I had thought of trying to finish the last foot or so of edging on Hiawatha tonight.

But I did something else instead.

I recently got a copy of Plush-O-Rama (subtitled: "Curious creatures for immature adults"). It's a book on making toys - mostly monster-type toys, kind of like the Uglydolls and their ilk.

Well, a lot of the creatures in the book are a bit outre for me. When I'm making a "critter" (and I prefer to think of my made-up animals as "critters" rather than "monsters"), I tend to hew to the "generalized tetrapod pattern" - two eyes, two ears, a nose where it's "supposed" to be and four limbs, with the animal either being bipedal or quadripedal.

I got to thinking about that sweater I reclaimed from the "can't sell it" pile from last fall's garage sale (it was shrunk and it also had a few moth holes). I had felted it even more (in hot water, with lots of soap, partly in the hopes of killing any residual eggs that might have been in it.

(I talked about the sweater and my plans for it a little bit here.)

Well, I finally got around to trying to make my "critter."

Her name is Rose.


(as in Secondhand. Seeing as she's made from a secondhand sweater and scraps of fabric I had left from other projects.

Except I'm actually calling her Lida Rose - her full name - because of the song from "The Music Man" - which was running through my head as I was working on her)

Rose is made of a dark green sweater. She's kind of a hybridized dragon/giraffe/kangaroo thing (except she has no pocket - I briefly thought of giving her one but then it seemed excessive). Rose is actually quite large as far as the stuffies I make go - she's about 15" tall sitting and almost two feet tall if she were standing on her own two feet. I kind of used the dimensions of the sweater as my guide.

You can see the dragon influence; she has "spines" (giant ric rac) down her back and small gold wings.



The gold is repeated on her hind-foot claws and also on the fringe on the back of her tail (which was originally going to be claws on her hands until I decided I liked the big, plain mitten-type hands better)

I pretty much made up the pattern on the fly, cutting and fitting as I worked. (So this is going to be a totally one-off stuffie; there is no actual paper pattern). That's how I used to make toys, back in the day, when I was a kid. (Yes, I made a lot of the toys and dolls I played with). It's kind of fun to get back to that - that freedom of not working with a pattern, of changing things as you work because you realize they won't turn out as you wanted or because you have a better idea.

It's kind of hard to photograph a fairly dark stuffie. Here's a side view, taken with the flash:


And a couple close-ups of her face. It's kind of hard to see it but she has long eyelashes (after all, she IS a girl) and small lips embroidered right on the front of her mouth.





One of the thing I like about some stuffies is how their expression seems to change depending on the angle you look at them from. Rose is kind of like that.

Rose also insisted on getting in a "cheesecake" type shot so you can see her figure better.



Rose likes pink things, swing jazz, Cary Grant movies, and making soup out of all the leftovers in the fridge. She does not like it when people interrupt other people and she hates it when people talk in the movie theater. She ALWAYS knows what fork to use for what course at formal dinners.

(To get a bit in the spirit of the Plush-O-Rama "brief lives" of each of the stuffies shown)