ursine making and mending

i have managed to make my first bear with articulate joints. I decided that as my confusion over 2D drawn diagrams of parts and 3D stuffed animal toys was so great that it threatened to paralyse the entire Anderson Articulated Animal empire before it was off the drawing board, i would find a good pattern and follow it from start to finish and see what happened.
 

The Gibbs' book is gorgeous and perfectly easy to understand. The bear i made does not really look like the pattern i followed but it does look like a teddy bear so i'm celebrating a Good Start. 

The original body was far too small so i made larger and longer templates. However i went too far - his body is a little too long and i had to make a tummy tuck. I think his legs should be longer. Also i have plans to make changes to future bears' front paws.

The bald patches on his forehead are where i had to move the eyes. Twice. I'll patch him up. The less said about his chin seam, the better.

Before i embarked on the jointed bear, i took some time to mend poor Pinky, a bear i was given as a baby in 1969, which i found in January, spread over one of the eaves in the attic, a victim of the dog.

Pinky was in a coma in plastic bag intensive care for 10 months.

Linen skin-grafts from the work box.

I had to completely re-build the muzzle.

Once that was accomplished, re-making his face was  pretty quick to do.

Although Pinky's own eyes and nose were eventually found at the crime-scene, they were too badly chewed to be used so he has new eyes and nose from the Fred Aldous surgical supplies department.

bears and squares

I am toying (sorry) with the idea of going into mass stuffed animal production for the craft-site market to see if i can earn a few quid. It's about time i stood on my own two feet again.
I seem to have problems with 2D to 3D visualisation. I struggled all of last week, looking at patterns on the web, studying bears (real beautiful brown ones) and teddy versions of my own. Eventually i came up with this creature - only the head so far, more canine than ursine:

I shall have to be careful about the inevitable cat hairs when i go into business.

Also, i've begun another knitted bear. It's a pattern i used before for a bear for my friend's baby. This one is bigger as i have used bigger wool and bigger needles - just wanted to see if it grew larger proportionately. 'Real' eyes, noses and, most excitingly, cotter-pin joints are on order! I have a lot of strong opinions on teddy bears and one of them is that they must be articulated if they are to do their job properly.

Presumably there would be copyright issues if i used somebody else's pattern? I'm keen to make my own modifications anyway.

....and finally, 4 more pieces for the blanket:

lino print

I've finished part 3 of the lino triptych (always wanted to use that word) that i began last year. It's the square one in the middle, 30x30cm. Needs a bit of tidying up.

My lino-cuts are gradually getting neater but something's gone very wrong with tools lately; mine were all blunt so i ordered some more from ebay - what i thought would be years' worth of size 1's - but found the wings of the blades were sort of facing forward instead of backward. So i returned them saying they must be seconds, then bought a box from Fred Aldous. But these were the same. I think a different company is making the blades and they just don't cut. At great expense i bought a 1mm, wooden handled gouge from GreatArt made by Dastra. This is a joy to use but doesn't cut as finely as i'm used to. Does anyone know what happened to the old cutters that fitted into a red-plastic handle? I used to put the 1's and 3's into a vice, heat them up and squeeze them with pliers to get fine cuts. 

blankey update

Here are 4 more rectangles for the blanket. The plum coloured creature is supposed to be my old beloved dog Daisy (who passed away last year). She was black and not exactly this shape but the resultant intarsia being has it's own charm. My rectangle-a-night progress was held up by the ginger cat which i was determined to get as right as i could and took 3 evenings; it's Boris, my 3-legged ginger 1-year-old.

moth macro

Over the Summer, i fell back in love with photography as more than merely a means of recording personal landmarks (such as building the greenhouse) or 'it shouldn't happen to a dog/cat/John' type of event. I am particularly enamoured of the close-up at the moment with true Macro being the ultimate, glittering prize.
Luckily i had a good compact and managed some nice close-ups of flowers and garden spiders. Then i used the catalogue to buy my first digital SLR. I found a lovely Russian 50mm lens on Ebay and today i made a huge leap closer to the goal by using some cheap tubes. I'm really pleased with these photographs of a dead moth which i've kept in my subjects-for-the-microscope jar for years.

36 easy pieces

I'm between Name-Cushions at the moment and so have embarked upon my first blanket. I'm aiming for 5'x4' made up of 36 10x8 and a 1/2 inch (approximately) rectangles which is 6 down and 5 across; 18 patterned and 18 plain. I can make one patterned one a night if i'm not distracted. Here's the first 3:

The purple is much more vibrant in real life - for some reason it never photographs well. The yarns are a mixture of acrylic, wool and blends. Cheap acrylics (Hayfield Bonus) are great for bright colours in bit-parts on this sort of job, 'though i did splash out in the night on a couple of bright balls of Rowan Felted Tweed to liven and class things up. I'll be on the plain rectangles until it arrives.
  When all the parts are connected, i'll sew it to a fleece backing which will hide the messy back and make it really cosy.