Following on from yesterday’s post about candidate finger puppets made from card, Abbey Hambright has felt finger puppets of Obama for sale.
craft
Purse frame bags
These two bags are theatre props I made yesterday. They still need some handles and some special things happening inside them, but I am pleased with how they are coming on. There is some relief, too, as I had intended to buy a couple of bags and modify them, but couldn’t find any that were right. I also had trouble finding the purse frames here in Canberra. I resent the fact that most craft shops here now just have scrapbooking supplies.
I hadn’t made bags like this before, but looked up patterns online, and I am indebted to u-handbag for her purse frame demystified tutorial. Isn’t the web great?
Eye of Sauron
The Eye of Sauron goes off to a villian’s party!
Cool cuttlefish and blenny puppets
Raggy Rat has made a couple of beautiful marine-themed puppets for Portland’s Seafest: a cuttlefish and a tompot blenny.
There are some great photos and commentary on the making process here. I love the mixing of different types of fabric, and the wool in particular reminds me of Mimi‘s use of wools. I’m looking forward to seeing photos taken at the festival, too. (And look at this cool jellyfish cake!). Thanks for letting me post your photos, Cat!
A strange girl
My friend Lynda would like to know seven strange things about me… Thanks, Lynda.
- I disliked dolls as a child, but loved teddy bears and other animal toys. My favourite was a panda I was given when I was about 4. I was fluent in Panda talk. Another favourite was a little German-made bear that I was given to keep in my pocket on the plane when my family moved from South Africa to Australia when I was seven. (I don’t think he is a Stieff bear, because I don’t remember him ever having a stud in his ear, but he is a dead-ringer for Peter Bull’s bear, Theodore, that sold for a fortune in 1995.)
- When I was little I used to save up my pocket money for 10 weeks to buy little felt mice from a tiny shop called The Acorn in the Adelaide Hills. They had tartan clothing, and you could get girl and boy mice. Later I started to make them for myself, and I had a whole family of them, all with alliterative names like Miranda Mouse. I also made them things like tiny books, bags and babies. I still have some, and I still make them occasionally. There are notes on the photo if you follow its link through to Flickr.
- When I was about 12 I went through a phase of carving rabbits in the ends of matchsticks.
- Another early foray in craft was making miniature gonks in football colours for friends at school. Gonks were a 60’s fad, essentially humpty dumpties with big hands and feet, and a fuzzy tuft of hair.
- At about the same age I started making soft toys from patterns in women’s magazines, only I often made them straight from the miniature pattern on the page, rather than scaling them up
- We have a couple of treasured crocheted blankets made by grannies in the family, but on the whole I dislike crocheted objects. Amigurumi drive me nuts. I don’t know why.
- I find it very difficult to tag people; not sure why. (I also have a telephone thing, have to push myself to telephone at times). So if any of my blogging friends would like to take up the meme and run with it, please do, and let me know in comments here.
Keeping busy
While my foot is in a cast I’ve picked up an old knitting project, continuing knitting squares for a blanket. I’ve done about 6 new ones, and I’m up to about 42 squares.
I’ve watched a motley collection of DVDs:
Casino Royale – a complete waste of time, apart from the animation at the beginning which was great – loved the way it played with pattern and card imagery.
Happy Feet – good animation, but crap illogical storyline
Cars – hackneyed if worthy themes, but cool and inventive concepts and animation
Robots – hackneyed if worthy themes, but cool and inventive concepts and animation. Loved all the mechanical ideas.
HP: Goblet of Fire – enjoyable, but so much missing
Starskey and Hutch – thoroughly enjoyable crap – loved it, much to my surprise
Jindabyne – an uncomfortable but really good film; sustained creepiness; feminist, though that opinion might seem odd. My haunting image is of the hooked trout, about to become the mens’ trophy, powerless and taking its final slow gasps and flaps.
And motley reading? I’ve just finished re-reading all 6 of the Harry Potter books. And Bryce Courtney’s The Potato Factory which I enjoyed though it’s not great in any sense. And an old Donna Leon. Now I’m on to The Poisonwood Bible. But I expect to go back to Harry when I get my turn with the new one next week.
Cursters
There are a lot of monsters out there on the web, and I tend to be pretty selective about which I like. Some of Erin Currie’s Cursters I like a lot, particularly the ornate ones, like this or this, or this or this. Erin has an Etsy shop, too.
I hadn’t heard of munnys before seeing the monster above. Interesting to see a cross-over between urban graffiti and stencil art culture and toys.
A dearth of koala noses
I’ve been phoning around the crafts shops asking if they have any large koala noses, as you do. Only one person spluttered with laughter; she gets a big tick of approval. But it turns out there is a dearth of koala noses. What can have happened?? Where can they be? Are they living it up, kicking up their heels somewhere, free at last?
Later:
I got to thinking what a strange word dirth was, and tried looking it up. There was a derth of dirths but eventually I found that its obsolete, obscure and spelt derth, making for a derth of derths, as well as dirths and koala noses. (Still later: Okay, it’s dearth. I got there in the end.)
Pasha at Project Puppet in comments below found one loafing around (thanks Pasha!), confirming my suspicions.
Fancy having to send to the US for a koala nose.
Msg: have snake
Whipped up yesterday from materials at hand, as a surprise for my eldest’s jungle party.
