crafty mcgee

Chamomilla, Flora and Herb

Since I am filling in as administrator for the Month of Softies group over on Flickr while Amy is on a maternity break, and I called the theme, I thought I should participate. The theme is "Plant Life" and here are three of my little plant pals. In the individual portraits below (which you can see larger versions of by clicking), Chamomilla relaxes with a cuppa tea, Flora spends some time in the sun with her cousins, and Herb is hanging out with his buddies from the Italian cooking class.

      

I had originally planned for four, but they took longer than I expected and I wanted to spend more time on my "Midsummer Night's Dream" stuff. You may have noticed a theme of little armed and legged non-animal or person things lately. I think it all started with this impulse purchase from superbuzzy:

Which I bought with absolutely no idea of what I'll ever do with it because it reminded me of one of my all-time favorite videos, Blur's Coffee and TV. What do you think the dude with the square blue head is? My current theory is an ice cube to help with the fire. I've been getting inspired by so many odd things lately that I'm beginning to feel a bit overloaded. I can't work that fast! 

Miike

Next up in my Asian directors series is Miike (pronounced 'Me YEK ee'), named for the Japanese director Takeshi Miike . Known primarily for gore fests and prodigious output (he once directed five feature films in one year!) I've never actually seen any of his ultra-violent films. In the horror trilogy film Three...Extremes his contribution "Box" was the only one I could get through, and wasn't the least bit gory...Anyway, it's a couple of his quirkier films that put him on my tribute list. The Happiness of the Kataruris  is a zombie musical - the stand out song being "Don't Be Discouraged 'Cause You're Dead" (sung to the zombies, of course). It's got lots of humor, and even claymation! Another of my faves is a lovely little film called The Bird People in China, a fantasy about a group of Chinese descendants of Scottish ancestors high in the mountains. I would recommended these two highly to anyone who likes unusual movies. He's even made a good J-Horror (what I refer to as "ghost girl" movies) called One Missed Call. The other films of his I've seen like Gozu, Audition, and Andromeda can best be described as "David Lynch meets Quentin Tarantino".  I don't think Miike is a great filmmaker. Not surprisingly, most of his films seem unfinished. But he's prolific, and always interesting. I tried to make the little monster reflect all of that.

A hedgehog for St Patrick's Day

Only a day late! My apologies for my lack of posts lately. I had a very cool stuffie almost completed for the latest in my "Asian directors" series, when my cat unraveled it. Then she chewed up a couple of my vignette figures. So my swell toy collection, one of my favorite things in my house, has been packed away. I've been grumpy, to say the least, and not in the mood to work. Add to that some late winter health problems, a ton of work at my day job, and you have no blogging or answering emails from me. Sorry to everyone who left me messages! I do sincerely appreciate all comments. Then my grandma died last week, two days after turning 90. My cousin has blogged very eloquently about it over the last couple of days, and said almost everything I'd like to say. Thanks, Di.

Strange as it may seem, this event seems to have kicked me out of my funk, and I was almost able to finish this picture by yesterday. It still had to go into the box, though.

Year of the Golden Fire Pig!

Happy 4704! I knitted this guy based on a pattern in this book, out of some out of some yarn in a fiery colorway that just showed up in my stash. I added the wings because not only is this a Fire Pig year, it is also a Golden Year, a most auspicious event that turns up every 600 years or so (like, when pigs fly). I learned this from a commenter on Stephanie's pig post about a month ago. I did a little research on Golden years, and there seems to be a bit of controversy as to whether this is actually one or not. I guess it's easy to lose track after 4500+ years, but it still sounds dramatic! The Pig  force is strong in my family - I am an Earth Pig, my brother Craig is a Metal Pig, and our dad was a Wood Pig. In yet another series of cosmic coincidences, our mom, our brother, Craig's wife, and my son are all Tigers.  It's supposedly going to be a great year for them. Hope so, and hope you all have a great one, too!

A Garden's Octopus

It's Stormar, Scourge of the Slugs! If this guy looks familiar, it's because his incredibleness is all due to futuregirl. In addition to the amazing Sigmund, there are also a bunch of happy Octophrost Christmas ornaments about in the world. She is going to be selling the pattern on her blog, and asked me to test out the pattern. I highly recommend checking it out for yourself. Not only is it a great looking pattern, I guarantee you'll learn an extra trick or two to use in your own crafting. Thanks for the opportunity, Alice!

