Evil Pea from Supertato!

UPDATE: free pattern now available here!

“Some vegetables are frozen for a very good reason...”

My son Joe’s reception class have been reading the fantastic Supertato books by Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet as part of their superheroes theme for this term. Supertato is a superhero potato who defends the other vegetables in the supermarket from the Evil Pea that escaped from the freezer. The children have been making their own Supertatos (Supertatoes?) from actual potatoes, working out different ways of defrosting vegetables that have been frozen by the Evil Pea, designing their own superhero vehicles and talking about what superpower they would have if they were superheroes.

The books have fun, bright illustrations, and of course my first thought was, I bet I could crochet Supertato and the Evil Pea. Joe agreed, and requested Evil Pea, Supertato and all of the other vegetables. “But they don’t all need capes mummy, you can just do arms and legs on the other vegetables”. So this is going to keep me busy for a while!

The first pea

I have started with Evil Pea, who is really rather cute for a supervillain. I initially intended to make a pea with a separate mask, but in the end the mask just seemed too bulky for the size of pea. (Although my pea is not to scale – I admire miniature amigurimis but cannot make them!) So the mask is part of the pea’s body, with a row of slip stitch top and bottom to help differentiate it.

The second pea

Joe was delighted with his Evil Pea, who was immediately played with, carried around, (thrown around) and been made his own lego super-vehicle. He has even been to school, where he apparently put some peas on Joe’s plate at dinner time, and such are his super powers that Joe claims to have actually eaten them!

a crochet evil pea from supertato sitting on a toy plate

This one's not for eating!

Joe told me that his friend would really like an Evil Pea too, so (what a shame!) I just had to make another one. I’d thought of a couple of things I would do differently after seeing the original pea in action, so I make a couple of tweaks to the second Evil Pea. I used a bigger hook for the slip stitches around the mask, which I think works better, and made the cape wider and used a smaller hook, so it felt a little sturdier.