Bumble Bee

This is my latest bear. He's made using a pattern I recently found in my archives that I'd designed about 5 years ago. I didn't remember the bear I'd originally made from it until this one was finished and I was trying to pose him for his photos. He naturally wants to sit with his legs crossed - and that was when it all came back to me! This pattern was originally a mediating teddy! The photos are long since lost to cyber-space, but I can still remember posing him with his legs crossed and his arms out stretched in meditative peace.




This fuzzy guy is more the cuddly type. His fur is so soft, and so cuddly that Byron (almost 6months now) starting laughing and reaching for him when he was just a floppy body and limbs! This morning when I had him all assembled and stuffed it was like Byron had never seen a teddy before. He just wanted to grab it (and no doubt chew on it if I had let him!). The best reaction I've had for one of my bears in a while!






I asked some of my facebookians to help me name him, and amongst the awesome suggestions, 'Bumble' jumped out at me. He really does have Bumble-Bee like colouring too. You can now find Bumble Bear on bearpile too.

Petunia

This is the second bear in the purple tie dyed fur I made 'Yum' in. I always forget how far I pushed the boundaries of proportion with this pattern, until I'm already halfway through the bear! :P I've made a few from this design now, and they've all been pretty cool, but Miss Petunia is just something else... maybe it's the paws, or the pretty colours, or the way her little face just begs to be held? I don't know what it is, but she has stolen my heart. If she doesn't find a new home she can stay here with me!

A bear named Yum

Chelsea didn't wake once last night. Either that or I was so exhausted that I just didn't hear her if she did! Nonetheless, we were all feeling a lot brighter today. Chelsea is a little trouper and has just adapted to life with one hand. She has learnt to carry her toys in batches now, rather than trying to carry them all at once. She's discovered that she can't clap, so we did a high-five instead. And she's learnt that by saying 'owie' and 'hurt', she'll get a sympathetic reaction from her dad and I!



We had a bit of her 'cake' this morning too. It's just layers of jelly in a Tupperware jelly mould. It doesn't look like much indoors, but when you take it outside into the sunshine, the colours just glow! This was meant for her party, but now we have 1.5L of jelly to eat between the three of us!



I also managed to finish off one of the little mohair bears I had been working on earlier in the week, before all the drama of the last few days hit us. I asked Chelsea what he should be called, and she said 'Yum' with such conviction that I figured she must know something I didn't. So Yum it is!



Yum is made with some of the tie-dyed mohair Alison from eTeddies was creating a few months ago, and his eyes are another pair of the hand painted ones I was making in this post.




I've just put him on bearpile. I'm only paid up for the next 48hrs though, and my paypal account is currently in lockdown due to being hacked last week, so I might disappear from bearpile for a little while if paypal don't fix things in time for me to renew my membership! If so, feel free to email me directly about Yum if you're interested in him (eleb2000@hotmail.com).

Birthday Month

July is birthday month at our place.

Oliver's birthday is the 4th July. Mine is the 18th July. Chelsea's is the 21st July and Mark's is the 30th July. Poor Byron is the only one not born this month.

But because of all the clustered birthdays we thought we'd do something special this year and purchased ticked to Cirque Du Solei. We got my Step-mum to babysit Byron especially, bundled up Chels and off we went to the (rather expensive) circus last friday. She lasted about 30sec before she starting thrashing around and kicking people in front of us and screaming like a banshee. In the end we got ushered into the 'sky room' right up the top of the entertainment centre it was being held in. But not even her own private viewing room was enough to pacify Chels. So we ended up leaving shortly after intermission. Needless to say, Mark and I were a bit annoyed.

Then Monday came, and it was my birthday. I actually had a good day despite waking up to a mountain of washing up, the dirty laundry basket overflowing and three dirty guinea pig cages!



Mark bought me some awesome flowers and a WHOLE chocolate cheesecake. (I'm trying to loose weight - 12kg down in the last 4 months through Weight Watchers so far) - so this was an interesting birthday situation. Yummy, but not ideal! My mum had asked me what I wanted, and I explained that the only thing I really needed was more fur. So that's what she got me. I asked her to choose things she thought I wouldn't have chosen myself, to try and give me something a little different to work with. These are the three awesome pieces she picked out!



Then on wednesday it was a mad dash out to the shops to buy provisions for Chelsea's 2nd birthday and her party scheduled for today. I managed to juggle both crying children through the supermarket to collect colour matched table clothes, cups, cuttlery, party bags, food and ingredients. Got home. Fed the kids. Started on the rainbow jelly cake, and was maybe 5mins away from having them both in bed at the same time when I caught sight of Chelsea falling from her new trampoline head first.



