Calamity Kim

Please don't feed the bears

They're already stuffed! I used to cut out wooden signs and paint 3ft bears standing there holding the sign that read: Please don't feed the bears..they're already stuffed...Bad joke, I know, but appropriate for a bear shop or room filled with your collection! I am working on a new bear  and have stuffed him and sewn his  openings. I was inspired by the Marie Antoinette movie and am using teal/mint velvet and silk, and brocade...I am trying to recreate a ship hat- sort of like the one in a brief scene in the movie. I can see it in my head and will be pulling out the cream colored feathers and  making silk flowers and tea-dying some lace....I am moving slow..enjoying Fred being home for a three day weekend...baking banana  bread  and  curled up on the couch in "compie pants"  like polar fleece...warm and soft watching the History Channel, cartoons and Sci Fi! Tonight is the Sarasota Quilt Guild Meeting with a presentation by Nancy Prince. Next week I am taking a class with her, as she will also be with the Venice Guild. I am excited about learning how to thread paint  and may employ it on future bears. I am so excited to be sewing bears again and am going to try some needle felting soon- maybe to enhance their features...take a look at  the fabulous nimbleknots bears by Jennifer Stanfield. She just started her blog and is doing great! I love her absolutely adorable little bears and she even has a doll house in progress (like me) on her dining room table! LOL! The Craft Table as Fred calls it as he heads toward the living room, plate in hand, Charlie Brown music playing as he walks , head down and laughing! Maybe someday I will finish that doll house! I'll keep ya posted! Have a nice Monday and I'll be back with some pictures from the guild meeting tomorrow!

Do You Ever

wake up in the morning with a song in your head?
Not because of the clock radio.
Like The B 52's Love Shack.
It's going round and around and around, baby, every bodies groovin' baby...love shack...baby love shack...I can't hear you..love shack baby love shack...
Now it's in your head too.

The first time I met My Future Step-Mom, when I was 4, fresh off the bus from West By God Virginia; she introduced me to the concept of nap time and gave me a little orange rabbit to sleep with. Curled up in her big bed with the prettiest and nicest smelling sheets I felt cozy and safe.
I think I slept with that rabbit for a long time.
It eventually lost an eye and some of it's fur and was stored up in the attic till my Mom gave it away in a paper bag full of my other old stuff.
Mrs Beasley.
My Brother's comic books.
Get the picture?
Of course I was married by then and she didn't know that I still wanted those things. She was trying to make a little neighbor girl happy.
It's OK.
I fell in love with Boyd's Bears in the 80's and then I started making my own bears in the 90's and eventually made about 300 or so.
I sold them at a wonderful shop in Asheville, NC called: Sassy Cats, Bears & Friends.
Martha & Tommy Thompson were the owners and were so kind and supportive of me and my bears and rabbits and sprytes.

I made artist bears and rabbits that were one of a kind and had small books with poems or stories about how they came to be...Be still and listen and you shall hear the stories of Brave Bears so sweet and dear......Brave Bears. You hold them. They hold you.
I even made a life-size soft sculpture doll of Gary Lowenthal and met him & his son when they came to the shop for a signing. He was very nice and kind.  My hero.

Rufus is a bear that I didn't make but slept with for 16 years.
Longer than any man.
I have bears that have tea parties at their little tables with fake food and cakes. I have a lemonade stand for Rufus where he likes to make a few dollars in the summertime and then he rides his little red flyer bike to the candy store and gets him some honey bits.....
I found a bear of mine on eBAY once and bought it back. She didn't get what she paid for it I'm sure. When I opened the box it was like seeing an old friend that I had forgotten all about....
Sometimes I want to make bears again.
I miss seeing there faces come alive with expression through soft sculpture. I miss creating their stories. how they came to be.
Once I cut up a painting I had done and sewed it with strips of fur and then made the bear from that. That bear had stepped out of a painting, so the story went and lived in the painters studio. Some were covered with embroidery, especially on the paws and faces. Little vests....
Maybe I'll make some soon....I have fallen in love with the new dry felting some of the bear artists are using...and the tiny Japanese bears with big heads...so cute...Easter is coming and maybe I can find a bear or rabbit left in the dusty attic of my mind to bring to life. If I could just get that song out of there first!

malcom

malcom, originally uploaded by calamity kim.