Category: Soft Dolls and Art Toys

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The menagerie continues to grow

There are a lot of critters staring at me around here lately. I’m starting to feel a little self-conscious when I walk into my workroom. I’m glad they look friendly.

And they seem to get along with each other pretty well, at least while I’ve been around.

This is Hilda the hippopotamus’ new friend, “Barbara the Hug Me! Zebra”. Like Hilda, she has hand-embroidered features, and a removable, elastic-waist skirt made from quilting calico cotton.

Barbara also has a pretty cool yarn mohawk,

and a tuft of purple yarn at the end of her tail.

It’s been about 100 degrees here, during the daytime, and our injured duck friend has been staying on the water. He’s only come up the hill just this once, this evening, since we tried to help him before, and again, it’s too late to get to the vet 🙁 If we can get the timing right, hopefully we can catch the duck away from the pond during business hours, when we can catch the vet too. He does seem to be doing better, but I’m sure he’d feel much improved once that hook is out. Here’s hoping.

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Sixteen slugs are a lot

Especially when they all need names.

Me: “C’mon, wanna help me name some slugs?”

My mom: “How about ‘Tommy’?”

Me: “Okay, which one looks like ‘Tommy’?”

My mom: “Um, that one.”

Me: “What does this one look like?”

My mom: “I don’t know. They all have the same face.”

Me: “No, they’re different…”

Lilith
Megan
Brady
Marshal
Timothy
Stephanie
Millie
Stella
Ryan
Molly
Riley
Macy
Tommy
Edith
Eddie
Rachael

These “Hug Me! Slugs” are all up for adoption over in my Etsy shop. I’ll keep all the available soft dolls and toys on this page of our website too, just to try to keep things organized 🙂

In duck news, we haven’t heard back from the avian vet and, in the meantime, we haven’t seen the limping duck, except from a distance, floating on the pond. Then he disappeared. We’ve had visits from the one mama and papa duck and their one duckling, but those have been the only sightings. Just hoping for the best with their tiny flock, and we’ll do what we can. Have you noticed that animal emergencies always seem to happen on weekends or when the vet isn’t there? It is surprisingly difficult to find anyone who will treat white ducks who live in the wild. The wildlife rehabilitation organizations we’ve contacted before only treat native animals, which makes finding help tricky. So, fingers crossed for them.

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Hippos and ducklings

Here are some better photos of “Hilda the Hug Me! Hippo”, my sock hippopotamus. You can see her hand-embroidered eyes, nose, and mouth, which I did by winging it with some embroidery floss.

I even gave her some eyelashes, and some tufts on the end of her little tail.

Her posture is pretty funny too. I think I might just keep her!

The ducks showed up with some babies! Two sets, on different occasions, so far.

Their mama likes to talk to me. She will walk right up to me and quack, quack, quack. She’s the same duck who ran into some trouble before, the one we caught in a sheet so I could remove some fishing line from her leg. She seems to know me. Sometimes she will just sit and look at me for a while, tilting her head this way and that. She’s very sweet.

We’ve only seen one duckling today, and we’re hoping the others are hiding down by the pond with the other mama duck. They don’t all leave the pond together lately. Some stay behind. The ducklings in the other set are smaller, and I haven’t seen them myself yet. I’ve only heard about them.

It’s a big trip for them. They will just fall asleep in place while the other ducks are standing nearby. If anyone slows down long enough, it’s nap time.

Update: Just as I was posting this, one of the missing ducks appeared limping badly, unable to make it up the hill. We caught him in a sheet and found he had a long fishing hook stuck in his leg. We couldn’t get it out, but managed to cut it off so it won’t get snagged on anything. We poured some peroxide on the wound, but there is only one avian vet we know of who was willing to help last time, and he isn’t open at this hour. So, we will have to wait and see. Please everyone…pick up your stuff and dispose of it properly when you leave a place. Garbage and leftover fishing hooks and fishing line cause so much suffering.

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Sixteen slugs and a sock hippo

I’m pretty proud of myself this week. I actually sewed up all sixteen of those toys I cut out and fused. It’s been too unpredictable outside to get some better photos, but here is my new batch of “Hug Me! Slugs”, all lining up for their school photos. Maybe tomorrow, kids.

I also made “Hilda the Hug Me! Hippo”, my sock hippopotamus. She’s quite a bit larger than the slugs I made this week. I keep picking her up and carrying her around. She just asks and asks. So, what can I do?

We watched a cute movie this weekend, Lost in Austen. For anyone who enjoys Jane Austen, it is a miniseries takeoff of the novel and a entertaining spin on the miniseries Pride and Prejudice. A modern woman finds a door in her bathroom that leads directly into the Bennets’ house, switches places with Elizabeth, and inadvertently disrupts the order of everything. They must have cut out this scene from the version we watched: