The happy versatility of spherecreturs

For a while back in my youth (i.e. about two years ago) I made little spherepigs. They were clumsy beginner things, cute but not really the most impressive shows of craftsmanship.

Musclepig, unloved for all his lifetime, now a permanent resident of the Cretur Box.

Apricot pig. ... That's all there is to say, really.

So I tried to make them more interesting. First there was a holiday-themed one that ended up being given away at a craft fair. I don't know who got it, or even if anyone ever did; for all I know it floats in the ether and makes woeful little snorting sounds at midnight on Halloween:

Pumpkin pig. Getting better.

Then one ended up pink for some reason, so I decided to take it all the way and experiment with adding appendages:

My favorite part is the little swirly dollop of hair

After the moderate success of the flying pink pig, there were no more pigs for a long time. I didn't want to repeat the pink one and cash in on cuteness; instead, I wanted to start a deal where anyone would be able to make up their own completely custom spherepig. But no one seemed interested in the idea. After a lot of awkward marketing, someone finally took me up on the offer, and I was so happy to make this:

Sort of the evil twin of the pink one

But then it never happened again.

In fact, after that, several aspects of life converged to make a big mess and there were no creturs at all for a while. I lost practice and inspiration, and despite how much I love what I do, I couldn't bring myself to start a good respectable sculpture.

One day, sitting in front of the computer and a bottle of beer, I forced myself to do a warmup exercise. This is what happened:

LEONARDO LEADS

Ninja Turtles make everything better. Revived by the triumph of my decapitated 80's nostalgia trophy, I rediscovered COURAGE and HONOR and PIZZA and I started poking wool constantly again.

And so, all spherecreturs since have been a lot more interesting and I am actually proud of them. THANK YOU, LEONARDO.

This one, which you may remember from a previous post, is based on a doodle by Stevan Zivadinovic and was given to Phil Barbato as a Christmas present:

Another one where my favorite part is the hair. Little nub-hair!

Then I made two more pigs, very quickly, to contribute to a team challenge from the Plush Team:

I seem to have gotten better at eyes, at least.

The last two were both made last month, were both commissions, and have not been posted here before. They also both like long walks on the beach and mimosas, probably.

The first is a ladybug, pretty straightforward, first cretur where I've dared to use bare pipe cleaners as limbs:

Ladybug, or ladybird, or lady beetle (Coccinella magnifica)

And the second is a wintertime quail, poofing up to keep warm:

California quail (Callipepla californica)

I don't know what the lesson is in all of this but I am sure there is one.

Anyway, I never liked pigs. I know, I know, pigs are cool, pigs are smart, pigs can eat anything, pigs have 6-hour-long orgasms, etc. For a person who has been keenly interested in animals her whole life, I am sure it is pretty weird that I don't like pigs, but listen: they are so smart and so fleshy that they just make me think of gross people. It's an uncanny valley sort of feeling. Did I start making spherepigs as a subconscious way to cope with my strong dislike of pigs? Probably not, or if I did it certainly didn't work. But at least it yielded a lot of experiments and learning opportunities, and looking at the whole history of spherecreturs makes me feel like, at least, I'm advancing.

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!

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.

S is for September and Spherepig

Spherepigs! They are great! It is their month!

What does this mean? It means you can get your very own one-of-a-kind spherepig, that you can design yourself!

These are pigs I've made before:

You can design your own custom pig by going to my Etsy shop, clicking on the Custom Spherepig item, and choosing from the following options to build your pig:

Color - Midnight blue, turquoise, bright aqua, neon green, forest green, yellow, amber, apricot, bright orange, baby pink, neon pink, strawberry red, bright red, dark red, plum purple, chestnut, chocolate brown, black, silver gray.

Size - Anywhere between an inch and a half and 3 inches in circumference.

Eyes - Large or small, solid color or over white, whatever color you like from the ones listed above, whatever distance from each other.

Extras - Legs, wings, a tail, a mohawk, a curl of hair, whatever you can think of!

Here are some examples that I just drew, of what your pig could look like:

A pig and a preview

Introducing the new model of pig, Flying Pig (which sold immediately):

Bye, apricot pig!

The apricot pig got claimed on Friday, so I get to use my neato handmade stamp for the first time:

Bye, pig! Have fun!

Photo-heavy post!

TA-DAH! My best alebrije ever!

And to take full advantage of the loveliness of today's light (and the camera I borrowed from my friend Catherine), I re-photographed everybody else as well. Here's some photos of my two most sadly unloved creturs, whom I love enough to compensate for the public's apathy, I guess.

Bradford! You sexy heartbreaker.

Muscle pig! You hideously deformed bundle of love!

A wealth of hyenas, two pigs, and a bird in progress