3 New Ones & a Makeover

Sorry for posting so late. I had a real weird day yesterday.  First off, I lost my wallet the night berfore. So consequently, I didn't sleep very well.  I got up the next morning and found it under the bed. Then I discovered that the beads I used for the chihuahua's eyes were just the right size for the little chimp (my other learning experience). So I started to redo him and some of his fur. That took a couple of hours. Next, I had to take pics and post them to auctiva. That took over 5 hours. My batteries kept dying and I kept getting kicked off the internet. I did manage to get them listed around the usual times.

But I forgot the really cool thing about yesterday. My neighbor lent me this fantastic magnifying glass on a stand. It's the best! I have to get one of these things. I think they have them at fly fishing shops. So like most days, it was a pretty good mix of good and bad.  But even the bad stuff wasn't so horrible. It just required me to be more patient.

So about my new critters. They all start at $9.95 with no reserve price. 3 of them are 1:12 scale. The little teacup chihuahua is only 1/2 tall at the shoulders.  The little mouse is needle felted and is kind of  on the theme of the last little mousie. I hope you all like them! Now off to clean up yesterday's mess and create a whole new one for today :-)!

A Flying Pig & A Learning Experience

It's been once said that there are no failures only learning experiences. Well, my fox was a learning experience. His eyes seemed to disappear and his fur became a glued matted mess. I'm still trying to figure out how to do it better. But I now know how I'm not going to do it.
I just finished this little piggy yesterday and she will go on eBay tonight along with my little bull terrier. No Reserve this time. My sales seem to have hit rock bottom. It's kind of scary because this is how I earn my living.  So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this will work. Otherwise, it's beans and rice for a while.

Cubby & Daisy

Here it is Sunday, again! I've got a lot of things to write about and should post more on Monday. But here's a quick run down about these two. Both start tonight on eBay at 6:45 pm PST and have a reserve price of $135.00.  Cubby has been weighted with steel shot and has Apoxie Sculpt nose and claws. His pics were kind of hard to do. I always have a hard time photographing blacks. I can't seem to get the light and exposure right. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Black & White ~ Bretta & Heika

I finished these little ones a few days ago and they will start on eBay tonight @ 6:45 PM PST.  I kind of went with a Southern German theme for their names as Heika is a Swabian-Hall piglet and has a Bavarian sugar cookie. She also has a folk-style ribbon rose headband like the Bavarian dancers wear.  Since Bretta is also colored black and white, I decided to give her a German name also. They each have reserve price of $135.00.  I hope you like them both. 

Gabriel

Here's my latest little one. I named him Gabriel. His wings were needle felted then hand-dyed. Gabriel's 7 day auction started on eBay last night at 6:45PM PDT.

When I was making him, it reminded me of a church Christmas pageant that I was once in. It was a tradition at St. John's Lutheran church in Anchor, Illinois to have the pageant on Christmas eve. It was also a tradition with my family to open presents after church. The church pageant was always a very exciting event for the Andreae kids. But this year was even more exciting. I was going to be an angel and my sister was to play Mary.

That night we ate our bowls of chili and quickly dressed to go to church. So after the 30 minute ride through the slushy snain (rain & snow) we arrived at our beautiful little brick church. My sister and I headed down stairs to get dressed. Valerie was beautiful in her Mary costume. Being the smallest angel my costume seemed to overtake me. I had to tie the belt extra high to keep my gown from dragging. Plus I had to walk very gingerly or else my halo would fall off. When we were ready, we lined up to go up the stairs and into our assigned pew. It was the larger angels first and me in the rear. That was the way we were also to file onto the stage and the opposite upon leaving.

I sat in the pew watching my sister as she knelt before the manger. Joseph was kneeling behind her. The light from manger cast a warm beautiful glow upon them. It was now the angels turn to stand behind the holy family. As we filed up on the stage, I noticed Joseph was looking kind of green. Then as we were standing behind, Joseph bent over and threw up in the manger. You can well imagine the smell as it hit the source of the beautiful light, a 150 watt trouble lamp. My poor sister had to kneel there for the rest of the evening. Luckily for us angels we got to go back to our pew. But I led them astray into the wrong pew. The pastor's wife had to redirect us. As I sat down, the chili took hold. I let out the loudest fart ever. It seemed to echo through out the whole church. It was hard not to laugh. As I sat there trying to hold back the giggles, my halo fell off. I bent down to pick it up. And guess what? Another frog had escaped and the whole row of angels were all cracking up as we sang "Angels we have heard on high". Proving once again my Mom's favotite saying. "You can dress them up. But you can't take them to town,"

