(Incredibly Uncomplicated) Cat!

Wow, it has been some time since I last posted anything on this blog.  Time flies when you can barely remember where you are from day-to-day.

I haven't been anywhere, I just haven't had much time/inclination to write things, and the few blog posts I have written have been more suited to my other blog.

In fact, I'm going to push you over there to read my post about Batgirl, if you haven't done so already.

I recently finished that cat I mentioned in my last post.

It wasn't terribly complicated, but it took me a while to make due to the fact that I hardly gave it any time at all and I was stitching it by hand.  I probably could have run it up on a sewing machine in a flash, but the point of this whole exercise is to have a skill that doesn't require electricity.

And, besides, sewing machines and power tools scare me.  At least the damage I can do with a hand tool is limited to the strength of my hands.

So, here is the cat:

I made it out of the sleeves of a recycled polo shirt.  I'm pretty much getting all of my materials out of recycled clothes.  I'll pay for actual material when I stop making a hash of the stitching.

I'm getting better, but I still need a lot more practice.  The tale was actually a bit of a sticking point for me - I spent a couple of weeks trying to convince myself I wanted to make it so I could finish the darn cat.  I might make a bear next (equally incredibly uncomplicated) just to avoid that dip in the momentum.

Mouse/vole!

I forgot to mention!  I finished my other pocket mouse/vole thingy!

I have now made two (count 'em - two!) toys.  And I've even started working on a new one (a cat this time, for balance).

There are a few mistakes that I've repeated on the second mouse/vole, but that's because I don't actually know how to sew anything more complicated than a back stitch and a cross-stitch, so it took a while for me to figure out exactly what a ladder stitch was (not what I was doing, that's for sure).

But I shall improve.  I shall make more toys.  I shall be a toy maker!

This one has a tail (so not a manx mouse/vole thingy), but I didn't give him any whiskers.  The other one had whiskers, but no tail.

I'm not sure whether I should have given Number Two whiskers or not.  I wasn't 100% sold on the whiskers for Number One, but now I think they add a certain something...

I have made a toy!

I promised photos, didn't I?

Okay, so, when push comes to shove it's really more of a "Manxvole" than a "Manxmouse" (I'll probably discuss that book at some point over on my other blog) - and it's riddled with errors.  But that's what first attempts are for, right?

Yeah, it took me a while.  When you only give something a few minutes a night, and you take a week or so between nights, something that might only be a couple of hours' work can stretch out a bit.  Especially when you've never done this sort of thing before, so everything takes a bit longer anyway.

I'm now starting on the second vole/mouse, and it should be a bit of a smoother process.

I shall make a slightly better mouse/vole.  And it shall have a tail that has been tested for disintegration (so hopefully won't do that).

The important thing is - it has begun.  I have started.  If I can just make myself continue, then I'll be onto something good.

Of Mice, Shoelaces, Toys and Books

Well, I've actually started making some toys.  I will be a toymaker, and I shall be a toymaker.  One day I will be able to introduce myself to people by saying "Hi, I'm Sharon and I'm a toymaker".

I'm starting with a pair of pocket mice.

They are "pocket mice" because I'm making them out of the pockets of a recycled pair of denim shorts.  The process has not been without some complications.

I chose to start with a mouse because it's one of the simplest patterns I've found - a simple body with some ears and a tail sewn on.  It's supposed to be made out of man-made fur and felt, but I had the denim scraps handy, so denim it is!

I had only intended to make one, but I stuffed up a rather simple step - reversing the pattern to get both sides of the mouse.  I had two left sides and no right sides.  Fortunately, I may be an idiot but I'm also a thinker, so I just made the same mistake in reverse and decided to make two mice instead of one.

Then there was a slight problem with the tails.

The wool I was going to use to make the tails had been damaged (a storage issue), so I decided to use an old pair of shoe laces I had lying around the place.

As I was tacking the shoelaces in place, it occurred to me that I was actually using a spare pair of laces from my old school shoes - 25+ years after I'd thrown out the shoes in question.  A) I still had the laces, b) I knew exactly where they were, and c) I was getting some use out of them.  If this had actually worked, I might never be able to throw out anything else ever again.

