The Snow started Friday just in time for rush hour and continued into the early parts of Saturday. (Sometimes it’s good that I don’t usually go anywhere.) I do not want to go out and look at the driveway. Looking at the garage roof, it may be better to stay in and finish writing this note to you. Then tomorrow, Sunday, I have some feet to work on if I can finish the gastrox and soleus muscles so I can get to the feet. I promise I will show you how that is coming in a later post. I also can report I have received Mr. Mer’s Hair! I will show you that but thought a week less fishy might be in order.
So to get to today’s topic I should get you caught up with my frantic (HA!!!) social life. Last week we were able to visit my brother, his family and my Mom for the first time since…. Well, sometime last year…. I think it was early August actually. We were hoping for a safe Christmas dinner but that plan was thwarted. So it was an early March, (my) Birthday / (Mom’s) Anniversary, Dinner My brother was hosting. It was fabulous to see everyone and meet the new kitten (not quite so new now but still stuck with kitten brain). We were very pleased to get caught up on all the family news, especially exciting was the news that my Niece had been accepted into McMaster University. My parents and brother all went to Mac, I was a rebel and wound up in fine arts at the University of Toronto after doing 3 years of commercial art. (My Dad and brother were both PhD Geologists, but I love landscape so I guess that sort of fits in.)
I had brought my little ice dragon to show my niece since she has been interested in some of the strange things I felt. She did like the little guy too.
When I got home, I dug through the little ice dragons’ box and found I had his wing template but not the armature measurements. I did a few quick measurements of the ice dragon then started working on the little Mac dragon. I pulled out a couple of 18-inch steel florist wires and found the roll of 26 gauge steel floral wire and got to work.
This little guy is a bit bigger than the ice dragon but only a little. I used the 20ga for the main frame and used the 26ga for the tows and lower jaw (both yet to be twisted in the photo). I also added the 26ga over the main frame to give it a bit more strength. He needs to be able to stand up and look fearsome!
2-3 Adding wool to the armature body
I used a fine crimpy fleece I had purchased at the wool Growers Co-op in Carlton Place but found it to be too brown in tone. I switched to some of the core wool from Sarafina Fiber Arts, trying the darker grey but deciding on the lighter grey. (It’s really important to go check your source or reference material, in this case, the school colours.)
Now, to find the burgundy for the wings. It is time to dig through the Red bin, I have a bag of red tones also in the basement. Luckily, I found I had a corriedale called Aubergine by Ashford I had picked up at Wabi Sabi (one of the local fibre and yarn stores).
The colour was perfect but looked a bit flat since it was too homogeneous. I added a bit of “i-have-no-idea-where-this-came-from fuchsia,” which I had found while looking for my sari waste, which I never did find and I don’t think it would have been the correct tone if I had found it.
A quick check of the McMaster shield Heraldry added the background colour of gold to the two colours Burgundy and Grey. Ok, where did I put the boxes of beads, I need to find eyes! They should be Gold or dark amber.
I chose one of the dark amber beads in the little bag in the center of the second picture. The colour seemed to work with the body and upcoming wing colours. To add the eyes, I used a long needle to get the position, then used the tapered awl to get the depression the bead would be sunk into, (the eye socket). Leaving a longish tail of thread at the back of the head, I went from there across to the hole for the eye, added the bead and drove the needle through to the other eyehole. I again added a bead this time taking the needle out at the back of the head so I could tie the two threads together. I covered the knot with a bit more of the grey fibre.
10-14 “Don’t look yet! I can see my wings are naked!!!”
I again made a template to layout the wings. I dry rubbed them a bit to get them to be cohesive enough to remove the cards.
15-17 the strangely expanding wings.
Strangely with wispy wings, as I felt the wings tend to get bigger, not shrink like a good felt should do! Even my fiber is dyslexic and can’t be relied on to do anything the normal way everyone else dose! I could have done this using wet felting but I would have to have gotten wet so I went for the dry option. I am sure you will be much braver and may not melt with the application of dampness. If in dought you might try surgical gloves.
I counteracted the expansion that the punch tool seemed to encourage by working with a single needle on an angle, from each end, along the leading edge of the wing membrane. It was still a bit longer at the front edge than I had planned on, but I made a design change at the shoulder and was quite pleased.
19-24 the wings
“No don’t show that side! You haven’t added my tail enhancement!!!!”
“The Embarrassment!! Just for that, I will show them what you were drinking while you were making me!! That will explain any blurry or inappropriate pictures!!”
Mac dragon, it did take me 2 days to drink that one can, out of the 3 days it took to make you, so I am not likely to be too tipsy to operate a camera. Though it’s probably not a good idea to drink too much alcohol while needle felting…….
My final additions to dragon were the ear puffs with a bit of gold Bombay silk and the bifurcated tail embellishment. I added a secondary piece of wool and silk above the bifurcation. (I am sure it will attract other dragons with its flamboyantness and the bit of gold silk)
I tried out the Christmas video camera (the zoom is a disappointment and the frame rate is not as listed.) I had a long argument with the file this afternoon and got it finally to crop, rotate and convert to avi format. I pulled out the little display turntable I had ordered in December(?), time is getting much trickery to keep track of than it used to be. Let’s just say it’s the pandemic and I won’t worry about that too much. If I can get the file to add, I will add it here.
Video of Mac Dragon pretends to be a merry–go–round (If this doesn’t work I will beg Ann to help! Second try, my phone is much more shaky but worked better than the new video recorder for formatting!)
I would like to have been able to get Mac Dragon (short for McMaster U. Dragon) to his new home but I am snowed in until tomorrow. So, no one say anything to my Niece until after I can deliver him on Monday!
Keep safe and Keep Felting!!