Belinda

At 7 o'clock this morning, there was frost on the roofs, and the most beautiful bright sunshine belting down.  Thanks to the quality of smart phone cameras, I was able to take some pictures of it.  I'm absolutely mad keen on my phone camera!  It's rather embarrassing.  Yesterday I shame-facedly took a picture of my lunch, which seemed to be looking particularly gorgeous.  Often, when I go into Dedham, I've got my phone in my hand as I walk up from the car park, and I've taken 20 pictures before I get to the Centre - not of anything interesting: just of the road, the hedges, the sky...  I'm hoping it's just the novelty of the thing, and that this madness will wear off soon, but it's showing no sign of doing so, so far.  There's something particularly clever about the camera phones that allow them to adapt to the changes in light, which my Nikon D300 just doesn't do very well - not in my inexpert hands anyway.

Anyway, this is a phone picture of my beautiful avocado plant (grown from a stone!) on the window sill this morning.

But this is what I really wanted to show you!  This is Belinda, the hedgehog...

I knew as I saw her unfinished face that what she really needed was eyebrows.  For most of her time on my little homemade production line, she had this note pinned to her...

Having painted in the eyebrows, I couldn't resist adding a little smile too!  Not very subtle, but never mind.

She looks wonderful sitting on my desk among piles of books (a paper-weight perhaps?) so I have styled her as my bookish hedgehog.  Here she is, almost finished Margaret Forster's fantastic book, Significant Sisters.

You can find Belinda in my Etsy shop.  

In the meantime, I am working towards the Bradfield fair next weekend, on 28th November.  I have another lot of 10 bears on the table, and it's touch and go whether they are going to be finished on time(!)  It does seem to take so long this way.  In spite of that though, there is something wonderful about watching them come together as a group, and I think I probably work harder on their individual personalities when I have several of them in front of me.

Anyway, must get to work - have a great day!

Dusty

This is my second hedgehog, Dusty, in proper gel-spiked fabric.  He didn't' quite turn out as I wanted him to.  I was feeling quite dispirited about him until I took some photos of him in very bad light.  I actually think he looks quite realistic here.  Maybe dark photos are the way to go(!)

The two things I'm not happy with are the legs and the nose.  Regarding the nose, I think Bella's worked because there was a fairly smooth line between muzzle and nose.  Dusty's is a bit more bumpy, making it look like he has a shorter muzzle.  I think I might make his muzzle longer in the next version.

The legs are a little too long, and maybe too chunky.  I'm going to try cutting out the wire-wrapping stage to see if that works better.

I'd like to get another hedgehog made for the Long Melford fair next Saturday.  Also a little sun bear, and maybe a couple of little birds.

Hedgehog

This is the creature I have been working on recently.  Her name is Bella, and she is [supposed to be] a hedgehog.  This is just the prototype.  I have some specially-purchased, gel-spiked mohair for the actual finished version, but since I wasn't sure how I was going to make the legs, I wanted to practice with some other mohair first.  

She has toes!  Little wiry, metal toes!  The legs start with a bit of wire armature.  These are wrapped in a thinner wire, which is also used to form the toes.  Then they're thread-wrapped (which looks great on its own, but doesn't hold firm enough), then felted over the top.  It was a bit of a voyage of discovery, but I'm really pleased with her.  

I think her front legs are probably too close together (see second picture), and I wish there was less contrast between the spiky bit and the white fur.  

In spite of these flaws, I still think she's really sweet.  I'm not going to sell her, but I'm thinking of running a Facebook giveaway.  Other 'business pages' seem to run them all the time when they reach milestones in terms of numbers of 'likes'.  My problem is that I never know what to give away.  It seems a bit OTT to giveaway a bear, when they're so expensive to make.  A prototype though, which is good but not quite good enough, seems a reasonable medium.