A Christmas tiger and a little frog

 I got a request for a tiger poking his head through a small hole in the wall for a Christmas present from mother hen.

While it is far from perfect I'm still pretty happy with how he turned out, especially considering how much harder it is to felt with a puppy around - no more sitting on the sofa comfortably surrounded by billows of colourful fluff for me!

He's life sized

"Hello, I just popped by to see how you're doing!"

There is a LOT of stuffing in this fella by the way!

And while you are here, here's a iddy biddy frog I made for absolutely no reason back in the summer.

Bob the bee

 I made this little fella. When I was referring to him as a he, Dan pointed out that male bees die in winter. But I explained that Bob was a favourite of the Queen's so she made him winter gear to keep him warm and alive. 

That's why he always looks like such a fun bee to be around. Because the moment he stops amusing the Queen she has no more use for him. Oh, that turned dark!

Iddy biddy little bee stinger.

Sir Bouncelot and his trusty steed

I made this guy almost a year ago, for the 2019 christmas craft fair, but just realised that I never posted him!

This was one of those situations where I had no idea what I was doing and just kept throwing felt at it until I felt any more felt would be too much felt. Unfortunately I did run out of the ... thing, whatever the brown thing he's riding is?... I ran out of brown wool for him, so he ended up looking how he looked and I focussed on the bunny instead. 

He has a cape! If I recall correctly, there were multiple discussions about seeing if I could get bunny-sized chain mail to make him a mail shirt. But I think we decided that would be overkill.

 

Fairy door for my little neighbour and King of Tokyo

 I made a little fairy door to go on the neighbour's side of a tree in our garden to delight the daughter-neighbour.

I also made Tokyo statuettes for Meka Dragon and Cyber Bunny because Dan and I play those characters (respectively). Look, I had a quiet weekend and a lot of clay on my hands, okay?!

He was a bit too shiny for a good picture.

In the game of Tokyo you win or you die. (Are we still making GoT references, or is that so 2019??)

A dragon make over

So I made this dragon about 8 years ago when I was not very good at needle felting. He was loose, his body was WAY too long and he looked really sad. But for some reason I never had the heart to get rid of him, so whenever I was reorganising all my crafts, sad dragon would have a place, just a place right at the back so he couldn't be seen and bring everyone down with his floppy sadness. I finally decided to make him a little tighter, shorter and happier. 

This is the only picture I have of him before his make over, see how long that body was (you can't even see the tail, he just went on and on!) And those massive back feet!

                         

Ridiculously oversized feet are now dainty little paws and he is looking much happier - kind of wistfully hopeful?

Even the wings got a make over, which I kind of regretted as I hate doing wings!

A slothy Flash

A lot of the time Dan's job requires him to work very fast on many things, which he finds stressful when he has not slept well and is feeling very slow.

I made a sloth Flash to keep him company on days when he has to be whizzy fast but would rather be hanging from a tree slowly watching the world go by. 

Sloth Flash (Slosh? Floth?) sits on Dan's monitor and they grudgingly whizz together

Whiiiiiiiiz. Yawn. Whiiiiiiiiz.

A woodland poppet

 Every time I use the poppet pattern to make a Dobby (I've made a few for various children over the summer but only posted the one) I tell Dan in a surprised voice how very easy it is to make them and that I might make a non-Dobby just for the heck of it. 

So this little lady was born.

I'm terrible at making clothes, but didn't hate how hers turned out, there's a tutu under her skirt to give it some floompf and I even attempted the merest nod at embroidery! 

She has a tail!

Her hair is... out of control. I sewed a hair weft that probably had too much wool in it in the first place and then once it was sewn down I decided to 'brush out' the wool to make it fluffier, to a gentle chorus of "are you sure you should be doing that?! It's so big!" from Dan.

A baby giraffe

Remember Freckles the Dinosaur? He was originally supposed to be a giraffe, but he ... wasn't in the end. So, I had another go and made this little guy.

Here he is just munching on those low-hanging leaves. (Point of interest the leaves are so low hanging because we forgot to water this plant for quite a while. It is much perkier now you will be pleased to hear.)

I was pleased with his legs and tail and .. mini-antlers? noggin nubbins?  I'm generally not very good at thin things like legs

Baby Groot brake cable puppet

Playing peek a boo in the garden.

He's getting very cosy on Dan's shoulder.

Just perched on a tree - how cute is this guy?!

Hibiscus-groot!

Baby Ludo

Hey guys, I made a baby Ludo and I am so in love with him!

         

I've never combined sewing (body, ears) and needle felting (face, horns, hands and feet) like this before and was winging it but I think it turned out very well.

His arms and legs are  poseable, and look at his little toesies!

It is so important to spend time playing with your baby Ludos while they are young as they grow up so fast. (And so big!)

