Flamingos and penguins and mittnz -- OH MY!!

Just when you though the onslaught of birds was finished .....

MORE!!












This is the latest of the flamingos

I've been doing variations of these funny birds for several years, and just about the time I'm thinking "ok, we're DONE!", someone comes along and buys one and I decide to do "just ONE more"

this particular bird is the best of the bunch I think (evidence that continued practice improves the product perhaps)

Occasionally I get a remnant of feather finish mohair that is actually an appropriately pink color, but not recently, so the pink of this one is a hand dyed piece (would you believe I used Wilton paste food color for this one? -- that actually makes a GREAT dye!!)

His beak is made of two colors of upholstry velour. Prior birds had a lighter yellowish piece instead of this very burnt orange color, and I like this much better.

there is a joint where the neck meets the body so his head can be turned to get the cute pose I did here in the close up shot

Glass eyes and stiff, self supporting legs complete the package

I think he's rather fetching!!














For about 3 years I have done a penguin named "Bill" -- he was short, had little wings and a very long beak, each one of them wore a hand knit scarf. Cute, but after making quite a number of them, I'M DONE! (turning the long very thin beak was a royal pain in the butt every time!)

But penguins, just because they have that cute black and white formal wear thing going on are a great eye catcher in the booth, so we decided we'd try to design a new one.

Well, this little birdie took us almost 6 months to figure out!! For one thing, a bird with an open beak is a whole new challenge (and I'm still not totally satisfied with this one, but its pretty good)

As you can see, he has very long wings that are attached just below the neck joint, and they have a very stiff floral wire inside that allows them to be posed in a number of cute positions

This one has those expressive bright yellow eyebrows above the glass eyes -- the yellow was hand colored with an alcohol based ink marker -- and I've already decided that the next one will have larger eyes

Something about penguins just says to me "I need something draped around my neck", and while the last design had long fringed scarves, this one wears an 8 mm crystal "ice cube" on a string of smaller crystal beads. You know -- penguin -- ice cubes -- hmmmmmm

We'll see how this is received at the next show




Pair number 5 of the Mittnz!

Don't you love the almost floresant blue of these -- a lovely soft wool -- like silk, wool just seems to glow in some colors

So, now I'm working on pair #6, and closing in on the 8 pair goal!!

Last night I put the last quilting stitch into the quilt and removed the last pin. Now its on to the binding!! This means I will have 2 large Christmas projects completed by the end of April -- HURRAH!!

time to get busy