Two new mammoths

Hello!  We are enjoying an unexpected hot spell here, so I rushed out with the mammoths to take photos in the garden.  There is another - a furry one - but I am determined to make him a horned Viking helmet, and I haven't got to grips with the design yet, so photos of him will have to wait a bit.

I am discovering that there are certain mammoths which sell better than others.  The plain, pale, floral ones have taken the longest to find homes.  The mohair mammoths sell very quickly, and the one winged beastie I made sold quickly too.  The navy blue floral mammoth with the shifty eyes is a replica of a commission mammoth I made a little while ago.  She is very sweet, so I'm hoping someone will like her.

I have been busy this week - not just the three mammoths, but also a long-legged bear to sit in the little doll-sized wheelchair my aunt sent me from the US.  It is the sweetest thing, but strangely proportioned for a teddy bear.  Luckily I specialise in strangely-proportioned teddy bears!  I am a little stuck on this one though.  I have the same old problem - I take a lot of interest in design, shape and silhouette, but when it comes to details - like facial features - my imagination tends to fail me.  So I currently have [what I think is] a lovely shaped bear, but with no features.  I've keep trying various things, but they just don't look right.  He is currently sitting on my work table with two little pink beads pinned to his nose (the large nostril look?) but that's not going to work.

I really need to put some work into my teddy bear faces!

Anyway, here are the mammoths.  I will be back with photos of the furry mammoth and the wheelchair bear as soon as possible!

91 bears

Made it to my second-best target!  91 bears in 2011 - not quite as many as I'd hoped, but certainly an improvement on last year.  Unfortunately, I haven't got a photograph of two of them... but I have made 91 - honest!  The two missing bears are mentioned at the end of this post.

In the past couple of days, I have finished up a bear and two mammoths.  Here's the bear: Benji

And here are the mammoths: Deliah and Agatha...

So, of the 2011 bears, there are 19 mini bears...

...14 Cheeky-style bears...

...14 mammoths...

... 6 mohair mammoths...

 ... 3 extra large Union Jack mammoths and a baby mammoth...

... 11 realistic bears (ahem, the pink bear in the middle is supposed to be realistic in design, if not in colour)...

... 3 OOAK character bears...

 ... and lots of little things: three 3-piece bears, 3 flying bears, 2 weird owls, 4 bears which made up a family, and 8 hanging heart bears (2 of which are not pictured).

In 2012, the big thing is that I really really need to improve my work rate.  I'm back to my 100 bears target - although, of course, anything above that would be great.  I would like to come up with some new designs, and particularly, to develop the realistic bears more.  I would also like to put a bit more work into seasonal items, sell some bears for charity, and brush up on the presentational stuff.  And, once and for all, I am going to get the website sorted out!

As for me, I am going to get fit this year (yes, I know, that was a resolution last year as well), and develop some hobbies - so lots of cooking, reading, visiting of historical places, and going to hear live music!

New mini-mammoths

Good morning!  The mammoths I make sell reasonably well to non-collectors, but the sticking point is always the fabric.  Whilst it's nice to have some kind of tactility - some kind of pile to it - mohair is too expensive.  I have been thinking that the ideal fabric would be the cashmere I usually use for teddy bear paw pads.  It comes in slim-ish strips though, and my ordinary mammoth pattern is too big to fit.  Recently I tried reducing the pattern size, and these little black mammoths are the result.  They are incredibly cute!  (Unfortunately I don't have any of the bigger mammoths to compare them with at the moment.) 

At the same time, somebody recently sent me some vintage velvet curtain fabric - dark bottle green with yellow flowers.  It is absolutely beautiful, and that makes a very sweet mammoth too!

I have put all three of these in my Etsy shop.

June & Sadie

These are my two new mammoths - June (in dark green, gen-u-ine antique mohair!) and Sadie (in a slightly whispy, baldish, kind of mohair).  Both have a cashmere undercarriage.

I was working at the Art & Craft Centre the other day, and somebody picked up one of my grey mammoths.  She said to me, "Is this an elephant?"  Being quite relaxed about this kind of thing, and not one to worry if someone wants to call a mammoth an elephant, I replied "Yes - or a mammoth."  She then said something like "Oh, so it could be either" and put it down and walked away.

Maybe, of course, it was just a polite enquiry and the lady never seriously considered taking the mammoth home with her anyway, but it felt at the time as if I'd given the wrong response.  Maybe the distinction between elephant and mammoth was of great importance.  I suppose if you collect mammoths (and I've met a few people who do), you need to be clear about the distinction.

The only thing is, if I were to insist to a customer that these were mammoths, as opposed to elephants, I can envisage a situation where the next question they ask would be "Oh, what's the difference?"  I have no idea - apart from one being bigger (and older) than the other.  I wonder if there's a more general word - describing the type/family/genus - which includes both?

Mammoths

I have moved onto the mammoths.  I love their suspicious sideways eyes!  They are all mohair - the grey ones, with a cashmere gusset (or 'undercarriage') and inner ears.  They are another item that I can make one of each day, so I feel a lot more productive than when making the bigger bears.

The three grey mammoths are called Emmeline, Christabel and Sylvia.  The red one is Rita.

And I spent last weekend dying mohair, so I now have the fabric for the tiny, long-legged bears which are next on the list.

The bad news is that my sewing machine has died.  It had stopped feeding the fabric through on its own, and I was having to pull it.  Then it started knotting at the back, every time it took a stitch.  But that machine has done well.  When I went into Franklins to ask them about it, they said that these machines (which cost around £100 new) were only ever meant to be temporary, and last around a year.  I must have had mine for at least three years, and used it constantly.

Unfortunately I have no money for a new one at the moment, so I am using my mother's sewing machine for a while.  She's had that for 28 years, so I'm hoping I'm not about to finish it off(!)

Last of the mammoths

Good morning!  I'm working at the Art & Craft Centre today, but I just had time to photograph my last two mammoths before I go out.  These are Beatrice and Bluebell.  Unfortunately, Beatrice looks rather sad in all the photos - I think it's that long mohair, and the way it covers her eyes.

If it's quiet, I'm hoping that I can catch up on listing some of the bears and mammoths on Etsy (I'm taking the kitchen scales with me).  Beatrice and Bluebell - both mohair with cashmere undercarriages and cotton tusks - are £25 each.