Patrick

His auction starts tonight.  I just love this hedgehog mohair.

My Neighbors and Totoro

I just love coincidences! And I've been having a lot of them lately. As you probably know, I live in a very tiny town of 150 people, if you count chickens and dogs. I also foster the wonderful Mr. Bullet, a very sweet bull terrier boy.  Bull terriers are not the most common of breeds. You'll never guess. But my new neighbors across the street from me have a rescue bully! She's a very dainty little girl and Bullet is in love. He gets kind of moony eyed and stares at her from across the street.

My second coincidence, is that the other day I had just finished photographing a birthday present that I made for my son, when I noticed Helen Priem's post of her birthday present that she was sending. So here is what I made Jeremiah.

Penny, a Little Spring Duckling

Here's little Penny. Her eBay auction starts tonight at the usual time of 6:45 Pm PST.

Percival & Petunia

I finished little Petunia, today. And quite by accident, I noticed how cute they were together when you place their mats side by side. Initially, I wanted to put Petunia in my Etsy store.  But they looked so cute together that it would be a shame not see them go to the same buyer.  Petunia is up for auction on eBay now.

A Hedgehog, Retrospective

Percival, pictured at top, is my latest hedgie. I used a specialty mohair fur for his spines. I kind of felt like it was cheating a bit.  But I really like how he turned out. I have enough left over to start really playing with making hedgehogs. I'm kind of excited about making more. Percival's eBay auction starts Sunday at the usual time.

Frankie, the Newspaper Boy

This is little Frankie. His little outfit is removable and completely hand sewn. I believe sewing little mouse pants was the hardest thing to make a pattern for.  Mice really don't have legs. The newspapers are little miniature copies of a 1900 New York Times. It was fun trying to figure out how to age them a bit. The first batch I made, I tried aging the papers in strong tea. The ink ran. So the second batch, I aged them in picasa and then used pastels and a fixative. Frankie's eBay auction starts Sunday night at the usual time of 6:45 PM PST.

Peony & Clive

Here's my latest two, a lop eared bunny and a Fennec fox. It seems I was on a big eared, sleepy kick. Both are on eBay tonight.

Elizabeth, a Little Orphan Train Rider

I named this little mousie after my Grandmother.  She and her brother Frank were orphan train children sent from New York out to the Midwest farming communities. She was adopted first and her brother Frank was adopted 50 miles later.  My Grandmother never knew his whereabouts and often wondered what had happened to him. Many of the orphan train children were little more than child labor used to work the farms and do housekeeping. Some were lucky and were adopted into loving families. I believe my Grandmother was one of the lucky ones. Grandma' Elizabeth passed away when I was five.  I'll always remember her thick German accent and her wonderful windmill cookies. She  also had a fondness for African violets. Another thing I remember is her fear of being sent to the poor house.  As a kid growing up in the '60's, I had no idea that the poor houses were real. And that by being poor, your children could be taken away from you and sent to work.  Or that like my great Uncle Frank you could be sent to the juvenile authorities for the simple act of trying to sell newspapers on the street. There are people in this country that believe they'd like to go back to the good old days with little or no constraints on business and no public assistance programs. I only pray they do not get their way.  Someone who had seen my work on eBay recently sent me this poem:

Star Fish Poem

As I walked along the seashore
This young boy greated me.
He was tossing stranded starfish
Back to the deep blue sea.
I said, "Tell me why you bother,
Why you waste your time this way.
There's a million stranded starfish
Does it matter, anyway?"

And he said, "It matters to this one.
It deserves a chance to grow.
It matters to this one.
I can't save them all I know.
But it matters to this one,
I'll return it to the sea.
It matters to this one,
And it matters to me.