I ran outside and she was screaming. (which in itself isn't unusual for Chelsea!). But this scream was different. She was physically shaking and not holding herself properly. I figured out that she wasn't able to use her left arm. So after a couple of frantic phone calls to Mark to get him home to watch Byron so I could take Chelsea to the hospital, we were on our way.

Originally the doctors thought it was her elbow. So they got me to hold her arm out straight, palm side up for an x-ray while she screamed the place down. We quickly realised why when the x-ray showed she had actually broken her wrist. And the bone was misaligned.




So they strapped her up, told me to give her some panadol and present to the children's hospital in the city the next morning. Which basically translated to a night of no sleep for Chelsea, me or Mark. I was literally going from feeding Byron, to cradling Chelsea in my arms while she whimpered 'hurt hurt' over and over. We all finally fell asleep at 3am this morning, only to have to be up again at 5am to head into the hospital.

They were great though. We'd seen the specialist by 7:30am, were up at theatre by 9:00am and in recovery by 10:00am. Home by 2pm. She then slept until 4pm when we were finally able to give her her presents and try and make the day feel a little more like her birthday.

It still felt like a crappy day though. I know she doesn't understand that today was any different to other days. But she loves everything to do with balloons, candles, singing happy birthday and unwrapping presents. I get really sad when I think about the day I had planned for her versus the day we actually experienced.




She's sleeping now, and seems reasonably comfortable (after a fight to get some pain relief medicine into her - resulting in sticky pink syrup spat out all over my face earlier). So I really hope we all sleep better tonight. You don't really realise how amazing a full night's sleep is until you haven't had one for the better part of 12months. And then you don't realise how good slightly broken sleep is until you don't sleep at all! :P

Pink Custom Bears

Thought I'd share some photos of two custom bears I finished this week. These two are for two special little granddaughters. It was so lovely to be able to go all out with the femininity!

One week in the life of my strawberry

Plush piggies

I've been busy making my plush pigs today. I've done a more in-depth post about them on my guinea pig blog, but I thought I'd share this photo with you guys. How lovely do the real and plush pigs look together!?

What a lot of fun!

A little custom guinea pig

Check out this little lady! She was made especially for her new mumma, and has been named Dot. She is a 4" custom baby guinea pig in scruffy mohair.




I'm working on some more guinea pigs in faux fur from my newer more realistic guinea pig pattern at the moment too. These guys will go up for sale with a percentage of the adoption cost being donated to The Cavy Cottage guinea pig shelter where I adopted two of my girls. I've got two shelties, a bright pink curly pig, a jett black smoothie and many others in the works!

Oliver's First Birthday

Oliver is 1 year old today! Seems like we've had him for a lot longer than that! :P



He got a big juicy bone as a treat for his special day. I think he was pretty pleased.

He's a pretty good dog, he has his moments and I have mine (where I think it would be easier and cleaner not to have a dog!), but we're preserving. He still jumps up to greet people though. Usually putting dirty paw marks all over our visitors pants. And it's not just one jump, it's continual jumping that gets a bit annoying. He knows not to do it to us but obviously we missed the whole 'don't jump on guests' bit of his training!



He's not allowed inside as he can't be trusted with food/toys/furniture/bins/anything-we-want-to-keep-nice etc, so he lives on the patio. We gave him an old couch of ours that used to live in my studio before I got my shelves. He loves it! This is where he sleeps, all rugged up with a fleecy blanket and his winter jacket.



We tried putting a kids jumper on under the jacket to give him a bit of extra warmth, but the little bugger can wriggle out of it, even when the jacket is over the top! I don't know how, but he does it every time now. So we don't worry so much about the jumper! :P

Hopefully this year will be a bit smoother with him as we slowly get out of the puppy phase. I would say he destroyed at least one toy a week over the last year. Maybe some days more like one toy a day. So we'll see how the stats work out next birthday!

Rylee and Ryo

I was sorting out my rather extensive mohair and faux fur collection earlier in the week, when I pulled out a remnant of mohair from making Oreo and Blizzard. It was the last of the long, wiggly white mohair from Oreo. I had to make something with it right then, so the fur sorting got abandoned and I drew out these two little bears!

I only had enough to do one full bear in the white, so I decided to pair some hand dyed pink mohair with the last tiny bit to squeeze another bear out of it. I just love pink and white together! And if I'm honest, the pink and white bear is my favourite of the two!

I've called her Rylee, and her brother all in white Ryo (I'm pronouncing this as 'rio', but I could be wrong!).






I thought I'd try out something new with the paw pads too. I didn't plan to get quite as involved as I did though, and they both ended up quite detailed. I like the look, I just wasn't convinced the bears needed such detailed feet! But at the end of the day it doesn't at all subtract from the look of the bear, so alls well that ends well!