Departing from long tradition, I have finished a horse. Not just in the fact that I have given him hair, but I have also finished his hooves. Or what would have been his hooves if he had any. I have been accused of always doing the “Tina Turner” thing with manes and tails, and there are some good reasons for this:
A. I don’t really know how to do manes any other way and
B. When you make something for someone else, you have to leave some of the finish details to them. As in – hair styling. A highly personal choice. And so I leave those details to the true owner.
Yes, yes—I have taken up doing portraits of pretend animals. I am constantly amazed at the propensity of purely linear and simple yarn to end up in three dimensional shapes.
He ees wild and free—the only horse I know to walk a fence rail ==
For size. Not as in “trying it on.” The quarter is so that you will be amazed that this horse is so very small.
Perfectly palm-sized for the person who has, by the time this photo was taken, imposed on him her own concept of horse haut couture.
Here, you can see the bonding of these two, plus a peanut butter cookie with a Hersey’s kiss hidden in it, held by the cook who made it—the grand Mr. C. A big deal to make out of a fifty cent sized pony, don’t you think?
But this is not the end of the story.
There is a second part, this one having to do with a sweet and generous friend of mine from South Africa. She is the sort of person whose magic turns these linear bits into characters: a designer of wool-based characters. Having received her pattern for a brilliant young dachshund, I followed it – not in wonderfully fuzzy mohair (as prescribed), but in modest, humble and ancient plain-old orlon. I stuffed him not with the elegance of fleece, but with prosaic Wal-mart Fiberfil. Still, this dog, dog#2, became fairly magic and dear. So there is hope for those of us whose access to the elusive organics is limited.
Linda calls him Rex. I’m not sure what I call him, yet.
I hoped he would not be embarrassed by the ribbon. I thought red was a forceful enough color not to distress him. He is small enough to follow things into their burrows. Very, very small things.
The yarn dog takes a walk in the nether regions of the yard. “Are we done yet?” he asks, tired of the camera.
But for all that, he’s perky enough. And still inquisitive.
This is actually what the puppies did their first day here, climbing into all the planters. Later, they spent months in rampage, digging up all the flowers and ground cover. Yarn is not so playfully destructive. And now I close this only-a-little-fatuous collection of stuffed animal portraits. You don’t mind, do you? Letting me show off these little things?
I hope not.
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