Georgie Monster in Brown

A couple weeks ago, Val commissioned me to make a Georgie Monster for her son Sam's 2nd birthday. Val picked out a great color combination of brown and tan plush with bright green details to create a unique gift for Sam.

Sam looks a little shifty eyed here, but he does love his new monster.

Scrathe the Monster of Basewood

Alec and I are headed down to the MoCCA fest in New York this weekend.  Joining Alec at his table will be Scrathe, the monster from Basewood, which I just finished making.  Alec is going to have all the chapters of Basewood for sale in an awesome custom screen-printed case. If you're in the area you should come on by.

Strawberry Sweater

I finished another sweater! Alec and I are moving to Oakland next month, so I've begun the processing of getting rid of excess stuff.  I've built up quite a yarn pile and I wanted to use up some of the stock instead of moving it across the country again. I chose a base of a couple different shades of yellow.  I went with a loose stripe pattern for the background since it would give me some room to change colors if I ran out as the sweater progressed. I made the pink and red strawberry shapes to add some variety to the stripes.

I finished the first sleeve and realized I didn't have enough yarn to create an identical one. I solved this by creating a different sleeve pattern with more pink and red yarn.  I have a pretty bad habit of making three of something to get a decent pair. I'm hoping one day to just make two.

 

 I used another pattern from my 1970 Women's Day magazine, if you're interested in the details they can be found after the jump.

Plush Bloodhound Pup

For my dad's birthday this week, I made him a plush version of his dog Nina, a Bloodhound.  I wanted to create a simplified soft version that was more stylized than super realistic.

Nina as a puppy

This the main sketch that I worked off of,  I didn't really figure how to show the folds around her face until I was working them in fabric.  Bloodhounds have very loose skin around their face and neck. It was difficult creating the underlying shape and still getting the feel of loose folds.  I chose to just make two main folds on the side of the face that taper into the neck to create the depth of eyes and the loose neck shape.

The face was a breeze compared to figuring out the back leg shape.  I went through so many versions before I got to a folded up back leg that looked right.  I didn't take any photos showing the scale before I shipped it off to my dad, but this is a small one about 12 inches long from nose to tail.

 

Spring Break!

Well, March flew by and I didn't do a great job of making regular posts.  I spent most of the month working on a bunch of projects that I'm finishing up now.  One of the fun things I did do was take a little vacation with Alec for his spring break.  We headed down to Washington, D.C. on the train to check out the sights.  After that we flew to Florida to go to Disney World!  I put together this little travel video to share our trip.



 Disney resorts pretty much only show Disney networks, which they own a lot of: ABC, ESPN, Disney channel, etc. When they don't have a channel filled or they're blocking a rival network they play a rotating 3D logo from 1992,  which I thoroughly enjoyed watching, check for it at the end of the video.

Horned Lizards for Sale

I made another Horned Lizard in more realistic khaki and brown colors.  Both of these cool lizards are now for sale on etsy.

Horned Lizard aka Horny Toad

As a kid in New Mexico,  my brother and I would occasionally find Horned lizards, but we always called them Horny toads.   Even though they have spikes all over they have really soft bellies and you can still pet their spikes.  I always thought they were super cute and sweet,  so why not make a soft plush version.

When I was starting with my sketches,  I had a hard time visualizing all the parts together so I quickly made a clay sculpt to help me work out the shapes for the pattern.

This is a much more complex project then I usually take on,  mostly due to the spike details,  but I'm very excited about how it came out.  I do plan on making some in more realistic brown tones,  but I couldn't wait for that fabric shipment to arrive so I went with a bold pattern of red, black and white.  This one is the Darth Maul of horned lizards.

My favorite horned lizard factoid is that they shoot blood out of their eyes to deter predators.