Tired out after playing. I thought I'd finished making him when Dan pointed out that Ludo has a tail, so he had to have a tail added as well. 

Missus Bunny

Remember last month I made a romantic bunny and then made myself sad because he had nobunny to give his flowers to? 

I made him a girlfriend!

Part of me is reminded of poor Smurfette who was made with the sole purpose of being a woman and a companion to all the boy smurfs. Like, all of the other smurfs were defined by their personalities, Smurfette was defined by being a woman. So I told Missus Bunny that she didn't have to be defined by her gender and she could be whoever she wanted to be. She thanked me very much and asked to be Romantic Bunny's girlfriend. She even asked for a little purple bow.

They are very happy together. Watch this space for tiny baby bunnies!

Freckles the dino

My hands were bored while we were netflixing the heck out of lockdown, so in the absence of any kid-commissions, I decided to make a giraffe. Except he didn't want to be a giraffe, he was quite adamant he wanted to be a little herbivorous dinosaur. (I wonder if god had these problems when he was making the animals. I - further - wonder if that explains duck billed platypusses).

There he is, munching on our weeping rosemary.

 

I thought his head looked bare and that he wanted some goofy ears, but Dan put his foot down and said that dinosaurs Did Not Have Ears. We compromised on some nostrils instead. 

     

Freckles was photographed in the same photo shoot as romantic bunny and proposal dinosaur. I wish my garden could always look like this. I would make all sorts of plant munching animals to put around the flowers!

Columbo and a porg

This post contains probably one of the lamest things (I think) I have ever made and possibly one of the best.

Let's start with the good one, shall we?

Here's Columbo. Or as the little person he was made for calls him, "uncle Peter".

"Just one more thing..."

Look, he's even holding a little cigar!

I very much enjoyed making him, even though I had to make a coat collar, and I really hate making collars.

And here's a Porg. The recipient seemed to like it well enough, but let's just say if I made another one, I'd do some things differently.

Still, porgs are hard - I defy you to find a decent non-crocheted hand-made porg out there!

                                       

A Very Special Dinosaur

This is a bit of a special (text heavy) post, introducing a very special little dinosaur.

Last month, I proposed to Dan. I should mention now - to avoid any suspense ruining the story - he said yes!

Due to various problems with the postal system, the ring should have been with me last December. So I had a lovely proposal plan all ready for Christmas. But it was delayed. So I had a lovely proposal plan all ready for our anniversary in January. But it was still delayed. I thought at a push, I could make use of the leap year tradition of women proposing to men. But alas, still no ring. (Although I'm quite glad about that one - I didn't like the idea of doing it on the one day Society "allows" women to do the asking!)

Finally, it arrived early May. But how do you make a proposal special in lockdown?

So, I organised a scavenger hunt, with a series of clues to help him find me - I was hiding somewhere inside the house. Now, our house is not very big, it doesn't have built in wardrobes you can hide in, there's no loft, it is not easy to hide in our house. I was giggling for a week before the day, at the super-cunning place I had come up with. Dan was very bemused at all this.

In our kitchen there is a little cubby where we keep our recycling and spare plastic bags etc. But the manic miner curtain you see here is not in fact the back of the cubby - behind that curtain we have the space underneath the stairs to the house above us. Interestingly, I have discovered this space is known as the spandrel - so I was in fact hiding in a concealed spandrel.   

So I made Dan go into the front garden for a few minutes while I got into place, with instruction on where to find the first clue.

 

The rhyming couplet clues led him to a number of lovely memories - the first book we read together, the first stuffed toy he won for me at Chessington and so on.

 

Eventually, he got the final clue and found me. 

I guess I was lucky Dan didn't get thirsty during the hunt and get a coconut milk from the cupboard!

After I clambered out of my concealed spandrel, he gave me a big hug, but I told him it wasn't over just yet. I had one more clue in my pocket - a little harder than the others, but that it would lead him to a special little someone.

When he worked out the last riddle, he found a little felted dinosaur wearing a ring on his arm. Because of supply issues during the pandemic the ring maker had run out of ring boxes, so I thought a dino would make an excellent alternative.  

Why a dinosaur, you ask? Because the ring had an inlay of fossilised Tyrannosaurus Rex bone, from this awesome shop who I highly recommend.

And so, yes, Dan and I are now engaged. Although for obvious reasons, we aren't even starting to think about plans yet.

Anyway, now, let's finally get to why you are really here. For needle felted goodies! This is him a couple of weeks later - he's handed over responsibility of the ring to Dan now.

                                       

Look at those dorky little fangs he's got!

                                       

He likes sitting here as the flowers really bring out his eyes. Speaking of which, I'm not very good at doing eyes generally and Dan is always encouraging me to push myself on them. So I paid particular attention to them here. I was quite pleased with how they turned out.