Fortunately, cheap Chinese shoelaces from the 80s actually are crap.  They didn't break on me all the time when I was a kid because I was incredibly strong, they were just rubbish.  So I would have been perfectly justified in throwing them out, and should have thrown them out years ago.

Unfortunately, I discovered this when the tale on my first mouse disintegrated as I was turning the body right-side out.  Replacing the tale would have required unpicking most of the dang mouse, so I just said "This one's a Manxmouse" and left it sans tail.

That, of course, made me want to reread Paul Gallico's Manxmouse, which has a dear place in my heart.  It was one of the first chapter books ever read to me when I was a child - and it was read to me by my aunt when we were on vacation.

I can't remember much about that vacation, but I can remember my aunt reading me this book every night.

I've kept that copy all these years, but I realised that I hadn't actually read it for myself.  So now I'm essentially reading it for the first time.

After reading the first few chapters, I had a brief moment of doubt when sewing the ears on my pocket Manxmouse.  The blue colour of the denim was actually spot on for a Manxmouse but, by rights, if I was making a Manxmouse I should make the ears long and rabbit shaped with pink insides.  My ears were cut out when I thought I was just making a mouse...

I just decided to give it normal ears.  Partly because I already had them, and partly because I didn't have anything pink to turn into new ears.  If I ever make a Manxmouse on purpose, I'll make sure I get the ears right.

I'm starting with the mice.  Then I'm going to try a duck, perhaps.  Maybe graduate onto bears at some point.  The key is to do it again.

I have a tendency to do something once and then neglect to get around to repeating the effort.  If I can make a few mice, I'll get better at the mice.  If I can make a few ducks or bears or what have you, then I'll get better at making toys in general.

When I get to the point where I regularly make toys and feel as if I could say to another person "Yes, I will sell you this toy for actual money", then I will feel confident to say I am a toymaker.


Yeah, yeah, pictures are coming.  Give me a break - I can't think of everything, you know.  Besides I've been too busy taking pictures of the new bike.  Post on that coming soon.

Toys R Addictive

Confession time – it has been several Mondays since I mentioned my plan to try to set aside a night a week to make things, and so far I haven’t made a blessed thing.

Well, I did decorate an Easter tree with hand-made paper baubles, but I’m not counting that.  There’s craft and then there’s craft.

However, I have developed a new hobby – obsessively staring at toys to see how they were made.

I’ve lost the ability to walk past a teddy bear.  I have to pick it up and pour over it to see how its butt was stitched together.

I’ve been borrowing books about toy making from my public library – which is the way I usually take up new “hobbies”:  vicariously, through books.  Sure, I haven’t made anything from any of the books yet, but I have developed a much better understanding of and appreciation for how toys are put together.

Most soft toys are actually remarkably simple, and the more I look at them the more I think “I could do that!”

Of course, as someone who hasn’t touched a sewing machine since high school (and was particularly bad at sewing at the time) I may be completely delusional.

But, still.  Even if I haven’t graduated onto making toys as a hobby, I’ve well and truly taken up looking at toys as a hobby.  It’s not as active, but oddly addictive.

A tree begins

So, it occurred to me that Easter is coming up shortly.

This is not new information, but it has still been catching me by surprise for weeks.

I haven't got long, but I've decided to make another Easter Tree (or Osterbaum, for all you Germanic folk out there).

I found a suitable branchy thing for a small scale tree and I'm just going to steadily decorate it between now and the end of Thursday.

Look, Cuboid (my little wooden robot, which I may or may not have bought with money I was going to put towards buying a novelty bicycle or a plastic euphonium) is helping:

Which is great, because earlier in the day he was just sitting around the place, thinking.

Such a poser.

Toying with an idea

At the end of my street (or the middle, depending on your perspective) there's a cluster of shops that have been there pretty much since the neighbourhood was built.

Back in the day it was a thriving hub with a butcher, a baker, a barber, a book exchange, a convenience store, a chemist, a number of takeaway shops, a green grocer, a paper shop and a video lending library - and sundry other things I can't even remember.  For the past twenty or so years, however, most business have changed hands several times, some have gone away only for someone else to try (with varying degrees of success) to bring them back and others have disappeared entirely.

