Friday 2 January 2009

Conversations with felt animals

This evening I am home alone. HWSNBN and Vlad have gone out drinking together and sometimes it is more fun without me. I have a book and the Internet to keep me company. And, funnily enough, a lot of tidying to do; it being the story of my life and all that.

Yesterday I made an evil flying pig out of felt. Perhaps I should put a photo of him on here. Hold on a minute...
There he is with his friend the Wonky Sheep (whose legs do not sit at each corner like those of a Normal Sheep, but which sit in different places, like those of a sheep specially adapted to stand on a very specific bit of rough terrain), asking two questions:*
  1. Why did I just stick a wire up his bum** to make it look like he was flying in a photograph? It hurt and he was not impressed;
  2. Given my photo-taking exploits of the past few days, why can I still not make the camera focus on objects which are close to me? Is it an innate deficiency in my brain, do I need more practice (he begs that I do not practise on him while he is impaled in an unfortunate place), or do I need a new camera? Being in rather a bad mood, he suspects that it is the former. He is bitter and resentful that I did not make the photograph I took, in which he was so carefully impaled as to look as though he was flying, count. I had better not publish it here; it is not very good.
The Wonky Sheep does not know the answers to his questions, of course, despite being many days older than the Flying Pig, and thus having so much more Life Experience. Wonky Sheep does not have eyes, you see, and cannot conceive of a photograph, nor why it would be useful. He does, however, opine that perhaps I should get out more.



*The two questions to which I refer, of course, are the ones at the beginning of each bullet point. Which is shaped like a number just to confuse me.

**Well, where would you stick it? The hole that it left is entirely appropriate in context. The pig is glowering at me. Perhaps I should not have given it eyes. Also, given that he was made by a process of stabbing a ball of wool with a needle repeatedly, you would have thought he would have built up a tolerance for such things by now.

4 comments:

Lisa Moon said...

Oh, I am familiar with the stabbing of the animals! Well, ok, so I haven't stabbed animals in particular, but I have used a similar technique on unsuspecting signs and wall-hangings. You might try those, they tend to glower quite less than pigs and sheeps.

Perhaps we BOTH should aim to get out a bit more?

Oh, and *do* be careful with those special needles; they are QUITE nasty if you grip them the wrong way!

Optistatic said...

I have only stabbed 3d things so far - I have created a few sunsets, but I used wet felting for them. I have ordered a couple of books on the subject (excellent idea - work out how to do it, decide I like it, and only the find out if I am doing it right), and shall be finding out how to make Japanese animals. I wonder who might possibly benefit from that...

I got out this evening, to the pub, for 1 1/2 hours! I drank expensive cordial (winter berries - surprisingly yummy) and chatted for a bit. Then I came home.

The special needles I have seem reasonably tame - I think that they are the gentle sort. In the near future I shall obtain some slightly more effective needles and proceed to do myself some real damage (so far it has just been unprovoked stabbings; poor left thumb).

Lisa Moon said...

Oh, that sounds exciting! And Japanese animals would be wonderful. :)

How lovely to get out to the pub! Expensive cordial sounds well-deserved and enjoyable, too.

The needles I had used were about 4 inches long? and had several little thorn-like protrusions nearest the sharp end which gripped the wool for stabbing. These suckers DO rather hurt should you attempt to use your skin as wool. I don't recommend this.

Please keep your damage to a minimum! Wouldn't want to miss any updates due to thickly-bandaged digits. :)

Optistatic said...

My needles are also about 4 inches long, but the protrusions are more intrusions, as they go inwards. Quite meek and mild. I am not looking forward to the damage I will inflict on myself when I get hold of some proper needles, which I have seen but have never been able to buy (if you spend over £25 in the shop, they increase the shipping charge; I have to whittle down my desired items until they come under this price, and the wool is such pretty colours that the needles do not get a look-in).

I don't really see the connection between bandaged fingers and updates. It's not as though the lack of bandaged fingers has left me productive, or anything! ;-) However, an update may be on its way tomorrow. I have slightly non-uninteresting news...