finishing touches

Today's been a hugely satisfying day as I went shopping for a few little things I've needed for the past week or so to put finishing touches on a number of projects.

First, the hedgehog can see now!


There was a slightly awkward moment when I went to show him off to my landlady's daughter - as soon as I said, 'Hey, look at this!' and perched him on top of her textbooks her eyes lit up and she said, 'Wow, thank you!' Uh, not for her! So I guess I'll be making another one in the near future - actually that's good since I still have a fair bit of that woolly brown yarn left and it's absolutely horrible for anything other than a stuffed critter's body.

He got a name from the landlady's daughters as well. I asked them to come up with a name for him and one girl promptly replied, 'Ah-hen!' which sent all the Taiwanese people present into gales of laughter. Apparently this is an extremely common, very local name in the Taiwanese dialect - I get the impression it's roughly equivalent to Bubba or Jim-Bob in the American South. I figure it's appropriate for him since he is a little Taiwanese guy, after all. Also the second character in the name means 'kindness', and that's what the critter swap is all about. Aw, warm fuzzies.

This bag will be accompanying Ah-Hen on his journey to America.


I originally bought the yarn intending to try my hand at a stuffed unicorn, but when that proved beyond my abilities I made a bag with it and decorated it with a unicorny motif. At first I thought of embroidering or appliquéing a felt unicorn onto it, but that seemed pretty daunting - unicorns are difficult (for me) to even draw freehand without them looking like crap. This little charm came to my rescue:


He was in a basket with wooden elephants, lions, and other African animals so presumably he's meant to be a giraffe, but when, I ask you, did you last see a giraffe with a horn like that? (And the recipient lists giraffes as one of her favourite animals anyway, so presumably a unicorn-giraffe hybrid will go over well....)

Next up, beads for topping off this phone cozy which I absolute, positively, had to make as soon as I saw it:


Of all the incredibly frivolous, colourful doodads! This was my first project using intarsia and it came out basically all right with just a few hiccups, so I'm pretty damn pleased with myself. And now my phone can stay nice and warm in this sweltering climate.

Finally - I mentioned I found a yarn shop in Hong Kong. They had this bright, soft, inexpensive cotton stuff for sale at a great discount and it will be just the thing for making a shoulder strap for a bag I knit a couple of months ago:


And that's all for now. Gods, I wish I had a decent camera!