Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Ba-DUM:

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Ba-DUM, ba-DUM:
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Ba-DUM, Ba-DUM, ba-DUM-ba-Dum-Ba-DUM

(well, you try rendering a 4/4 D minor arpeggio with violin sostenuto - or however Mr. Krabs put it - in words):

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I think we're gonna need a bigger smaller boat.

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This is the shark from Kath Dalmeny's World of Knitted Toys. I'd been planning on making one for a while, but when they advertised "Shark Week" on The Discovery Channel (which is next week and not this week, as I had originally assumed), I figured it was apropos to do one now.

I wound up giving him a rather goofy benign face (yeah, yeah, TChem, I know about your feeling on toys with faces, but I feel just the opposite - I'd've been more than a little creeped out as a kid by a faceless animal), despite the reputation that sharks have. (Really, most sharks are quite peaceable, and it's only a few rogue individuals of a few species that are a danger to humans).

His name is Kenny, despite my usual moratorium on giving "critters" the same name as people I know. He's named Kenny because of this, which is, alas, no longer on any channels that I receive.

2 comments:

TChem said...

Fear not--those are GOOD eyes. So, maybe cute face embroidery's not impossible, just difficult. Or impossible with warm-blooded creatures.

("I want KE-nny, KE-nny the shark! I want KE-nny, KEnny the shark!")

fillyjonk said...

I wonder what constitutes "good" eyes?

I tend to use shiny round black buttons, simply because for me they conjure up all the years of lusting after the beautiful antique Steiff teddy bears I could not afford...

(Until one day I actually saw a Steiff-like antique bear in a shop, picked it up and realized, ugh, those things are NOT cuddly - they're sort of prickly and the straw stuffing is hard).

I also tend to give my critters "Linus" eyebrows - giving them a sort of bewildered, nervous, or helpless look. I'm sure that says something rather deep about my psyche, but I prefer not to contemplate just WHAT.

I'll have to look at some of the critters I've made over the years - maybe even do a photomontage - to compare and contrast faces. I know I have the snake from the Kath Dalmeny book that I've never photographed, and I have the Noro Kureyon bear/bunny/piglet/indeterminate animal thing, and a sock dog and a sock reindeer...and I have a number of teddy bears I've made in my again-thwarted desire to have a bear that looked like the antique Steiff bears...