The famous one · 2009–2015
The Mario Blanket
- Years
- 6½
- Hours
- ~800
- Balls of yarn
- 100
- Size
- 2.2 × 1.8 m
In 2009, Kjetil started crocheting the first map of Super Mario Bros 3 — the whole of World 1, stitch by stitch, from the game he'd known since childhood. He finished six and a half years later. In between: two university degrees, two Norwegian skydiving team championships, the start of a career, and roughly eight hundred hours of counting stitches.
Halfway through, he noticed that one section of water was the wrong shade of blue. Most people would have called it close enough.
“It was almost purple, and very ugly. So I had to undo all of it. That took an extra week.”
— Kjetil, to NRK, 2015
When it was done, the internet noticed. The blanket went around the world — the front page of Reddit, Bored Panda, NRK, and a long tail of gaming press that couldn't quite believe the medium.
Next up: the maker — how the same person ends up with gold medals and yarn burn.