Elephants

 

All of our friends seem to be having babies right now.
I've been knee-deep in elephants.

 

A pair of batik elephants for two babies in Sydney:

 

A pink-and-green fella for a little one in Whyalla:

A rather bizarre floral dude for a new one here in Santiago - (hiding in the first photo)

And a psychedelic number heading up to California:

 

I used the "Tilly and Tommy" pattern from retromama on etsy, which whips up neatly and quickly and looks pretty cute to boot.
Mostly. The pink-and-green elephant is a little cockeyed.   

I marked both eyes at once, but it was late, and I was cross-eyed, and somehow the elephant turned out drunk.
"Mr Tabubil!" I wailed.  "It looks home-made!"
Mr Tabubil said that no one couldn't care less. Those floppy ears are designed for chewing, and that's what counts with a 5 month old baby.

 

Tutankhamonkey and Monktenkahmum

Meet Tutankhamonkey and Monktenkahmum. 
They lurched their way into the house around about Halloween and decided to stay.

Tutankhamonkey is a birthday present for Mr Tabubil (last year's birthday.  Don't judge.)
Monktenkahamum is a farewell present for a friend who adores Halloween with an almost unholy passion. She left Chile well before he was finished, but he will get to her by New Year, even if he's got to lurch the whole way.

I used the Monkenottukhamun pattern by q.D.PatOOties.  Her own link appears to be down, but her etsy store is HERE and you can find the pattern HERE if you would like to make one of your own.

As you can see, the pattern is pretty simple.  But those bandages - 

Grubbying up the fabric was a headache and a half.
I didn't have any paints on hand, which really didn't matter because I wanted an organic sort of stain.  Basically, I was a twit.
I tried coffee. I tried tea.  I tried soy sauce.  I tried fish sauce and oyster sauce -
Everything washed out clean.
I let the stains dry - for days.  They washed out. 
I set them with salt.  They washed out. 
I set them with vinegar.  They washed out. 
I can't get a damned sauce stain out of a single shirt ever, but could I get one to stay when I actually wanted it to?

I could not.

In desperation, I wet the cloth and dragged it across our balcony railings to sop up the greasy Santiago dust, because this dust sticks.  We have a couple of pillowslips that were left to dry on the backs of balcony chairs that hadn't been dusted in four days, and those pillowslips are streaked and grubby forever - the sorts of linens you hope like hell don't accidentally slip onto the pillows in the spare bedroom before your guests arrived.

This time round, the dust washed out.
I wet the cloth again and used it to swab the grotty bits around the bottom of our outdoor flowerpots.
The dirt. Washed. Out.

After two weeks of moaning, hair-shredding and an increasingly befuddled Mr Tabubil ("Yes, I'm swearing in harmony with myself.  No, you don't need to know why.") I achieved a fabric that was mildly dingy, and at that point, I gave up.  Marking the grimiest spots with chalk, I cut the most careful casually-raveled bandages you've ever seen.

And draped.  

The draping was rather a lot of fun, actually.

The monkeys rewarded me with a matching set of musty grins (seriously, antique drains were nothing to it) and Mr Tabubil thinks they're awesome.

I See Purple Elephants....

His name is Roger.
Roger Featherstone Umbrage the Fourth. 

Finger Puppets

My stuffed elephants are on hold until the other half of the baby gift arrives, so yesterday afternoon, during an impromptu sewing bee with Sarah, I whipped up a few of Soto Softie's finger puppets for the big (slightly bigger) sister of the baby.
            I made them about half the size that they're shown on the Soto Softies webpage  - I wanted to make them the right size for a set of two-year-old fingers.  So no big bobble eyes.  Just embroidery floss and a bit of attitude.
            They're rather creepy.  They look as if they're planning something.

Beaded chiffon and purple velveteen!

Yesterday I sat down and beaded  the edges of the orange chiffon scarf that I had hemmed while I was up in Brisbane.

And I bought the yummy elephant pattern for the new baby.

And I have fabrics, too!  B.W from my Wednesday sewing group cleaned out her stash last week and brought me a lovely stack of velveteens and small scale corduroys. I rather like these two for elephants.

