The Latest Enthusiasm

I'm a little like my mother.  Okay, a lot.  I've mentioned in the past that she's always been quite talented in many, many ways.  She didn't always stick with whatever she did but by golly, she mastered it before moving on to the next thing.

I tend to circle back around to mine.  Sometimes a long time goes by (like with the crochet, which I'm still doing, by the way) and sometimes it takes less time.  Last year, I was introduced to making felt tree ornaments.  It was fun.  It was cheap.  I did it a lot!

For some reason, this year a lot of people I know were having babies.  I whipped out the crochet hook and made six (!) baby blankets in fairly short order.  Some of them also already had one kid, who was about to be displaced as king/queen of the house, so I decided to include a sibling gift as well.  One little girl moved into her new room this year, decorated especially for her with her favorite colors and themes - nature, especially owls.  After wracking my brain for a gift for her, I tumbled to those felt animals from last year and wondered if I could make her an owl only bigger than an ornament.  I could.

This isn't the owl.  I tried a couple of different versions.  The original went to the little girl with the new baby sister.  This one went to a little girl at church.

I was so pleased with how they came out that I turned my brain to a possibility for another new big sister who, according to her mother, is a real girly-girl who loves pink, purple, unicorns and ballerinas.  I don't know much about ballet, but the unicorn - that I could work with.

This one I found online.  Just the pattern with no instructions.  And it was actually for a horse, so I had to make up the horn (which wasn't tough).  But I was really on my own.  I used felt, then had to figure out how to do a mane and tale with what I had on hand.

When I posted a picture of my white unicorn on FaceBook, another friend's daughter saw her and fell in love.  So I made this pink one for her.  Tried something different with the mane so this one's kind of punk - that mane just doesn't want to lay down.  In this case, the improvement will probably send me back to my original method.  She's waiting to go - all I need is an address.

Not long after I finished the pink unicorn, I was standing in line at JoAnn Fabrics.  It was a long line and they have a rack of magazines to keep customers happy while they wait.  One the cover of one was a little boy holding a red dragon.  Of course I had to pick it up.  One, it was a dragon.  Two, it was red.  Those two things together speak to my Welsh soul.  I bought the magazine because it had - wait for it - a pattern inside for that dragon.  I pulled it out and photocopied it in various sizes and promptly misplaced the magazine and the instructions - but I still had the pieces!  I had hoped to finish one for my son before Christmas, but it just didn't happen.  But I stayed up last night trying to work it through and once I did, I made some adjustments and added a couple of pieces of my own and did it again.

The blue one was the first one.  He has ears, which my son is adamantly against.  The purple one has two horns (which isn't apparent in this picture).  He also has a couple of extra gussets to give him more dimension and I used more alternate color on him - which doesn't show up well in this picture.  The first one was blue with purple accents on his belly and wings.  The second one was purple with blue accents, including his spike this time.  I'll keep working on perfecting my dragons.  They have really caught my fancy! 

So my felt animal enthusiasm has returned with avengence.   I'm still crocheting too.