In my last post I mentioned that in Tagaytay, we found this large, warehouse-like place that sells second hand clothes, shoes, bags and other miscellaneous items. These places are called ukay-ukay, and from my understanding the word ukay (not sure which Filipino dialect this is from) means “to dig”. This is only my speculation, though, as it’s pretty close to the Tagalog word hukay, which also means to dig.
Jake is done!
I’ve been planning on making plushies based on the characters from Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time (the only show I look forward to these days), but it only took a request for my nephew’s Halloween costume to get me into gear. He was going as Finn the Human, and he needed his bestfriend, Jake the Magic Dog. Unfortunately, I didn’t finish Jake in time for his trick-or-treat debut at my brother’s office. But I did manage to finish Jake on All Souls Day, when The Nephew visited.
I consider my Hobbes plushie project as the first real plushie/stuffed toy project I ever did. Looking back, I think I was a little crazy to have done it by hand, but it was also a great learning experience for a novice crafter like me.
I made the Hobbes plushie last June as a send off gift for my youngest brother, who was going to law school this semester. He’s been a fan of Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes comics strip since he was young, plus he took philosophy as his undergraduate degree. I thought he’d like to have a tiger on his side to help with his studying.
Bill Watterson never wanted his work commercialized so there are no merchandise for Calvin and Hobbes. People have been making their own version of Hobbes, and I think that makes it much more special and meaningful – to receive something made especially for you instead of something mass produced and bought off a department store shelf.
The original plushie version of Hobbes in Bill Watterson’s “Calvin and Hobbes.” Of course in the strip Calvin sees Hobbes as a real (but still adorable) tiger.
Anyway, I got the pattern and followed the steps from this fantastic tutorial on Instructables.
Pro-CRAFT-inations 