Last night I put them through a hot wash, but I cleverly put the whole stack in together.  When I took them out of the machine, I found that a kleenex had slipped into the washing machine, and that between the tissue shreds the green velveteens were purple with purple fuzz and the purple velveteens were green with green fuzz...
            Oddly, the orange and black corduroy came through completely unmarked. 
            The velveteens are going back in the wash this morning.  Individually.  We'll see what happens after that.

Rain Trumps Hats

I was hoping to have photographs of a freshly cleaned felt hat today. Unfortunately, it has been raining solidly for three days straight now, and the general suspicion is that 100 percent enthusiastic humidity is NOT the sort of weather in which to cover a felt hat body with flour or baking soda or cornmeal and leave it to sit for a day.

You might not have a hat at the end of it.

So instead - here's a picture of a stuffed pig.

Nasturtium

This is my current favorite color of silk ribbon:  Nasturtium, by Color Streams.  It's not a color I usually use - I tend to go for purples and blues.  I bought a hank of it on a whim at a craft show, reckoning to use it as an accent in larger compositions  - naturally, I use it constantly and have to restock regularly.  It's bright, it's sunny and cheerful and not QUITE orange - and it has the same quality of subliminal iridescence that, like real life flowers, lets it coordinate with everything.

Pig Iron

This is Porcus Minoris Mark 0.5- the original test run to see if I could machine stitch the little squeakers.
Mr Tabubil has claimed him as an office mascot.  His name is "Furnace Pig" - and I have stuffed his belly with pot pouri, so that he can climb all over the job site and get black and dirty and still come out smelling of roses.

Oinkers, Doink & Sidney

This triple bill of Porcine Perfection is known as Oinkers, Doink and Sidney (or Sydney. He can't spell.)
Porcus Majoris is reasonably tractable, but the two porcus minorus are liable to cut up something awful if you leave them unchaperoned.

All three have been sent to keep company with the new baby of a very good friend. They used to be my very favorite purple sweater.
            Then the sweater got felted. I didn't know much about felting before it happened, but I've done some research since: one takes wool rovings, or knitted wool fabric, and through the application of detergent suds and agitation and hot water, one turns them into felt.
It's a highly specific process, prone to balling and piling, but the best results are achieved through the use of a centrifuge in conjunction with very high heat.  (You want shrinkage to squash the knitted fabric into felt.)
About a year ago, I accidentally ran this sweater through a hot wash layered between two sheets. The washer and dryer in our old house in Adelaide uses water at about six billion degrees centigrade and spins the water out of the clothes with a small medical-grade centrifuge...
The sweater came out sixteen sizes too small, fully hypo-allergenic, and perfectly felted.
            It was a freak of perfect circumstance, and I have not been able to duplicate it since.  And I have ruined a few thrift shop sweaters trying! 
           So I made pigs instead* and embroidered all over them with silk ribbons.  But for the love of heaven, if you use this pattern, chop the noses off. Poor Porcus Majoris looked like an anteater. Even after some serious lopping he looks less than porcine. With the three porcus minoris, I cut the snout back almost to their front legs- now they look like pigs.

Originally the two porcus minorus had major embroidery on both sides, but I sort of forgot to leave room for an ear and eye on the really busy side and had to unpick everything but the french knots.  Le sigh.

Clarice

This is Clarice. She is a rare blue dwarf lemur and she is six years old. She is dressed up as Miss Piggy for a New Year's Eve costume party, but because she's only six, she's only allowed to stay up till nine o'clock.
            We had a big argument over a wig of brassy blonde Miss Piggy curls - I said that they were far too big and far too MUCH for such a small lemur. She said that the curls were NECESSARY or nobody would know who she was, she'd just be any elegant pig in evening dress.
            I won because I am bigger than she is, but she is still sulking, which is why she's so excited to be going on a trip through international post to meet Miss A -another little girl - because grown-ups never EVER understand and in Korea where Miss A lives she bets people would be properly sympathetic and let her wear her costume with authenticity. I congratulated her on her mastery of big words, but I still wouldn't let her wear the wig. She sulked till seven o'clock.