lucifer crochet doll. He is dressed in a toga made of a tee shirt.
This is related to Paradise Lost by John Milton because Lucifer is the protagonist of that book. Taking after the Romantics, I sympathized with the struggles Lucifer goes through at the beginning of the book and it compelled me to make a little doll version of him. Lucifer is unequivocally evil. His goal is to corrupt humanity to ruin something nice that God made because he is petty. He is very charming in an insidious way which is a very intriguing character choice for Satan. Milton attempts to get the audience on Lucifer’s side despite our better judgment.
I am making a doll because fiber arts is an art form that humans have been doing for about as long as we have been around and it is how we tell stories. I am also creating an angel similar to how God did in Paradise Lost but with probably different materials. As long as I don’t make another doll and love it more than there should be no consequences of making a small Lucifer angel.
This doll took a long time to make. The hardest part to make was the hair. It is made of 4 circles with anywhere from 6-20 spirals built off of it. Each spiral has around 50 stitches in it. It felt like an endless task to make the hair look angelic. This is my first time making a doll and I was surprised at how easy the doll was to make. The hardest part of making the doll itself was counting the stitches and paying attention to the pattern. The head also took a long time to make due to the fact that it is so big. If I was smarter I would have started this project a few days earlier than I did but c’est la vie.
Works Cited
Anh, Thuy. “Featured Crochet Patterns.” Green Frog, greenfrogcrochet.com/. Accessed 10 Dec. 2023.
Cabanel, Alexandre. The Fallen Angel. 1847.
Ferri, Roberto. Fallen Angel. 2011.
Free Amigurumi Rory Doll Crochet Pattern – Amigurumi Today, amigurumi.today/free-amigurumi-rory-doll-crochet-pattern/. Accessed 10 Dec. 2023.
Milton, John, 1608-1674. Paradise Lost. London ; New York :Penguin Books, 2000.
Sprockets and Springes 