As a result, I can't remember the last time there wasn't an empty shop or two amongst the store fronts.

I often find myself wondering what I would sell if I owned a shop.  When I walk past empty shops, I frequently stop for a moment to think "What would I put in there?"

I've never worked in a shop in my life, let alone tried to manage one.  Whenever I speak to small business owners I get the distinct impression that they are tired, stressed out and slowly losing the will to live.

This is a world where, whatever it is you want to sell, someone somewhere is selling a cheaper, nastier version for a price you can't afford to match if you want to keep your head above water.  And we all go buy the cheap thing, no matter how much we want to support the local shops or encourage the creation of quality goods.

I know I'll probably never own a shop.  Quite frankly, I don't think I have the stamina.  But if I did...

I'd like to own a toyshop.

Oh, sure, I've often wanted to own a book shop, or a news agency.  These days you have to be both to survive.  But the shops I love the most are toyshops.

In a perfect world, if I could afford such shenanigans, I would have a shop that sold toys, puzzles, curiosities, books, cakes, confectionary and coffee - much like Reliquaire in Tasmania, only with less freaky dolls.  There's something really disturbing about walking into a room full of freaky dolls.  All those little frozen faces that all look like they're staring at something just over your shoulder...

But I digress.

People would walk into my shop and think "Wow, look at all this amazing stuff" and the presence of so much cool stuff would make them want to buy something so that they could feel part of the fun.  At the very least they would buy a jigsaw puzzle or a cup of coffee and a piece of cake.

But lately I've been experiencing another whim.  What if, rather than simply having a shop full of interesting and amazing toys, I had a shop full of toys that were hand-made?  By local craftspeople in the town?  Or maybe...

What if I made them myself?  Instead of just being a toy seller (already kind of cool), I could be a toymaker...

How's that for a job?  Making teddy bears, dolls, wooden trains, puzzles, rocking horses, figurines...

There are many reasons why this idea is just plain silly.  But that doesn't make it any less fun to dream about.

And a girl can dream, can't she?

The Dragon

I have a plastic dragon on my desk at home.  It’s an expensive toy I saw in an expensive toyshop, and I liked the look of it, so I bought it.  It’s not one of those new-agey things that people get because dragons are so, like, spiritual, ya know?  It’s a genuine plastic toy. 

It’s the kind of thing you might buy if you were a six year old boy who wanted to play dragons and warriors (and had parents willing to buy the expensive stuff).  I also bought a centaur and a gryphon (with a birdman riding it!) at the same time, so it really is dragons-and-monsters type stuff.

I bought it partly because I’ve always loved the kinds of toys they make for six-year-old boys*, and partly because it’s beautiful.  It’s just a glorious model.  Whoever sculpted the original just did a lovely job.  It’s so wonderfully detailed. 

You can see webbing in the skin of the wings, the tongues (two heads) are ever-so-subtly forked and there are various patterns of scaling in different parts of the body.  There are slightly different horns on each of the heads (intentionally so – not from lack of attention) and the musculature in the arms and legs is anatomically sound.  It’s also quite well weighted and balanced.

The paint has been applied by hand by someone who (although no doubt following a chart as he or she painted several hundred identical dragons) payed attention to shade and detailing.  It’s not perfect, but it also isn’t slap-dash and careless.  And whoever designed the details of the paint work did a great job.

The toy is a mass-produced plastic figure pumped out of some factory in China, but it is well designed and well executed.  It’s lovely.  The design and detail on the centaur and gryphon are also very well done, but this dragon is a thing of great beauty.  And yet, so many people would probably just see “plastic toy dragon” and assume it was therefor ineligible to be “art”.

We often dismiss things just because they are mass produced, or made for an audience we don’t want to be associated with or don’t respect (like children).  We fail to see the beauty and the art that went into the original design.  I have yet to see a “proper” sculpture that could top this dragon for attention to detail and depth of imagination.  A lot of figurines are like that, though – they are wonderful sculptures in miniature, and we just don’t see the art through the plastic.

So here’s to the artists behind the toys:  occasionally, someone notices how good your work is, and they are amazed (and hats off in particular to whoever designed the two-headed dragon in Papo’s 2005 toy line – you rock).

*Admit it - they have the coolest toys.