80 degree holidays

happy new year, everyone!  i hope you all had a wonderful holiday season full of friends, family, and good food.  i know i sure did!

to begin, i must set up the story.  this begins way back in november, at thanksgiving...
my dear friend jenna and her lovely parents joined my family for a thanksgiving feast at my house this year.  jenna had come from texas and her parents came all the way from ohio.  thanksgiving night, jenna and i had a sleepover at at her hotel in santa monica and spent the next day frolicking around the city.  as our frolicking came to a close, we started our walk back to the hotel and came upon a pile of trash left by some careless hobo, no doubt (it's santa monica).

amongst the pieces of debris, i spotted a diamond in the rough!  an abandoned glove!  hurray!  but aw.. gross.. santa monica glove.  thankfully, i was carrying two bags because i had bought christmas cards and a birthday present for my mom that day.  i consolidated my purchases into the larger bag and used the smaller one to pick up and store the glove on its journey.


fast forward to christmastime.  my good friend marken is back from new york city for the holidays and we are at knott's berry farm with her mom, meg, and our friend beeta.  why are we at knott's?  for a craft fair, duh!  (what?)  well, we are walking around this craft fair, unimpressed with the knick knacks and various homemade crap.  i heave a sigh, expecting to leave the fair empty-handed, when i see a glove relaxing on the floor in a doorway!  yay!  i had no tissues or baggies to pick it up with, so this time i just sucked it up and picked it up with my bare hands and held it daintily between two fingers until i located some paper towels to wrap it in.


fast forward again to 2012 and after the holiday hubbub, i have time to sit down and make some glove dolls.  these two are fairly straightforward and i know right away what i want to form them into.  the santa monica glove is a plain black knit glove but the thumb lends itself so nicely into a long nose.  the knott's glove has cute rubber polka dots on the palm, so i want to highlight that feature.  the pinky and thumb fingers become arms and the wrist hole becomes a mouth.

please welcome 2012's first glove dolls:

             Huell                               and                                 Lon!

mar dee graws

the cross-street where meg found the glove

this glove comes from my best friend’s mother, meg.  meg is absolutely amazing and lovely.  she is a fantastic glove-spotter and i can't thank her enough for supporting this blog.  thanks, meg!  well, one evening meg stopped by unexpectedly.  when i answered the door, i saw her standing on the porch holding a box.  i immediately knew what was in it.  i ushered her inside, gave her a huge hug, and eagerly took the box from her.  i opened the box to find a small black glove covered in leaves and other foliage.  it was accompanied by a blue beaded mardi gras necklace meant for my mother.  the glove was from... you guessed it!  mardi gras!  what a party glove!  i honestly cannot imagine what sights this glove has seen or what debauchery it has been a part of.  accordingly, i decided i must make it a playful glove.

thuh gluv on da gound

after cutting off the thumb (gasp!) and sewing up the side, i stuffed the glove and sewed the wrist part into a mouth.  i originally wanted to make the thumb into bewbs, but later decided against it.  instead, the thumb became a tongue, sticking out of the mouth, taunting and teasing any passersby.  perhaps the tongue hangs out because the glove has caught sight of a mardi gras honey trying to get some beads?  perhaps not.  either way, he/she (i couldn't tell!) has turned into quite the swinger.

please welcome...

LECH!

lech and teddy making eyes at you.

P.S. meg gives her commentary on lech: 

"Lech is wonderful. I especially love it's tongue. And by the way, we couldn't tell either. I think the whole Mardi Gras experience had gotten the best of Lech. It was about 3:00pm on Fat Tuesday when it was found. I'm sure it had been ...partying for 4 straight days. I'm not surprised that Lech's mouth is now in a frozen state of retching. In all honesty, I have to tell you that Dick is the one who found Lech. I had our whole family on the lookout. They will be glad to know how well things turned out for the little glove. Now I'm getting teary..."

mom-entum

the first part of this post is brought to you by my illustrious mom:

"I was staying at Green Valley Lake with my fellow book club members, having a girl’s weekend away from our families.  The weather was clear, and cold.  We went for a walk around the lake in the morning.  I was in the last group of walkers with Meg.  There was some ice on the lake, and remnants of the last snowfall on the ground.  As we finished our stroll around the lake, and headed into town, I spotted a fuzzy raspberry colored glove in the snow at the side of the road.  I was elated!  At last I found a glove that I could rescue and take home to my daughter.  I took a picture of the glove in situ, and carefully wrapped it up to take home."

when mom got back from her trip and brought in her suitcase, i saw a little gleam in her eye.  she suddenly exclaimed, "i have something for you!"  i started jumping and dancing around the living room in anticipation.  she rifled through her suitcase, pawing through her clothes looking for something.  i started to lose momentum.  she wasn't sure where it was.  she could have sworn she packed it.  did she forget it?  noooooooooooooooooo!  but wait!  it was in the front pocket of the suitcase all along.  ha ha ha!  phew.  0_o

ok, onto the crafty bit.  (i know you were waiting for this part.)  today i went to michael's arts and crafts store to get more buttons and fiberfill.  i bought three large bags of fiberfill so i won't run out for quite a while.  the new fiberfill is softer and more pliable than my last batch, so i super-duper stuffed the glove to make it puffy.  i decided it looked a little bit like a squid, so i turned it upside down and closed up the wrist at the top.  i was watching futurama at the time so i had cyclops on the brain.  one giant button later, and my squid became a cyclosquid.  the thumb made a nice nose, and i secured it with some thread so that it would stay erect (heehee).  after that, i made a smiley face with thread.  but it felt like something was missing.  i pondered for a bit and realized the cyclosquid needed some unwieldy large teeth, so i sewed on four of those.  then i remembered the leather label, "possumdown" that i had removed earlier.  i found a suitable location for the label on the cyclosquid's rump, like a license plate.  he's rather silly, but oh so squishy.

here you can see him in his natural knitted seascape environment:

Cyclosquish!

unprecedented. unpresidented?

ladies and gentlemittens, i have great news!  for the first time ever, i have four lonesome gloves in my care at one time!  i am going a bit backwards and making the most recently acquired glove doll first, but i will get to the other three, don’t you worry.

now onto the story.  my dad got a call earlier this evening from my best friend’s mom, meg.  dad said meg was on her way over to our house to drop something off.  i thought nothing of it, since she’s in book club with my mom and those ladies are always borrowing books from each other.  five minutes later, we hear teddy bark his warning, and i open the door to find meg standing there holding a small white box.  she presents me with the box and tells me it’s the “little guy” she found in the mountains (the book club had just been up to big bear and i gave my mom firm instructions to rescue any gloves she or her friends came across).

 

i opened the lid to reveal a child’s black snow glove and a few cotton balls in the box that meg said were to keep it from going hungry.  how thoughtful!!

after meg departed, i immediately set to work.  i had trouble stuffing the glove since it, being a child’s glove, was very tiny and difficult to fit my hands in.  however, after a decent amount of struggling, i managed to stuff the fingers and palm of the glove with fiberfill (the polyester stuffing that i use to stuff my gloves).  i ran out of fiberfill once i reached the wrist part of the glove, so i resorted to using cotton balls.  i guess one might say this glove is 60% polyester and 40% cotton?

i gave the glove little legs in case he wants to ski or snowboard, a snazzy bejeweled belt, and two little antennae to pick up radio stations even way up in the mountains.

please give a warm fuzzy welcome to,

Handsel!