Malayan Tapir

A long time ago, a good friend commissioned me to needle felt a Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus), the largest of the four species of tapir (and, like all of them, endangered).

The kicker: I had to do its baby, too. Which in this case ended up being the smallest cretur I've ever made, at only an inch tall and balancing on two legs. It was quite a challenge, and I learned many things from it, one of them being that claws made of Sculpey not only look better, but they also make it easier for the cretur to stand. With such a precariously balanced pose, it was an important discovery to make!

More pictures after the cut:

Plush You!

Have you heard of Plush You? It's an annual art show based in Seattle (it has traveled in the past to LA and San Francisco) full of the a lot of the best plush and fiber toys known to man, or at least to the internet. This year I am in it! Ahh oh my god I'm so excited!

The opening is this Friday, Oct 14, 5-9 PM, at Schmancy.

I fully expect everyone in or around Seattle to be there on time and snappily dressed. But if you, like me, are far away and can't or won't see the show, you can at least have a look at the pieces I sent:

I know it looks like a real animal but it's a hare head on a dog body

I did not mean to deceive you, this is just not a thing that exists

Finally another alebrije! Yaaaaaay!

Ernst Haeckel's anemones

Back in June, the Mad Scientists of Etsy issued a challenge – create something inspired by Ernst Haeckel.

Being a big fan of the man's illustrations, I looked among his many plates for something that looked a. more like an interpretation of a creature than an easily recognizable animal, and b. was doable in wool (as opposed to, say, something like this). And so I came upon his Actiniae plate:

and decided to start this adventure with the little orange fella at the bottom right corner. Who, in real life, actually looks like this:

After a lot of work and some thrilling experimentation with steam dyeing using a spray bottle and a vegetable steamer, the result was this:

 It looks like the illustration and not much like the real anemone, which is a departure from my usual modus operandi, but an enjoyable one.
It makes a really nice desk companion. Sort of a cheerful marine sunflower that always faces you.

Happy October, Cretur Fetur Comeback Month!

Hello everyone!

I know, it's been a long time. I left the blog with no warning in the middle of a series of posts about an animal behavior conference. I did not get kidnapped or anything... mostly what happened is I went to Serbia. It was pretty amazing, and I'm still uploading photos. Here's a couple just to show I ain't lyin':

View of the Sava river from Kalemegdan fort (that's me in the foreground!)

Inside of a Church in Sremski Karlovci

Part of Tito's collection of relay staffs (that's not me in the foreground)

I also took a bit of time off of the hectic race to keep up with commissions, in order to explore other ideas that I had knocking around. I'll be bringing you up to speed little by little, dear blog. Let's do this in chronological order, shall we?

If you follow me on Tumblr, Facebook, or Twitter, you may have already seen some of these photos. But you certainly haven't seen them all, and anyway it's nice to have it all in one place.

For today, here's a couple of pigs that think they may have heard a noise in the house at night. They are not certain, but their little minds are racing with horrible possibilities.

The green one has already been taken away to a hopefully less alarming home, but the violet one is still up for grabs, and even more terrified now that she's got no one to speculate and go "oh god oh god what was that" with. Please take her, I have things to do and can't go around comforting pigs all the time!