First Mer-Pet

First Mer-Pet

First Pet for the Mer’s (“it followed me home, can we keep it?” begged Mer-Teen “Only if you take it for walks and clean its litter box” replied Mrs Mer.)

This has again been a busy week. We were off to see if the walker had arrived on Friday and found out that they had received 2 walkers they hadn’t ordered and not the one I had ordered. So maybe it will be this week.  Saturday we had a trip out the Farmers Market at the log farm not too far away from home. Ann and her Husband have a booth there. (go for the butter tarts, stay for the cookies, sausage, meat pies, bread …. And that is just at Ann’s booth. Ann is multi- talented!!)

 

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I added the fingers and hands to my Mer-Teen and worked on musculature for the forearms  I did a bit more musculature on the tail giving it vestigial quads, Knees, gastrocs and even Glutes (I may have to upgrade the gluteal endowment on her parents!! They are sadly lacking.) I now have the under-structure about to the stage I want for the Mer’s. So I ordered some coriadail.  Most were for possible skin tone blending from our local fibre store, Wabi Sabi on Wellington St.  They were doing order on-line with pick-up 2 days a week. Glenn kindly said he would go fetch the fibre for me.

 

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While I was waiting for the fibre pick-up day to arrive, I considered possible pets that the Mer’s should have. So I browsed Google image for sharks and found I liked the great white and the huge one that had some particularly good photos taken of her.

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Armed with a substantial selection of sharkness from many different angles I set to work building an armature. Using the aluminum wire from the dollar store I made a basic skeleton with lower jaw, pectoral, dorsal, second dorsal and caudal fins.

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Working from the same, now quickly shrinking batt of alpaca, (thanks Ann!! I hope you find another one you don’t want!), I started at the head/jaw and worked towards the tail.  As you can see, I was watching Sara’s Felt along flowers while building a juvenile great white shark.  Just to the right is my photo reference to help me get the jaw and head the right shape.

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After the felt along was finished I switched back to playing Runescape while felting (Multitasking!! That is my greatly missed Dog’s character in the gold armor. I got him an account because it wasn’t fair that the cat got to have an account and he didn’t.) You can see I have reached the pectoral fins and the nose angle and jaw line are now closer to realistic.

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Eventually I put on an audio book and really made some progress. Now I’m only a few fins short of a shark.

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A quick break for gardening and it was on to the missing bits to finish her off.

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So now I have the Mer-teen under layer reasonably close to what I was hoping for and the female juvenile great white shark under layer done .  I have one more pet underway but I will show you that later.

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Today I was off to Wabi Sabi to pick up my wool order (Coriadail and Shetland). I separated each colour into its own bag with a tag so I can reorder, as I get low. (This will help a lot since I don’t always remember where I got a fibre)

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Tomorrow I am hoping to start some colour blending, now that I think I have the base colours I want to work from. I still have to find the alpaca I was looking for and part of that bump of white South American coriadale I got quite a few years ago. I think I saw them in the living room last, now where could they be hiding?

 

Stay healthy and keep your hands in warm soapy water with wool.

 

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8 thoughts on “First Mer-Pet

  1. Lovely photos of Ann and her husband. All of Ann’s cooking looks so delicious (she’s posted photos of it before).

    Your shark is amazing – can’t wait to see her with her outer layer on.

    1. Thanks Annielynrosie, i am running late to start felting today. there is a heat warning today so i got up urly, watered the front back and side garden and moved the pots lettice into the shade. then rushed out to by another patio umbrella to shade the side yard vegies and lettice i couldnt move.

      Ann makes the most amazing tarts. she sometimes use to bring them to the socials at the guild. Yumm!!

  2. Everything is coming along really well Jan. maybe you need to start dying your own custom colours. Thanks for taking some great pictures. I really don’t have many of the farmers market.

    1. thanks for being a target for my camera! it took me a while to catch the tart into the box shot! (but i think it was worth it) i hope we can sneek out tomorow and by more tarts and maybe get some picturs with sun in it.

      i have been enjoying this fishy theme of felting (maybe because its dry?)

  3. Your mer pet is great. I’m sure that the mer teen and her shark will have lovely adventures traveling the deep blue sea!

    Thanks for the photos of Ann and hubby at the market. It’s good to see her 🙂

  4. Your Mer family is coming on leaps & bounds. I hope your mer-pet will be Relatively friendly with a ‘happy’ jawline

    From your last post – a commercial artist then a physio….that explains your attention to musculature detail.
    Poplars in pots check out the Japanese art of Niwaki

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