Latest Puppet

Just finished my newest finger puppet, Three-Eyed Fairy Librarian With Scroll.

Very silly, I know

with her golden scroll

 

Finger Puppets Floating ’round In My Head

I’ve been daydreaming about the possibilities of finger-puppets and today went and browsed through my motley yarn collection.  I’m not a real knitter, nor, any longer, a weaver, but I have bits and pieces of yarns of various sorts.  Even a quick assortment suggests possibilities —

butterflies? angels? robots? cardinals, bluebirds, jays? dragons? It will be fun to start playing.

 

A Brief Breather — with time to show you my custom holiday orders (2)

(part 2, so’s not to have to fight the photo placement gremlins)

Some of you have seen the little knotless-netting creatures I’ve made for fun. ( see Knotless-Netting Cat Toy and Theodora the Knotless-Netting Owl ).  Awhile ago I began to get the idea of making finger puppets along these lines.  It took a fair amount of trial and error and squinting, but I finally figured out a way to do it.  I showed some of the experiments to a friend who delighted me by being enchanted, indeed so enchanted that she requested one for each of her children.  In time for Christmas, of course.  Since she is a dear friend, I obliged.   Let me introduce you to the finger-puppet Creatures.

May I introduce The Wee Fiend, New Year's Robin, and Seaweed Man

Seaweed Man and his pet seahorse

Seaweed Man's back fin

New Year's Robin

New Year's Robin ringing his bell

The Wee Fiend brandishing his sword

The Wee Fiend wagging his tail

 

Working on My “Figure” — Part 4

It’s hard to say “fleshing out” about a ghost, but I have given her a swirl  around her skeleton and ghostly innards that is part arms, part wings, part very ragged cloak.  There are shreds of burnt, worn, “leather” cloak hanging from the hollow bones.

you can barely see her in daylight

if you can catch her against a wall...

After all, when I’d gotten this far I stood her in the kitchen next to the fridge, in front of the open shelving.  The Gentleman Caller got home after work and set something on the shelves, went over and opened the fridge…  I said, “Whaddya think?”.  He turned and said, “What?”.  He had been moving around and reaching for things within 2 or 3 inches of her and neither seen nor collided with her.  She is a real ghost.

Now all she needs is blood — she is alive, is she not?  And carries some long-ago pain, I think, through time and space.  Now she is hanging out at the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette http://artlafayette.org/index.shtml as part of Go Figure: Creatively Transforming our Environment.

I am fascinated to learn that “valr”=the slain [and I think, must be connected in some fashion, perhaps cognate-wise,  to “valour”].  “kyrie”=”kur”/”kuz” cognate with “chosen”.  In Greek, “kyrie” means “lord” which is ideally related to chosen or at least deserving, and is best known from the Christian cry, “Kyrie eleison” — “Lord have mercy”.  I suspect one could write a paper about the Valkyrie — choosers of the slain — and angels, and asking for mercy, and “Kyrie eleison”.

I’m looking forward to discussions of the linguistics here.

view 2...

view 1 of Wearied Valkyrie Ghost

 

Working on My “Figure” — Part 3

She got her head and hair.  I have her looking askance, in the other direction from her shy feet.  Then she was ready to be fitted with her helmet, which was the jumping-off point for the whole piece — I’d been eyeing it for over a year; it screamed Viking helmet, but a little “off”.   Less menacing/protective; more ethereal and elongated, as though swept upwards by a draft, or smoke.

view one

view 2

Because of the reflective surfaces, this piece appears quite different, depending on the light and angle of vision.

The face is attached with knotless netting in wire to the frame and looks out from behind the protective grill that morphs into her skeleton.

 

Working on My “Figure” — Part 2

She’s taking shape from the bottom up.  She now has her skeleton and her ghostly innards.  Before I start in on her head I’m posting some pix of what she looks like now.  The stretchy black/silver netting (boughten, not made) is attached at the top and bottom with knotless netting that no one can see, and anchored at each “rib” with, essentially, lashing, wrap and tie and knot.  I wish I’d payed way more attention to Knot Tying and Lashing back in the Girl Scout day.  http://www.girlscouts.org/ Why yes, dear reader, I was a Girl Scout from Brownies through 12 grade.

An atmospheric view of feet and body.

a better lit view; you get an idea of the "ribs" anchoring her ghostly innards.

a straight-on closer view

a closer view from a different angle.

I’m growing rather fond of her, and am much less worried about being embarrassed by her in public.

 

Knotless Netting Cat-toy…

I participate in an alumnae group Secret Santa exchange.  Names are tossed into an online virtual hat (yes, we used to do this by hand, walking uphill in the snow both ways to the name-draw…).  Members can, should they care to, make little wish-lists, or state that they are allergic to marzipan.  This year my Secret Santee mentioned that her cats love cat toys made with real animal fur.

Hmmm….  Cats usually love yarn — often made from real animal fur aka wool.  Hmmm…. I also have some combed but unwashed fleece.  Hmmm…

I played around and started to make a mouse.  I padded a real cork wine-bottle-cork with the fleece.  I took some nice grey-blue yarn and  started enclosing the fleece-wrapped cork with knotless netting.  I made little knotless netting legs.  Oooops.  The toy started to look a whole lot more like a cow than a mouse.

Shrug.  A cow it would be.  But after a bit the cow started insisting it wanted to be a biffalo-buffalo-bison.  Sigh.  I gave into its wishes and started expressing its bison DNA.  It was really looking rather cute!  And my cat was fascinated.  He made it quite clear he wanted one too, if not THAT one RIGHT NOW.

As I was finishing it up, giving it eyes, and little hooves and so forth, it started to complain again.  “no, no — really — I’m a musk-ox!!”  But I finished the spell without giving in, and it ended up a biffalo-buffalo-bison musk-ox wannabe.

The biffalo-buffalo-bison cat toy

Then to keep the peace, I made a down&dirty creature using the same methode but skipping the niceties, for my cat.  He has killed, and I have resurrected, it many times between now and then.

The mutant, oft-resurrected cat toy

 

OWL — a fun knotless-netting project

Here are two close-ups of a little owl I made.  I used various yarns to do knotless-netting, aka detached-buttonhole stitch, around a wine bottle cork.  The same stitch forms the wings, tail, and tufts.  The face is a goofy piece of costume jewellery that screeched “OWL” at me.

I also found this very cool website, The Owl Pages, for owl devotees: http://www.owlpages.com/index.php

Knotless netting owl; I think her name is Theodora

profile of Theodora