Errol, the chicken, is packed up and ready to go to Brooklyn. He’ll be at Fact & Fancy, a new gallery/shop started by two lovely ladies from Etsy. Rudolpho and Werner will be there too. I’m very excited about this, but right now I’m just tired.
good night.
Elphanso it is! thanks to the woman behind the bird bath for the great name. He’s up in my shop and entered in the 2nd annual softies awards too. Wish me luck! And because I can’t muster up the energy to get off the couch I will play along with a little meme that I have been tagged for by fiona of fede (blog and shop). She makes some pretty fantastic soft hammer rattles, that you should go see. Okay here goes:
4 jobs:
baker
nanny
bed and breakfast manager (mostly cleaning toliets and ironing! sheets)
chocolatier
4 favorite movies:
amadeus
fight club
grizzly man (and everything by werner herzog)
pirates of the caribbean
4 places I’ve been:
jerusalem
copenhagen
istanbul
the corn palace
4 places I’ve lived:
athens and
rome, briefly
bodega bay, ca
a little cabin with no running water and no electricity
4 favorite tv shows:
law & order in all their many incarnations
lost, when it’s on
the office
30 Rock
4 favorite radio programs:
this american life (who doesn’t like this?)
all college radio programs and their awesome college hosts
a prairie home companion, because if you were born in MN you must listen to this
marketplace on npr
4 favorite foods:
chicken livers
french macarons
nueske’s bacon
brioche
4 places I’d rather be:
in my sewing room
turkey
japan
in a bar with all my old friends
I’m supposed to tag 4 people, so I’ll tag the first four people with blogs that commented on my last post (suckers!).
I’m still working on the animals I was talking about a while back. There has been more unnecessary law & order watching than sewing, but there is some progress. I’ve never actually drafted a pattern for one of my toys before and it’s pretty time consuming–especially when you have an anal retentive side. I wanted the elephant to have a big head gusset that would extend down to his trunk and I couldn’t just whip this up. This is my first attempt and though it looked the way I imagined, his trunk stuck out straight–Pinocchio style–when I stuffed him. I made a few more and could have kept on making a little muslin menagerie, but I’m trying to make my toys less straight and narrow and more folky and improvised (strangely it’s the latter that needs a pattern).
So I cut into this amazing sparkley striped linen I got from namolio’s shop. I was going to make all the animals from thrifted outfits, and some still will be, but I was trying to cram too many ideas into one toy: stripes or patterned faces, moustached, thrifted outfit transformed into plush toy. Besides this grey linen was a little wrinkly just like a naked elephant.
Here he is almost done. He (ah! no name! any suggestions?) is sporting this fantastic fake moustache sent to my by Melinda (thank you again!). And after seeing little elephante sporting this polka dot moustache, I don’t know if I should use a completely different print for the moustache or make it out of the denim I used for his pants or the grey linen again, or embroider a big fluffy one. I need feed back from all of you who have made it to the end of this post.
