papa panov

Hey dudes, I made a monster of my dad, lookit:



It's his Father's Day gift, bit late like, but the inspiration came to me in a flash at work and I HAD to make it. His original gift was a text message.



But! That's not the best bit, right. I have recently been adorning my monsters with accessories. It's fun for me because I get to make various crocheted things which are bit different from your standard common-or-garden monster. And it's fun for the monster-recipients, because they get to see just what object their friend thinks best describes their personality. Or not fun, I dunno. If someone asked me to crochet a butchered cat or a copy of Mein Kampf or something, I might wonder if they needed to re-evaluate their friendship.

But I digress. My dad doesn't have any murderous hobbies I don't think, but what he does like is playing the BANJO.

Yes.



Yes! I REALLY had a good time making this. If any other musicians want monsters making, I would absolutely love it. I think this accessories thing is GOOD.

So here he is:



'Get along home, home Cindy, get along home...'

I'm going to give it to him tomorrow, and I predict that he will be bewildered as to why I bothered, and then one of the cats will chew it.

Happy belated Father's Day!

cute on toast

So this morning I took some more photos for my We Are Your Friends series. Ooh, what a treat! The lucky friends in question are Laura and John. Here is the post with their monsters in it.

Here is Laura in the sunshine:



Awww. Cute!

And here is John, taken using my trademark 'wonky camera' photography style.



If you squint and put your face close to your 'puter screen you can make out that his T shirt has a rocket on it, just like the monster's! See, I am observant!

Now for the extra cute:



Gip! Only joking, I love you.

Actually, this isn't the only couply photo I've taken. Couples LOVE this shit, right. Remember Ames and Nick?

Here they are being all cute.



I didn't post this before for some reason, but it is kinda sweet. Okay, that's enough of THAT. I do like the monsters in pairs, though. I've got a commission to make for someone's wedding, with the monsters in their wedding gear. I think it'll be super fun to crochet a little wedding dress. It'll give me a chance to show off them lace skills and get some beads and sequins on the go. Yeah!

Well, I'm off. Have a good weekend!

Valpuri

Hey guys, me again! Yes, two posts in two days. I know! I just wanted to show you a monster I made. How novel! It's my friend Valpuri, who is an artist and an amazing knitter. You can check out her work here. Good eh? We are doing swapsies, in return for the monster I am getting a wicked jumper knitted by the fair hand of Purlpuri herself. There are photos of it on her blog somewhere, it's red and black. Awesome!

Anyway here she is.



Valpuri quite often wears only black, white and red, so I decided to forgo my usual colour experiments and make the whole monster with only these three. Except for the blonde hair.

More glasses; I am having fun with these:



Finally, an extravagant hair ornament.



I have a couple of monsters to make before the end of this week, so I'd better crack on. Hasta pronto, a bientot, goodbye.

my face etc

Ey up. This weekend I have been busy doing things like dyeing hairs, going for walks, scrounging pints, and plastering stickers all over my head.

These are some photos me and Nic did yesterday. I dyed my hair on Saturday, which was an adventure. I wanted it to be really bright, largely so that I would look a bit like a monster. I made all the labels individually with a rubber stamp that I made ages ago by carving into an eraser with a Stanley knife. Here 'tis:



Anyway then I stood in Nic's garden and did some good muggin'. I won't show you all of the pictures, because a lot of them are hideous and terrifying. Also, she took about fifty. But these are some of the ones I liked.





Oh yeah, I also had some sexy fake eyelashes from the pound shop that matched my hair and I thought, yeah!





Then I had the fun task of getting all the stickers off my head which was good, I no longer need a moustache wax, and I don't need to pull all the skin off my face which I was also going to do. Fun times!

Oh yes, I have no idea about proper photo editing which is why I always just whack the saturation up to a million and then maul about with contrast and stuff for ages. I just like bright colours.

Righto, it's time for tea now I reckons. Til next time, folks.

