Thanks for all the great comments on Rose. I really had fun making her.

One of my "someday plans" is to change up my bedroom a little bit - maybe find a vintage/vintage-looking sofa or chaise to put under my double windows (I have a large bedroom) and use that as a place to park some of the critters I've made.

(Of course, that's contingent on getting more bookcases/finding a new place to put the little low bookcases I have under the windows right now)

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Lydia, I have seen Firefly but I don't remember that specific reference from it. (But then again - things have a way of worming into my subconscious and coming back out in forms I don't recognize).

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I had thought of trying to document (with photos and such to try to make a little tutorial) what I was doing with the design and sewing process. But - and this always happens - I kind of get caught up in a creative fugue-state where I forget about the "meta" of what I'm doing and am only focused on the making of the object.

I get like that once in a while: I get an idea in my head, I decide I want to make the thing I'm visualizing, and I can't really easily put it down until it's done. It was that way when I made Wilbur and when I made the Morris the Moose I made several years ago. And it's always been that way when I design critters (which is why, I think, it would be hard for me to make patterns for sale/swap: I tend to design on the fly and I seldom work with an actual paper pattern. I'd probably have to reverse-engineer the critter, taking it apart after I had made it, and I would find it hard to do that.)

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I was thinking about the differences between the making of critters and the sort of craft I usually do. Knitting and piecing quilt tops (at least, the way I do each) is pretty regimented once you decide on color and pattern - you set up what you are going to do, and you keep going, working in pattern, until you're done. (I think I once referred to piecing quilt tops as "sewing the same damn seam over and over again until you're ready to scream." Which is kind of true - there's a certain stamina needed to be able to do that).

With making critters, it's more like "scrumbling" in crochet - more free-form. You kind of design on the fly, your decisions are made as you go, rather than being mostly made up-front.

And you know? I think I kind of need that in my life. So much of what I do is very regimented. And too much regimentation - giving in, I mean, to being very regimented - is not so good for me. I tend to kind of "fossilize" - I get to the point where if I'm not leaving the house at precisely five minutes to seven, it's somehow a little defeat that throws the whole day off (No matter that as long as I'm in my office before 8, and I have a five-minute commute, so the 6:55 leave-time is a self-imposed rule). And I do get kind of stiff and rulebound and what one of my friends describes as "the stereotypical German part of you comes out" - where things like trains being late or meetings not starting precisely when they are supposed to start come to matter to me too much.

So once in a while, doing something "by the seat of my pants" is probably a good way of shaking up the neurons a little. But more importantly, it's fun, and it gets me looking at the world a little differently.

So maybe I'll make more freeform critters. Or I'll try scrumbling - it's always looked kind of interesting to me, and it's kind of like, in a way, like some of the enthusiasm a kid has when he's first learning to knit or crochet - "Look, I'm making this thing!" and it doesn't matter if the thing has holes or unintentional increased parts or if there are bobbles where there aren't meant to be bobbles.

Perhaps I should take some time and play more; just grab a hook or needles and yarn and start working and periodically go, "I wonder what would happen if I did THIS?" just like I did when I was first learning the skills.

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'Nother critter-making idea: socktopus. For those of you who are fans of class Cephalopoda. (I'm not sure if that can be made with a single pair of socks or if you need two to do it...it's just a picture, not a pattern or instructions).

There's also an octopus with legs made from old ties in the Plush-o-Rama book. You know, that might be a fun retirement gift for a guy who's had to wear ties his whole career - get a bunch of them (ones you know he'd not mind losing...it would be a funnier gift if he was someone who HATED ties and swore he'd never wear one after retirement) and make the octopus for him.