Bunny Rabbits Everywhere

I have two rabbits at home: Patty & Selma, so it seemed natural to make a plush version of a bunny. I didn't do much photo research since I watch them make cute poses all the time. The only challenge was using an upright pose and making sure the plush bunny didn't fall over when it was finished.

I forced the real bunnies into a photo shoot with one of plush that I made, they were mostly into it since they like investigating new things in their enclosure.

 

If you don't have your very own bunnies at home you can make the plush version with the rabbit pattern available in my store.

I also have a couple plush rabbits for sale in my etsy shop: fluff engine.

Squid Scarf

The winter be gone spell finally started working and spring has come to White River Junction. That basically means I'll be taking a break from knitting. It just isn't as fun to knit in the summer, holding lots of wooly yarn when it's bathing suit weather is kind of a bummer. I know there are lots of summery things to knit, I'm just usually less into it. So one last post about knitting until fall hits.
This scarf came from my first tries at knitting in the round with double pointed needles a couple years ago. Knitting scarves in the round is super time consuming and I've since found faster and easier ways to make scarves that don't roll at the edges, but it does make for a very warm scarf.
I started by randomly knitting a little squid toy, which gave me the inspiration to flatten it out into a scarf shape.  I made this squid scarf especially for my awesome friend Liz Prince, who loves squids and the color brown.  Like the DNA scarf, this scarf is knitted in the round with squids making up the fringe ends. The arms and tentacles are made by casting on a bunch of stitches, knitting 2 rows then casting off. This is repeated until you have 8 arms and 2 tentacles. Then you create a circle of arms and pick up the amount of stitches to want to knit with from the tops of the tentacles. After several rounds to make the body of the squid start to increase to make the mantle. With making the mantle shape introduce a contrasting color that will be the body of the scarf. I added the chevrons of red and orange to give it some more color.
 I hope everyone has packed up their scarves and are getting ready for summer fun.

Lazy Llamas

      After getting some nice live feedback from people passing by my table at Stumptown, I've got to say that the Llama plush were, by far, the most popular. At the beginning of my design research, I checked out some llama toys in standing positions, but I really wanted to make one in a lying down pose. Instead of going with a natural pose of legs curled up underneath I designed them to be sprawled out. I like the way the floppy pose turned out, plus having the legs out make the pattern that much easier to assemble.

Here are some of the sketches I did while getting into the llama state of mind.

 

Make your own llamas with the pattern available in my store, 

I also have a couple for sale on etsy.

Plush now for Sale!

I made a bunch of plush animals from my patterns and they're available for sale in my etsy shop: fluff engine. There are all sorts of colors and textures to choose from, go check it out.

 

Maisie Kukoc 2011 Award

I had the honor of getting to make the 2011 Maisie Kukoc Award. The award is given right before the Stumptown Comics Fest to an awesome mini-comic creator.  It was presented at Guapo Comics in Portland. The winner, Damien Jay, wasn't able to be there, but he was called live and he was very surprised and a little confused to have a shop full of people calling him.

The award is named after John Porcellino's cat and he makes King-Cat comics so the crown and kitty combo basically designed itself.  Although the cat is curled up inside, it still can be worn as a crown. The crown is made out of gold lamé, with an internal fabric stiffener to keep the crown shape. The kitty is made of a low pile plush, I did all the embroidery by hand. It was fun trying some new hand embroidery fonts as I usually just do my handwriting.

There are more photos in my flickr.

Owl Aboard

All these owls plus a bunch more plush animals are about to get on the train with me to start the journey to Portland, OR for the Stumptown Comics Fest. It's this weekend (April 16 & 17) and I'll be selling all my patterns and some plush I've made from them. I'll be right beside Alec who will have lots of awesome comics for sale. You should come stop by if you're in the area, it's always a fantastic overload of amazing talent and wonderful comics.

Chicken Parade

The second plush pattern I made is a chicken. I grew up with chickens so for the most part I think they're cute, but Alec really loves them. Perhaps because he has never seen them tear apart a centipede and gobble it up like it's the most delicious treat they've ever had.

 In my sketches for the hen I drew the wattle, but discarded it in the pattern process to make it cuter, just keeping the comb. The feet were the trickiest part, I made them big to make assembly a little easier but it was still difficult getting them to stay close to the body without the hen rolling over. One of the best things about a plush chicken is that they can be made is all sorts of colors and textures and you still know that it's a chicken. Then again I'll probably say that about anything, I just like bright colors reality notwithstanding.