An Arabian Mare and a Little Christmas Piggy

Here are my latest two, an Arabian mare and a little sleepy piglet. They're both on eBay now. I'm having one of those days that I don't have a lot to say. It's been a bit chilly here. But not as cold as elsewhere in the U.S. I got out for a hike a couple of days ago and was surprised to see that the Mojave green rattlesnakes are still out and about even in this cold. I finally got to watch the movie, "There will be Blood"'. It reminded me of what this area must have been like back in its hay day. We have a bit of local drama going on concerning something very similar to the movie. A new mining firm bought out the area and it looks as if half of Red Mountain will have to move. Red Mountain is a neighboring community of about 100 people. Silver was mined there predominately. I'm not too sure what they are after now as the mine has been played out. One thing about buying property in this area is that you may own the land but not the mineral rights or you may own your home but not the land. The folks in Red Mountain fall in the latter category.

It's November Already!?!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I can't believe how this year has flown by! We've already had a couple of pretty good freezes. And both my husband and I came down with the flu! So while I was resting between sneezes and coughs, I tried to catch up on some reading. When I opened up my last month's Utne reader, I saw the cutest thing I think I've ever seen. It was a photo of a little St. Andrew Beach Mouse by Joel Sartore. It brought to mind warm days, white sand beaches and the gentle waves of the Florida coast. And when I finally finished little Periwinkle and listed her, she sold right away.

My second piece was of an Inuit man and a baby harp seal. I continued my sale and it didn't go as well as I had expected. One of my regular buyers got a real bargain. They sold for under $30.00! I think that's the lowest any of my work has ever sold for. I was happy it was to one of my good customers. I guess people aren't ready for snow and cold, warm sunny beaches did much better.

I have three pieces on now, a little chipmunk named Hazel, a piglet by the name of Gingersnap and a little mouse named Kringle. They all end Sunday at 6:45 PM PDT.

Click here to view their auctions.

My flu is still lingering on a bit. Living in such a small town you get see how these things progress through the community. It seems the whole town has had this one. It's just the regular old seasonal flu. But we've had a couple of cases of swine flu already. One of them is a pregnant woman who contracted it by going to her prenatal checkups at the Ridgecrest hospital. She is recovering nicely. But it was a bit of a scare. The town children (all nine or ten) get innoculated for swine flu soon. I hope you all stay well!

What's My Name?

Well, it's finally happened. I'm stuck for a name for my next little piggy. I hope to have her up for auction Sunday. But I haven't a clue as to what to call her. She was a bit of a struggle. I started out with the idea of making her a little Christmas piggy with a holiday wreath around her neck. But no matter what I tried it just didn't look quite right. She wanted to be a pretty little pink girl. I'm thinking maybe naming her Molly after Molly Ringwald (Pretty In Pink). What do you all think? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Who does she look like to you?

Happy First Day Of Fall!

I had some fun over the weekend. I went to the Ridgecrest Pow Wow. It's kind of on the small side as Pow Wows go. But it was nice to hear the drums and see the dancers. I also got to buy a few things for some new works. I was so happy to see the vendor who I bought beads and artifical sinew from last year. I also bought some very tiny hair pipe bone beads to make choker for one of my bears. I plan on giving Honey boo bear another look. I always enjoy pow wows. I'm kind of new to this area so I didn't know many of the people there. But it was still very welcoming.

I'm so excited that Fall is finally here. Soon the wheather will begin to chill a bit. We still have nearly 80 degree wheather well into October. It sure beats the over 100 degrees. I'll be out hiking in the afternoon instead of sitting at the mini-mart drinking soda.

I just finished two new pieces and have them listed on eBay. Their auctions started last night. One is a little piggy that I named Isaac for his amazing discovery about gravity and apples. Plus he figured out why they call this season Fall. Things are always falling from the trees. I needle felted his apples and hand dyed them using Koolaid.

The other piece is a little black kitten that I named after a black cat that I knew when I was young. His name was Black Magic. The elder lady who owned him said he had 13 lives. She used to dress up as witch on Halloween. She always gave the best treats, Popcorn balls (still warm) and cupcakes.

I hope you enjoy my new works. Please click here to view their auctions.

Me Pages & a New Work Sold

Well this week has been very busy! Since it seems that I can't seem to get back on my Sunday listing schedule, I decided to go into my ME page (big mistake) and change it to read that I genrally list on Tuesdays at 6:45 PM PDT. Well, when I went in to save the changes, my whole page just disappeared. The html for my page vanished into thin air with no trace. I'm no html whiz. It took me all of yesterday to get a new Me page up and running. I spent most of the time trying to figure out what colors to use. Then I got hung up on how I was going to arrange the table. In the end simple won out. It still is a work in progress, though. I would love to know your opinion of it. You can click here to view my ME page.

