It’s been awhile.
Here we have Portland City Commissioner Steve Novick, whose Twitter slogan is “Commissioner with a hard left hook.” I don’t follow politics, but I think he’s kind of amazing.
Whippet good.
Ode to Summer Being Nearly Over.
Illustrations and picture making by Samala.
It’s been awhile.
Here we have Portland City Commissioner Steve Novick, whose Twitter slogan is “Commissioner with a hard left hook.” I don’t follow politics, but I think he’s kind of amazing.
Whippet good.
Ode to Summer Being Nearly Over.
Despite my long-lived passion for puppetry and toy theater, I haven’t made many of my own puppets, and none of them were very sophisticated. Recently, however, all that changed when I ran into Andy Furgeson of Red Yarn Puppetry, a local one-man wunderkind whose folk music/puppetry/education performances are growing steadily in popularity in the Portland area. He needed a new character for his pantheon and no time to make it, so I stepped in to create Molly Cottontail, the female counterpart to his main character Bob Rabbit. I’m completely stoked that I managed to whip her out in just three days, considering that I’d never made a moving-mouth puppet before, and I hadn’t even busted out my sewing machine in a couple years. My dog loves her, too.
I started with measurements from the pre-existing Bob Rabbit and sort of winged the rest. Andy and I decided that she should be a lighter color than Bob and have rounder ears, but he left the rest up to me. To make her, I used faux fur, reclaimed upholstery velvet swatches, felt, deerskin, floral wire, found plastic sheeting, and corduroy. She’s stuffed with polyfill and rice, to make her feet heavy.
I had a blast making her, and now that I’ve learned how to make moving-mouth puppets, the sky’s the limit!