Full Moon on Groundhog Day

I could have sworn that's what the calendar said when I blearily flipped over the calendar to the new month this morning. What an evocative phrase! It conjured up visions of true groundhog romance, so I spent the day at work (multitasking while actually working, we're very busy) planning this little image. The guy with the flowers was from last year's post, but I stitched up his sleepy paramour this evening. Shadow or no, they will be sailing away together under the full moon.

Here's the part where I promise (again) to be a better blogger. I realize I'm part of a pretty big crowd caught in the post-holiday slog, but still... Ann Wood made a promise to post every day, and stuck to it! I know better than to set myself for that sure failure, but I hereby pledge that starting on Sunday, and for at least the rest of the month, I will post every other day. I got a new camera and have been itching to put it through its paces, so I can show some photos if nothing else.

One thing I've discovered while blog slacking is that it is impossible to do any kind of detailed work while catching up with Lost on DVD. The story is convoluted, but I can watch foreign films while stitching and keep up! The problem must be the other distractions.

It turns out the calendar only said "full moon" with a moon sign, and "groundhog day" underneath it, and my sleepy eyes added an "n", but it set off an inspiring day (lots of other ideas coming soon). Here's to occasional misreading!

Friendly Family Crafting

Here's a present for my brother that I was working on while I was unintentionally away. They are, of course, the main characters from his show Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. I'm really happy with how they turned out. Craig liked 'em too. The beautiful background is by artist Carol Wyatt. You can see more versions of the house here. I'm partial to the black one, but I thought the snow was more appropriate to the season.

Here's another family project I was working on.  Yes, it's only a tiny vest, but it's the first knitting pattern I ever designed on my own!

Farewell to fall

It was great while it lasted, though it actually ended here about three weeks ago. It's already the wettest November on record, and it's looking to be the rainiest month EVER....in Seattle...I'll say no more.

This little set was fun to make. The branches of the tree are made with spray painted paper cups. They don't bend gracefully outward as much as I would like, but they take the weight of the fabric just fine. I was concerned that they wouldn't. The kid is another "stick figure" like the shark.

This is also a brief farewell from me. I'm off on my super vacation to New York City and Pennsylvania. I'll check in on folks and check my email, but I won't be doing any posting. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Akira

Alice (aka futuregirl) has created a set of stuffed characters based on great German film directors. Duly impressed, I vowed to create my own set based on my current obsession with interest in Asian film. Here's the first, Akira, namesake of the grand master of Japanese film, Akira Kurosawa. Kurosawa made films from the 1940's until the early '90's covering many genres, from his famous samurai films  Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, and Sanjuro; film noir detective stories in Stray Dog, The Bad Sleep Well, and High and Low; covers of classics like Throne of Blood (the best ever version of Macbeth), The Idiot, and The Lower Depths, and lovely slice-of-life films (Ikuru, Madadayo). All amazing, all exquisitely written and shot. Kurosawa made relatively few films in color, but in the ones he did make  the colors are almost painfully vivid, in vibrant reds, magentas, and turquoise.

I made my Akira a crow - since crows are sharp-eyed, curious, intelligent and mysterious. All words I would use to describe Kurosawa himself. Thus ends your first lesson in Asian Cinema 101.

The still in the background is from one of my favorite Kurosawa movies, The Hidden Fortress, which was a major inspiration for the subplot of Star Wars. The little guy is the master himself. Yet another reason to admire the Japanese - they make action figures of their artists!

Happy Halloween!

Here are the only two creatures I finished of the big monster mash-up I had planned. Even more than usual, I am suffering from too many ideas and not enough time. I think there's a bit of cache overload happening in the ol' brain. The shrinky dink skeleton took three times as long as I planned, even though I knew going in I was shrink plastic challenged. I envisioned a whole chorus line of these guys. The mummy is good - I got to use up more cheesecloth. But I will leave it to all of your wonderful imaginations to add in all of his monster pals. With that thought in mind, have a great holiday, and don't eat too much candy!