I spent most of last week needle & wet felting a hollow pumpkin to fit a little piggy into. It was quite a bit of work to get it firm enough and to get the top so it fit snuggly. I've done hollow items before. But this one was much bigger than usual. Consequently, I only had one item for this week and much to my surprise, it sold the very next morning!

At present, I'm working on a standing bear. He's been weighted with steel shot to help him stand up. But he needs a bit of coxing to get him to do that. I also made him some very tiny claws with Apoxy Sculpt. There's another item for him that I'm working on. But it's a surprise. I'll post more on him when he's finished.

Iris, the Amazing Little Flutter Pig

Ok this one has another weird end time. I keep forgetting to schedule it. She ends next Tuesday at 11:38 am PDT. There are a few things different about this little piggy. She's the first weighted felty that I've done and her wings are embroidered and hand dyed with koolaid. I really like the way they turned out.

Iris was weighted with steel shot to give her some heft and a real feel. I like the dichotomy between the lightness of her wings and her weight. It speaks to me of the sheer impossibility of a pig's flight. Her delicate antennas are thin beading wire that has been felted with black llama wool and a black onyx bead was attached to the end.

Her reserve price is $145.00 and her Buy it Now price is $224.00. The starting bid is $9.95.

Please click here to visit her auction.

New Felties!

I just finished these two new felties and listed them on eBay last night. Plus I decided to give Henry a vacation from ETSY and put him on too. Now there's an item on auction for each of my charites.

• Posie, the piglet and her teddy - 20% for Old Dog Haven
• Mojave, the bobcat - 20% for Sarvey Wildlife
• Henry, the not-so-scary monster - 20% for Dreamchaser PMU

It's been a real scorcher here in the Mojave. Temperatures have been well over 100 degrees everyday. I've been turning on the swamp cooler earlier and earlier. I think it's even been too hot for the lizards. They're always in the shade. When I was doing the photo shoot for the bobcat, a big desert spiny lizard ran up the tree and got in one of the photos. It's too bad that he was just a blurr.

Mojave, the bobcat is after a fairly young bobcat that I've seen in the wash in front of my house. I use the rocks there to do a lot of my pictures, especially for the horses. There are always bobcat prints in the sand. I was hoping that if I got pictures early enough in the morning, they would show up well. Unfortunately, the winds that night erased most of the prints. I think this little guy is the offspring of the one that I used to see up at the graveyard above my house. He heads down to the park everynight to look for the cottontails that congregate there to eat grass and get water. I'm happy he hasn't gotten any of the bunnies that use my yard.


The next one I finished was a sleeping piglet. I just love the way little pigs seem so content when they sleep. It kid of reminds me of the way dogs will wag their tails when they dream. I tried to capture that expression in Posie. Posie also has a needle felted teddy to sleep with. Her tiny teddy bear is 5 way thread jointed so his head, arms and legs move.

A Little Hula Pig and a New Charity

Anuenue ~ Little Rainbow

Starting bid $9.95

Reserve Price $125.00

Buy It Now $195.00

Please click here to bid or Buy It Now

(auction starts tonight @ 6:45 PM PST & will not be viewable until then)

Last week, I read about a little orphaned foal who is in desperate need of help. The post directed me to this sight, http://www.dreamchaserpmu.org/index.htm. After reading reading about this poor little guy and the fate that awaited him and his mother, I couldn't stop from crying and knew I must do something to help. Dreamchaser PMU Rescue and Rehabilitation is now one of my regular charities.

I was also reminded of something that I had heard of in passing, but it never registered until I could put face to it. PMU (pregnant mare urine) horses and their foals are regularly sent to slaughter. They are often sold and shipped off to Europe & Japan where horses are slaughtered for meat. The poor mares are kept pregnant and in stalls where they are tied both front and back for 6 months. Their resulting foals are very often sold off to feedlots as are the mares who do not impregnate readily. Fortunately, this practice is waning because of a 2004 study linking estrogen hormone replacement with cancer and heart disease. But this also means that these horses are now being dumped into a market where there are already hundreds of horses looking for caring homes. The people of Dreamchaser and other rescues like them have the very difficult task of finding these poor animals homes where they will at last know kindness from the hands of humans.

