Australia Summer Storms

I'm not quite sure if I've complained about the weather here in 'Sunny Queensland' over the last few weeks or not... if not, I'll fill you all in now! The weather has been crap. And that's an understatement! The nightly weather reports show the forecast for the next 7 days - and it has been solid rain graphics for weeks now.

This week it was solid storm graphics, complete with the little bolts of lightning coming down from the cartoony grey clouds. I saw this, but dismissed it! The days had actually been quite nice for a change, and I managed to get some washing done. Then yesterday afternoon I got an emergency alert phone message explaining that severe hail storms were on their way. I went outside and the sky was clear, no clouds, soft wind blowing... for all intensive purposes a beautiful summer day. About an hour later I could hear soft rumbling noises in the background. The sky was still clear and bright, so I dismissed it as neighbourhood noise.



About half an hour after that, the sky changed colour. The air had that electric feel to it and the rumbling noise was louder. Chelsea and I went outside and sure enough some ominous looking clouds were heading over. I quickly grabbed the washing off the line and took some photos. This is looking from our side gate towards the neighbours house across the road. Within about 2mins of taking this photo Mark got home from work and the clouds opened.



We had so much rain in such a short period of time that our back patio flooded (much to Chelsea's amusement, but not Olivers!). Oliver is a bit of a Princess dog and doesn't like loud noises or getting wet, so he took refuge inside, behind the couch!


It was all over within half an hour or so, and we got lucky that the hail stones were only pebble sized. But it had obviously damaged the power lines somewhere, and we went without electricity from 5:30pm till 12pm. Right on dinner time! And Chelsea's bed time. So we all had a rather miserable night last night. And tempted as I was I decided not to try and finish my bear by candle light... goodness knows what he would have looked like by the light of day! :P So hopefully, if I can stop rambling on here, I can go do a bit more work on him tonight!

The last Kool Aid bear

Way back in July I was feeling adventurous and did a whole heap of mohair dying experiments. Most of the bears had already been sewn up and adopted out, but there was one that I hadn't gotten around to finishing...



... Meet Misty! She is a little sweet heart at 9" tall, and very unique in her splotchy fur and sweet Kool Aid smell! She is now on bearpile for anyone interested.

(and yes, the rest of the big 22" bears are coming. Tonight I'm working on one made in the same awesome fur as Willa)

2011 Calendars

I was thinking this morning that I never say hello to all of you who read this blog. I always just go straight into whatever incredibly fascinating thing it is that I have to say at that particular time, which is a little self-absorbed isn't it! :P

So hello. I am sure there are many of you who read this blog whom I will never meet, and will never actually know have even been here. I hope your mid-December day has gone along wonderfully whether you're braving the heat and rain in Australia or the cold and snow in the northern hemisphere.

As a little piece of interest, I was wondering (if you felt up to it) if you would leave a little comment letting me know how you stumbled across this blog. I know I have some blogs on my reading list that were bizarre chance finds :)

Also, I wanted to give a heads up to anyone interested, that I'm going to produce an 'Emma's Bears Calendar' for 2011. I will be ordering them tomorrow some time and was wanting to get a really rough idea of how many to get!? I'll stock them in my etsy store and sell them over the next month or two (or 12 if it takes that long! :P), but am stumped on how many will actually sell!? Ah, the joys of supply and demand!

So also, if you feel up to it, I'd love you to leave me a little message here or send me an email at eleb2000@hotmail.com if you think you might be interested - no obligation. They will cost $25 and will be about 11" by 8" (20cm by 28cm). Postage within Australia will be $2, internationally $7.

Here are some screen dumps I managed to get to give you a sneak peek.





*** UPDATE - I can also order the calender in the pink-tones background or the creamy background as well ***

Creatures

So I'm still stuck for what to call these guys. In all my photos I've ended up just labelling them as 'creatures', so that might just have to do.

They are quite large too. I think I got a bit carried away in my design. The original plan was for them to maybe be about 10-12". Nice and petite and good for a child to hold. But then I remembered that I wanted to use up the crazy bright fur, which was the whole point of making them. And they ended up standing in at 32" (83cm).

Chelsea LOVED them when I finished them on Friday. She tried to carry them both at once, but one is roughly the same size as her, so it didn't work real well. I think her preference was for the yellow one, but I quite liked the blue better. They are completely child-safe too, down to the sewn-on felt eyes, embroidered nose, joint-less limbs and body stuffed solely with polyfill.

I am just about to list them on etsy too, and plan to market them as children's toys. Expensive children's toys mind you, but unique ones! Not sure if there is a market out there for toddler-sized, bug-eyed, rainbow coloured, fluffy and floppy 'creatures', but I suppose time will tell!

*** Update - I've named them Pluto and Junket, as it seemed like they needed some kind of identity! And they are now on bearpile and etsy ***

New Creatures

If I was feeling the clock ticking a few weeks ago when I made this post, I'm hearing it loud and clear now! And after my spout of panda's and polar's and grizzly's, most of whom I ordered in mohair especially for, I am now feeling the need to use up some of my extensive collection to get some money back, and clear some space before bub.

So after rummaging around in the cupboard for a while, I found a massive stash of very bright faux fur that I'd only used a tiny bit of ( mainly because it was a little too bright for my bears!). I decided I would find a way to use it... and sketched this funny looking critter up yesterday.

Being the kind of person that I am, I decided to put aside the other bears I was working on (I've got a couple of gorgeous long pile 22" bears in the same patterns as Oreo, Blizzard and Banjo in the works - just waiting on some massive joints so I can finish them), and got to work on the critters last night.

They've actually been a little more labour intensive than I anticipated, but I think they're going to be pretty unique! This is a little sneak peek of the bits waiting to be stuffed and assembled. Will upload photos when they're done... just need a name for them now!:P

Banjo the Grizzly

The grizzly is done! He is so cute - even in this massive size. And his fur is just to dye for - I love a really nice rich tipped fur, and these two colours are awesome.



I've popped his listing on bearpile as well.

Oreo and Blizzard

So the custom bears are done!!! I had so much fun making these two as well. It was a mission trying to carry them both, and the camera, and trying not to trip over Oliver to get photos of them together yesterday. I think one of the things I love the most about custom orders is that they help push you in a direction you maybe wouldn't have gone on your own. For example, I would never have purchased this mohair exclusively for this project on my own. I would have squirreled it away in my fur box, 'saving' it for an unknown project. But now it gets turned into these guys! Also, I would never have thought to make such big bears so squishy and cuddly - falling back on the whole 'limbs need to be firm, joints need to be tight' mantra - but it works so well like this! It takes what would have been a rather large and imposing bear with not much cuddle appeal, into a rather large and imposing bear that you just want to bury your face in!

And the twist in all of this is that these two bears are actually up for general adoption now too! I've just listed them on bearpile, but will add all the photos to the blog as well. I think it would be lovely if they could find a home together, but know that not many homes would have room for two such big giants. So I've listed them individually as well. And in the next few days I plan on making the grizzly bear version too (I cut him out as a supposed 'practice' bear for using the new pattern of mine, but got impatient and wanted to make the 'real' bears first!). So keep an eye out for the jumbo Grizzly to complete the bear family!



These are some photos of Oreo on his own:






And here we have Blizzard's individual photos as well: