Monster making

Since last year, I've alluded to my continuing hobby of plush monster making, but haven't said much.

The link in the sidebar, Monsters for the Home, leads to my sparsely stocked Etsy store, for which I have more stock, but not more gumption to list the stock. With Art Shop coming up in a month, I'm more inclined to save my stuff for direct sales anyway.

Monster making uses an all-different part of my brain, one I don't use much. I'm an abstract thinker; I like fiddling with ideas and symbols, and have little facility with stuff.

But making monsters is all about assembling stuff. For some reason, it's not strange and boggling when I sew, it's just strange.

I have a few patterns, but I get bored with the same thing after one try. So I launch into new things all the time, which takes thought. I used to doodle geometric shapes in work meetings where I didn't have much involvement (all of them). Now, I draw crude 3D models of whatever cotton problem I'm trying to work out. I imagine this is what it's like to be an artist.

Saturday I made my favorite monster yet: Cycloptopus. It's not actually that tricky, but it does embody the sudden, unexpected confluence of a lot of things I've learned about plush, and I'm proud of it.

Very little of my output is unusable -- it's hard to screw up something that's meant to look monstrous. But I see more blemish than finish in most of my production. This guy is different. I might not sell him yet. Might keep him around as a trophy.