So now you're probably asking "Why a pig and why is it in a hula skirt?". Years ago insulin was derived from pig hormones. Now it is synthetically produced and pigs need not be slaughtered so that people may live. If we can replace pig insulin with a synthetic, why not do the same with horse estrogen? So the little piggy is in a hula skirt because she's been invited to a luau where pork isn't on the menu. 20% from her sale will be donated to help "Orphan" at Dreamchaser PMU Rescue and Rehabilitation.

Good luck bidding!

Bluebell, the Flying Piglet

Bluebell

Stating Bid $9.95

Buy It Now $224.00

Reserve Price $95.00

Click here to bid or view her auction

I just finished Bluebell and listed her last night on eBay. She was really fun to do. Her wings were hand dyed with blue Kool-Aid. They turned a really lovely shade of blue. I was inspired by Chrissy P.(The Felted Chicken) from her blogpost last week. It was pretty awesome. I hard a hard time finding the blue. I finally found some on the shelf of the General store in Randsburg. I think it was about 5 years old. But who cares. I don't think Kool-Aid can go bad anyway. I bought their whole stock of 6. First, I needle felted them and I then boiled them in the Kool=Aid for about 15 minutes. It took 2 packs to get them this shade of blue.

Ferdinand & Diego & Grizzly Bears?

Diego

Staring Bid $68.99

Buy it Now $250.00

Click here to view or bid

Ferdinand

Starting bid $66.00

Buy it Nowy $95.00
Click here to view or bid

Well, I just finished these two little guys and listed them last night on ebay So far having a reserve on my auctions has worked a lot better than I had thought. But my eBay fees have more than tripled. So I'm starting these two with higher starting bids with no reserves. We'll see if they do as well. If not it's back to reserves. It's kind of a good thing that summer is sooo slow. I've got quite a few commissions lined up. My problem with commissions is that I tend to fuss and fret over them more. They tend to take more time. However they do stretch me and make me perfect my craft. So it's a good thing. The other good thing about it being kind of slow is that my sister and her husband are visiting me from Indiana. They'll be here on June 20. I have to make sure that I've got enough items done in advance so I won't be poking wool the whole time they're here.

Last night I watched Werner Herzog's documentary,"Grizzly Man", for the first time. It's about the naturalist, Timothy Treadwell who lived with the Grizzlies in Alaska for thirteen summers and was killed along with his girlfriend by a Grizzly. I think the guy was a wannabe bear and a wannabe Steve Irwin. He saw himself as the lone defender of the bears. It's really a tragedy. But he should have known that it had been a very lean summer for the bears and that they needed to gain enough weight in order to hibernate. Staying so late in the Fall was a fool hardy thing to do and even more foolish to take another person along with him. I think he had a death wish or an unimaginably huge ego to think that the bears would leave him alone. The upshot is that it was a very good movie that led me to ponder all kinds of things.

As an animal artist, I've often wondered that if my cute little wild ones help foster the "Bambi' syndrome where nature is just there to pet and hold and to sastisfy our need for companionship. We as human beings tend to either anthropromorphize animals or to think that they are so much lesser and different than mankind. I think there's middle ground. They all deserve our kindness and compassion. Animals should be appreciated for who and what they are and not what we hope them to be.

Cupcake & Thomas, 2 New Felties

Here are my latest felties. Both start on auction on eBay toniaght at 6:45 PM PST

Cupcake

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200330939661

Little Cupcake really enjoys her desserts.

Click to enlarge

20 % of the proceeds from this sale will benefit

Old Dog Haven ~ a senior doggie rescue and hospice

Cupcake is a tiny little piglet who has a very sweet tooth. Cupcake was lovingly created from soft merino and corriedale wool fibers tightly needle felted into a static pose without the use of a kit or pattern. She is adorned with a sheer pink and white polka-dot ribbon with yellow-orange paper rose. Little Cupcake is 5 1/2 inches tall ears included. She comes complete with her artist needle felted cupcake with it's cherry on top and vintage bugle bead sprinkles. It measures 4 1/2 inches tall to the stem and 2 inches wide.

Thomas, the toad

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200330966390

Thomas can pose in many different postions. He has 8 different joints. They are located at his shoulders, hips, knees and ankles. His arms have flexible wire for posing

Click to enlarge

20 % of the proceeds from this sale will benefit

Old Dog Haven ~ a senior doggie rescue and hospice

Thomas is a friendly little toad who can pose in many different positions. He is jointed at the arms and legs. His knees and ankles are also jointed and his arms have flexible wire for many different poses. Thomas was lovingly created from soft merino and corriedale wool fibers tightly needle felted around a wire frame without the use of a kit or pattern. His bright eyes are needle felted. Little Thomas is 6 1/2 inches from his head to toes and 3 1/2 inches tall seated.