Another day, no dollars

Hey hey children. Just popping in to tell you that I am still bumbling along, monstering, working, toiling away. Sigh. I got ANOTHER new job the other day. Earlier this year it occurred to me that this year is the tenth year since I moved out of home, and I worked out that in that time, I had had something like fourteen jobs, seventeen different addresses and 683 housemates. That's not quite right, but it seemed pretty high to me. Anyway then some of my friends joined in the fun and their numbers were quite comparable. Just goes to show how unstable and flighty we all are, what? Anyway that was in about January, and since then I have managed to accumulate four more jobs, thanks to the beauty of temp work. I keep getting sacked or just quitting in a fit of pique, in the case of the hospital, cos it was crud and I just wanted to make things. I am now poor.

So anyway this new job will be full time, but hopefully won't be too horrible as I'm going to be a receptionist at the Arts Council for three months. Oooh! Snazzy! I will probably moan about it here.

I was going somewhere with this but I've forgotten where. Anyway, I have a couple of weeks before I start this job so I am trying to get as much work done as I can before I haven't got time any more. I have done a few commissions, some of which I shouldn't post yet as I think they are for presents and YOU NEVER KNOW WHO'S WATCHING, but these ones are part of We Are Your Friends, sort of, so I don't think they will mind.

Here's Laura:



The glasses are a particular triumph. I sculpted them out of pipe cleaner and then wound black yarn round them. I think they look pretty awesome.

Quick side view:



Looking good there Laura.

And this is John:



Close up of beard and rocket T combo:



Now because John likes bikes, I decided it would be fairly amazing to just put a bike on his head. Like so.



Cool. So I have a few more to do, which I am kind of excited about. I'm also doing a workshop in October at Beetle Felt in Chorlton, so I need to make patterns and shit, because I normally just make stuff up as I go along, and I can't very well turn up to a workshop going, 'yeah, so just keep going until it looks reasonably symmetrical, whatever, no one will notice'. Not that I do that with my own work obviously. Er. I better go.

What larks!

Well, the crafty market yesterday was a lot of fun and a big success! I sold a few bits and bobs, which is obviously super cool, but I was also mega boosted by all the lovely comments and great feedback that people gave me throughout the day. It makes me happy to know that someone likes what I make. Sometimes when I spend a lot of time making and don't talk to anyone for ages, I get a bit paranoid about it, so it was nice to hear. Thanks guys!

This is what my stall looked like at the start of the day.



It changed quite frequently as I sold things and moved stuff around, used my lunchbox as a pedestal, added more things that I'd forgotten about, etc. But I didn't take photos of that.

My work appears to be quite popular with youngsters, which is cool. I am naturally drawn to brightly coloured things too. Okay, so you know the monsters mostly have big, open mouths? Something I noticed was that kids and grownups alike are compelled to stick their finger in there. It happened so many times! I wonder why? They must just be so inviting.


AaagUMMM

Whenever there was a flurry of activity, I took some covert photos, here we go look.





Mmm!

Well, at the risk of sounding like a right pleb, thanks so much everyone for coming to visit me yesterday, you made me smile and I like you! So now I am going to whack the rest of my stuff on Etsy, and Folksy too I reckons. I have to start asking shops and places to stock my stuff, too. Aargh, this scares me more than I can ever tell you. I don't know why. Yikes. Well, I will try not to have a breakdown about it and report back. Bye!

happy and tired and crafting

Hey chaps. As I have mentioned ten million times, I am selling my wares at the Chorlton Arts Festival craft fair on Saturday. I have pretty much finished sorting all my stuff out, few bits and bobs left. Here are some things you may not have seen.










Come visit me.

I also made some flyers and got Nic to print them for me, and they look pretty cool. However, can you spot the not-very-glaring error here?



Yes, the URL is wrong. It should be shop/helenmakes, not shopS. What a wanny. I might have to be super professional and go through the stack with a marker and remove all the superfluous Ss. Aargh. A tiny but significant mistake.

What else. I am super happy this week following a marvellous weekend at ATP. It blew on my mind. I am actually finding it quite hard to get on with things properly. Also, as soon as we got back we went straight back out to see the Bundles, which was pretty much the most exciting thing ever. I am still really tired from all the excitement. I think I am going to make Jeffrey and Kimya monsters and send them to them.

Anyway, best be off, crafty crafty. Come on Saturday, it'd be ace to see all y'all, you might even get a fist bump.

See ya!