Not really in a trice

The cockatrice is a creature of legend. Half cockerel, half dragon, with a dash of toad, snake or crocodile depending on your fancy. Their glance is deadly, their visage terrifying:

Well, maybe not all the time.

I started the cockatrice yonks ago, possessed by another strange urge. I wanted him to have a very silly, friendly face, and trousers, like some chickens do, but other than that, I wasn't sure how he'd turn out.

The head would make a rather nifty boiled egg warmer, I thought, if that kind of thing took your fancy.

Here he is, worryingly gapey at the back:

Main body finished, I got horribly stuck on the wings. Feathery or dragony? Spiky or silly? He sat for a year, awaiting the final push.

So I finally bit the bullet and added some fairly straightforward wings. And it turns out that cockatrices lay rather special eggs, despite their sex and the fact that they're made of wool:

Except, now that he's finally finished, I don't know quite what to do with him. So he's just hanging around the joint, awaiting his nemesis, the weasel...

Of Totoros and Cat Buses

Hello!

I made a thing! A thing for a baby. I battled baby hats and lost, gave up and made this instead:

It's from this pattern, and lo, it is cute.

I thought I might post pictures of an epic and strange project I set myself a while ago, which was making a Cat Bus. What is this Cat Bus you speak of, I hear you cry! It's a character in a Miyazaki film called My Neighbour Totoro.

It looks like this:

It is a cat. And a bus!

I had already taken on some Totoro-based projects, using these patterns to make a blue and a white Totoro for a lover of Totoro-type things. Here they are:

So far, so Totoro-ish. But I had a yen to test myself, to embark on the ridiculous challenge of making an anatomically correct Cat Bus That Things Could Ride In Should They Want To.

Reader, it nearly killed me.

Here are some (bad) work-in-progress photos:

Ruddy armatures again.

The present deadline grew near, it was the day before Christmas Eve and I had to pack for Christmas, and wrap my presents and do a million things and finish the Cat Bus, who, unfortunately, had no head. I have since learned from this mistake and always start complicated projects with the head. Top Tip! It gives you a glow of satisfaction to finish it, you are spurred on to the mundanity of body parts, and you don't have the eleventh hour weeping into your wool, when you realise you're just too tired to keep fiddling with the damn thing. How do I get the requisite Cheshire Cat grin? And those yellow headlight eyes?

But he (she? it?) was finished, and given, and now lives a happy life with the other Totoros:

The Cat Bus has the right number of stripes, and the right number of windows, and again LEDs would have been marvellous, but sometimes you have to just leave it alone. (I would like to add some mice and some claws, oh, and maybe seats? and stop now...)

(Stills from this website, and characters copyright to Studio Ghibli and other legal-ly stuff.)

Saturday ephemera

I'm having trials and tribulations making a small baby hat, which it is trying because it is tiny and should be easy and cute but is going wrong and flappy. But in more successful making news, this was crocheted and given as a birthday present:

(Holding some excellent books, it is too.) Grr argh, I can't find the pattern online that I made it from...

Some other things:

I made this veal holstein and it was meatily tasty and kind of retro.

Is this available in the UK?

I'm currently boiling two pink grapefruits to make Nigella's marmalade, and switching between reading Caitlin Moran's How to be a Woman and Cloud Atlas so I'm feeling simultaneously shouty-feminist-hooray-militant and citrus-y-domestic goddess-y with a literary twist.

Banjos are calling now...

woolly in two ways

A quick post with an older project - a woolly mammoth for a lover of prehistoric things:

Excuse the glamorous car park backdrop! I was quite pleased with his hump and pipecleaner tusks, though he looks rather mournful...

Ood!

I made an Ood!

The tentacles came first, and the armature was fiddly beyond belief, but here he is, ready to be given as a birthday present. Oh, for glow-in-the-dark wool for that orb.

See a real-life Ood here.