Meerkats on Frinton beach

We went down to the beach at Frinton at 8 o'clock this morning to take some pictures of the meerkats.  It's lovely there at that time, but we stopped for coffee on the way back and, by 9 o'clock, the peace and tranquility had well and truly disappeared.

The pictures came out really well - although, again, it was a case of, take 100 and select the 10 good ones.

This last one has nothing to do with meerkats - it is the beautiful crittall windows above the Peacocks store on Frinton high street.  1920s or 30s?  Wouldn't that just be a lovely place to live and work?

Meerkat group

Good morning.  I'm sorry I've been such a terrible blogger recently.  I have been working on meerkats and I have finally finished my little group - although I've still yet to go down to the beach and get good pictures of them (that's an early morning job).  I took a snap of them on the counter in the kitchen though - that's Sidney on the left, Amelia sitting at the front, and Samantha second from the right.  The other three are new - and slightly younger and shorter.

It's not a great picture, but I wanted to 'check in' here just to show I'm still around.  

I have been reading a bit about blogging lately - how to be successful at it - and I am in two minds.  I do enjoy occasionally going away and doing some research and writing serious stuff that might be helpful to people, but that seems like another job altogether and I'm not sure whether I want to get into that.  It begs the question whether it's worth having a blog at all - if I'm not going to write stuff that other people want to read - but actually it is quite useful for me.    

A lovely customer asked me recently if I could make a bear like Rowan for her.  I don't forget any of the bears I make, but I'm not so hot on their names.  I typed it into the search box of this blog though, and up came Rowan.  So as a searchable record of the bears I've made, it's quite helpful.  Of course, it would be even more helpful if I could record patterns here (Rowan's pattern is one of the one's I lost), but that would be a little too much information.

Talking of patterns, I have been wondering whether to move on to that next - making patterns which I can sell on their own, for other people to make.  But really I need to work on new designs for the glass cabinet at the Art & Craft Centre.  The next thing I want to make is a moose!

Samantha

My second standing meerkat is called Samantha.  She is not the same as Sidney, but obviously they are based on the same basic pattern.  With Samantha, I added some white colouring to her face, and I tried to give her the little groove down the centre of her head which adult meerkats often seem to have.  She also has a more alert tail - balancing on the very tip of it!

If you scroll down to the last couple of photos, you will see Samantha and Sidney together.  He has a rounder head, and a more relaxed tail and front paws.

I'd like to make a few more - so I can have a little chorus line of them - like you often see in photographs.  I think the next one should be slightly shorter though.  I'd also like to have a go at a crouching meerkat at some point.

Sidney & Amelia at the beach

We took Sidney and Amelia to the beach this morning, to try to get some pictures with a more appropriate background.  The green of the garden didn't really seem to suit them yesterday.  It was absolutely beautiful down there - I don't think I've been on the beach for years, literally.  Although we went early and it was quite cool and breezy, it was still very, very bright, and I found it impossible to see what the pictures looked like.  I must have taken over 100, and most of them were rubbish, but a few turned out okay.  Thats my mother with Sidney in the fourth pic.

Sidney

Hello!  I'm finally back with some news of my second meerkat.  Unfortunately, he is proving very, very difficult to photograph (grrr).  I have taken loads of pictures and I'm not really happy with any of them. Anyway, here are the best of the pictures I took.  His name is Sidney and he is made in mohair.  He is unjointed except for his head and neck, and he has a wire skeleton.  Like Amelia, he has a needle-felted face, and horse hair whiskers.

Amelia

Hello - I finished my meerkat this morning!  I decided to try something new with the feet.  It didn't look very promising at first, but it has creases sewn across the middle, and when it's stuffed...

... I think it actually looks quite effective.

I also tried putting claws in the front paws.  The middle two looked good, but the outer claws stuck out sideways!  Then, after stuffing the arms and sewing them on, I managed to break one so I had to unpick the whole thing, remove the claws, then stuff and sew the arms back on again.  I didn't risk a second attempt at the claws.  They obviously were not strong enough but also - the way she holds her hands - they were barely visible anyway.

Then there was the problem of the whiskers.  I tried them first on my poor prototype, with fishing line, but they're far too substantial.

Reading up on it, the best thing to use is apparently horse hair.  I posted about it on my Facebook page, and a lovely person agreed to send me some!

This is Amelia with her whisker (and eyebrow) placements marked out...

And this is her finished!  I absolutely love the whiskers - they definitely maketh the meerkat, so to speak!

I did just happen to have a pair of meerkat spectacles handy, and she does remind me of that meerkat in the Compare the Market advert, so I took one photo of her disguised as Sergei :-)