Two pink things

I made a tiny axolotl.

It looked to me like a strong and steady worker, so I gave it lots of jobs.

fascinator

pin

and magnet.


I also made a strange creature of the deep, a fleshy-bodied angler fish, the Coffinfish.
This one I just kinda let sit around. It has a distaste for work. And sunlight.

Kea - the remake

As you may know, I often repeat animals. Bats and axolotls are frequently revisited species here at Cretur Fetur. But I've remade other things, like the hoatzin. I intend to make some awesome hyenas soon, too. Before them, though, I remade another bird.

Weighing in at about two pounds, it's the clever little New Zealand parrot, the clown of the mountains, the terror of sheep livers, the kea!

New and improved Nestor notabilis!

There's many things I did differently here. First, the embroidery. That was an adventure! I've never embroidered anything before, and I think sadly in some places it kinda shows.

Well, it's not too bad.

Second, the feet. I seem to have discovered the Terrible Secret of Bird Feet. I'm positively thrilled by the results!

LITTLE CLAWS AWW

Third, proportions. I seem to have a better grasp on that nowadays.

before

after

In summary, remakes are not always a bad idea. And it's always good to remember where you started and keep experimenting!

Tamandua, or lesser anteater

There are two species in the anteater genus Tamandua: the Northern Tamandua, which lives in the jungles of Mexico and usually has a well-defined "vest", and the Southern Tamandua, whose vest is a bit blurrier around the edges. There are also some differences in skull shape and gestation periods, but since both species have a lot of individual color variation, it's really difficult to tell the difference between them just by looking, even if you have a specimen of each side by side.

Having said all of that, when I made this one I had the Southern Tamandua (Tamandua tetradactyla) in mind. But if it makes any difference to you, you can imagine that it's a Northern (Tamandua mexicana).

Tamandua tetradactyla

More photos:

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.

Bats- group photo

Oh my god, look at all these bats!

Today's stars are the Mexican Freetail and the Little Brown Bat, both of whom I've made before, but you'd hardly be able to tell considering how different all my creturs are from each other. What can I say, consistency is dull.

Mr. Freetail

Mr. Brown

2010 Secret Santa presents: three-cretur photodump!

Last year I overzealously plunged into not one, not two, but three secret santa gift trades. I will probably keep it to a maximum of two in the future, but I can't deny that I'm very pleased with the results. I'll make this a two-parter; today I will post photos of the presents I sent, and later (as soon as I receive the third present, or maybe sooner) I will post photos of the ones I got.

I present to you the Mr. Burns Toad (a new species discovered a couple of months ago in Colombia), an octopus, and a spheredoodle:

I do not know this creature's scientific name! O noes!

They went to different people, but they had time for friendship

More pictures after "read more":

A raccoon and some tapir sketches

Even though I finished this guy a couple of weeks ago, I hadn't posted it because it was commissioned as a SECRET CHRISTMAS PRESENT and the recipient probably reads my blog on occasion. I'm pretty sure it has been delivered by now, so no surprises will be spoiled!

Procyon lotor

There are and will be more secret Christmas presents, but one has not arrived to its destination yet and two more are actually for Orthodox Christmas (Jan 7), so they will not be posted until after that date in order to not spoil anything for anyone. I really hate spoilers.

More raccoon photos and some HOT EXCLUSIVE TAPIR PLANNING:

A lot o' lotls

Yeah I'm gonna run that joke into the ground.

So, remember the axolotls-in-progress that I posted a while ago? I have finally finished them all! There are still many more to come but there's a big chance that it will get kind of repetitive after a while, so I'm just going to make this last exciting axolotl post full of color and variety, and keep subsequent axolotls to myself and my Flickr page.

Here are three varieties of axolotl:

Golden albino, melanoid, and leucistic.

These all exist, and in fact there's several more different colors of axolotl. Here is an excellent resource if you want to learn more about it.

wheeee

More pictures under the "read more":

A pig and a yeener

Today is an important day, because today I say goodbye to the very first thing I ever needlefelted. It's the littlest hyena, and he's going to someone who will probably appreciate him even more than I, so hooray little yeen!

Here is the companion watercolor:

And last night I finished a custom spherepig live on the internet! Thanks to everyone who accompanied me on my first livestream and watched me finish this guy:

HELLPIG

I will definitely do more livestreaming in the future, possibly in a couple of weeks. I'll be sure to let you know in advance.

What I'm working on right now

Well, I think it's gonna be a long long time til I make creturs of my own design. Commissions got me buried; am I sad? Oh, no, no no! It's a challenge, man! Got a plan: finish all these orders, then make more!

Anyway here's the very beginning of the holiday rush of custom cretur orders, and the reason why there will be no fetured creturs (and also no more commissions) until like March when I finally defeat the monster of a million orders.

Three axolotls in progress! Everybody loves a 'lotl.

And while this was happening, hyenas and pigs were also getting claimed! So here is the beginning of a hyena watercolor, which I just started about an hour ago:

It's gonna be badass because anything with hyenas in it is badass.

First craft fair + three bats! (Photo heavy post)

Last Saturday, Cretur Fetur made its first real world appearance.

I was rolling wool in my hands, not applauding myself

It was a highly instructive experience, and more fun than I expected. Most of the time I was frantically trying to finish another skull, another zombie head, and another bat – two out of three while selling other stuff ain't bad! I also gave four pumpkin needle felting classes, which are definitely something I'd like to keep doing in the future (but made me aware of my faults as a teacher, such as focusing on my own example-thing too much and not enough on the students).

Tons more photos, including some neato bats, under the fold:

Goodbye, chevrotain!

Here is the watercolor drawing on the companion Cretur Card:

And here is a very terrible picture of the mouse-deer preparing for the most epic voyage it's had in its entire existence:

Bye bye, Tragulus napu!

Greater Chevrotain - Tragulus napu

Finally finished! I'm tired and hungry so I'm just gonna dump these photos here and go have myself some shepherd's pie with grass-fed buffalo meat and watch Godfather II. OH YEAH.

 

Remember this guy?

 Yep, still working on it...

Bye, second axolotl!

So, based on my previous axolotl, I thought this would take me 3-5 days, and it did, but they were awfully hectic. No one should allow me to make time estimates ever again.

I did some improvements on the design, as usual, and I am so freaking happy with this little salamander that for the first time ever I'm actually a little sad to let him go.

Ambystoma mexicanum

Here's the watercolor card that goes with it:

Preview of the chevrotain

This is what I've been working on, among other things:

Just needs some legs, ears, eyes, and a tail... maybe it'll be done by next week.

As for one of those other things I'm working on, I'll post something resembling a preview sometime later this week!

Mexican free-tailed bat. Yes, again! And goodbye to it!

Like the second hoatzin, this Bat II was commissioned and thus was fated to fly away as soon as the final needle stab fell upon its fuzzy abdomen.  Like the first hoatzin, I still had the first bat, because its owner has not yet picked it up.

Also like the second hoatzin, I improved upon the second bat a little:

More pictures under the fold.