Fiber

I recently completed another Warm Fuzzy project, but I gave it to the intended recipient before taking a picture. This one was dark purple and I made it some pink bunny pajamas. The recipient is a fan of A Christmas Story. I'm sad about not having a picture because the ears were so perfectly adorable.

Another area I've been leaning into recognizing my talents in is art. I've been practicing calling myself a fiber artist. This summer when I was writing my whole life story I had a sentence that started "If I were an artist". I had to change it because what I meant was "if I were better at drawing". I wanted to be more respectful to myself. It's weird to say that.

I've been practicing fiber art for a long time. In childhood, I was taught to sew and many of my early projects were costumes for re-enacting the middle ages. Around middle school, I learned to do counted cross-stitch. I've made a countless number of little cross-stitched Christmas ornaments as gifts for my friends. I never took pictures of those as I didn't have a camera or the idea to record my work.

In college, I learned to crochet. I believe my first project was a black scarf that is about 10 - 12 feet long and entirely single crochet. Except maybe some parts where I forgot what I was doing and slip stitched. I think I also tried to figure out how to knit and I was unable to do so at that time. That was probably around 2001. That's 18 years of crochet.

Over the years I've learned all kinds of new skills. Usually I learn new sewing skills when I need something and have limited resources. Like the year Taryn had a big growth spurt right when it was getting cold and I didn't have any way to get her anything new. I went to the Airman's Attic (like a thrift store but free) and pretended I was looking at fabric rather than the overwhelming piles and piles of wrong sized clothes. I turned adult long sleeve Ts into leggings and too-large shirts into right-sized shirts. Button down shirts into dresses. It was kind of fun actually.

Yes, I'm a fiber artist. I take materials and apply my skills and creativity to form new things. When I ask Google to tell me the definition of art, it wants to argue with me. But I prefer the idea that every human is an artist and we all need to tap into our creativity and be encouraged to express it.

Warm Fuzzies

In elementary school, I suspect it was 5th grade but I'm not sure, one of my teachers had a jar on her desk full of  a little things called Warm Fuzzies. They were little pompoms glued to a sort of heart shaped piece of felt to act as the feet and they had googly eyes. There was also a little piece of paper glued to it that instructed you to hold it in your hand and probably think of something nice, I don't remember. I had kept it for a very long time until the girls got a hold of it and tore it up.

More recently, when we were looking at Valentines, I saw a kit for making Warm Fuzzies. So for a Valentine craft I tried to get the girls to make pompoms from yarn and cut out felt feet. But my real love is crochet, so naturally I had to come up with a crochet version of a Warm Fuzzy. It only took me until November last year to settle down and try it out....

I found two or three heart applique patterns and came up with a combined/modified heart which leaves some loops open to crochet a generic sphere such that it's attached to the heart so I don't have to sew it on at the end.

One of my big ideas is that I can take this very basic thing and then by adding ears, a nose, wings, antennae, whatever I want, I could have a whole series of different critters. Not long after I had finally made the first two, Taryn needed a gift for a white elephant gift exchange. Well, I have basically one idea for those kinds of gifting occasions. 

It's so much cuter than I even imagined.

When I needed to make a pile of something for Christmas gifts, I took the opportunity to experiment with different eye placements for the Warm Fuzzies. Then in May, I made another pile of them. I got enough practice that I'm able to make a Warm Fuzzy in under 30 minutes if I don't add anything extra to them.

Then I kind of forgot about them for a while until I needed a "thank you note" and I procrastinated too long and then only had a short time available. So I planned to make a plain Warm Fuzzy, but I managed to put the eyes on way too low so it wasn't working. Then I thought it could be a cat, so I worked up a pair of ears. But they didn't turn out very cat-like.

This is how I've ended up, almost a year later, finally making my second Warm Fuzzy Critter.

I think I've dropped my phone one too many times, my picture quality has distinctly decreased.

It's a bat. Very Halloween. It's so cute Caelie has demanded one for herself.