"Doris"-1st Donkey Sketch

I shared my first attempt at sketching a goat with you, so I thought I'd share my first attempt at sketching a donkey. It's a quick sketch from a photo I took, and I used a Zig marker. I seem to have an aversion to leaving room for feet, and the large ears almost didn't fit, but all in all, I think I did okay on it. And Doris does have woolly bangs. :)

This is Doris. When we answered the ad in the paper for a donkey, the guy told us it was a female. For some reason hubby started calling her Doris as soon as we went and saw her.

Doris is various shades of tans and beiges with a really dark brown stripe down the spine and shoulder blades. He also has a deformed back foot. The hoof turns up like an elf's shoe, but it doesn't hamper him about getting around. We don't know if he was born that way or it's been broken. The halter was so tight that it had grown into the top of his head and made sores under his chin. We finally got it off him though, and it's healed up and he is free of it. He's only a couple of years old and has been through so much. He's loved now though and is a pet.

Doris was in a small pen with a horse and a pony, not a blade of grass, just mud, with a makeshift shelter barely big enough for the three of them, a roll of sagegrass hay, and an empty dishpan for water. They were a sad lot. Cooter goat went in and out of the pen as he pleased, so he was getting plenty of grass and water.

We fell for Doris and Cooter as soon as we saw them, and we felt sorry for the other two. The fellow was selling out to move up north, and hubby got him to make a price for the three of them, plus the goat. So the next morning, on our 40th anniversary, we brought them to live on our small farm with our cows.

We kept them in the barn lots with plenty of feed, water, and shelter for a few weeks. We wormed them, gave them treats, and spent lots of time with them before turning them loose to have the run of the farm. They are still having trust issues with us, but they are getting better. They look like different animals than what we first brought home, and they have already given us much joy. You can no longer see their bones and the lice are gone. They are fat and sleek and have life in their eyes again. I'm thankful we are able to give them a home and love, along with carrots, apples, and they adore caramel cookies.

Doris turned out to be male, but the name had already stuck, so Doris it is. We wanted a donkey to help with the coyote problem with our calves, but Doris likes the barn and Cooter doesn't get too far from him. We've been told that most donkeys are hateful, but Doris has such a sweet personality and spirit that everybody just falls for him. Doesn't matter whether he helps with coyotes or not, he has a home and love now, as do Cooter and the other two.

Two of the Four Musketeers (Doris and Cooter). Stay tuned for the third member, and if I get REAL brave, I may try a sketch of the four together...

"Cooter"--First goat sketch

Yesterday I did a quick sketch of my goat in my sketchbook with a Zig pen from a photo I had made and loaded onto my pc. He was laying in a twist. The proportion is a little off, because I did it in a hurry and wasn't really focusing on every little detail, but I thought I did okay for a first attempt on sketching a goat. Please ignore the "to do" list in the corner. ;)

He is mostly white with black around his face, chest, and legs, and he has yellow eyes with pupils that look like black dashes, and a light pink nose. His beard is long and part white, part black.

We've only had Cooter a few weeks. He was thrown in with a deal for a donkey, a horse, and a pony. The four of them go around together like the 4 musketeers. He hasn't let us pet him yet, but he will eventually. Animals take patience and you have to let them come to you. He loves apples, carrots, and caramel cookies.

I've always liked goats, and I fell for Cooter the first time I saw him. He has so much personality! He makes me laugh every time I see him. His best friend is the donkey, Doris, and together they are hilarious.

I'm sure there will be more sketches of Cooter and the gang, and hopefully they will be better. In the meantime I thought I'd share this quick sketch with you. Hope Cooter and I made you smile! :)

Learning Needlefelting 2-ATC?

Since this month's theme at Creative Every Day is intuition, I guess I can call this an intuitive yarn painting, of sorts.

I wanted to do some needlefeltting this morning, and since I didn't have any backing material handy, I decided to try felting yarn to yarn. I took the black yarn that was left from the kit project I shared before and pulled and tangled it into a flat shape and layed an atc template over it.

I started out to make a landscape atc by felting the blue and green yarns onto the black, but then it called for a pink stripe. I liked it and was going to leave it that way, but then the muse whispered, "If you felt it on the back too, it will lock it together better."

Okay, the black backing had pulled apart some when I pulled it off the foam punching block, because the needle punches the yarn into the foam, so this sounded like a good idea.

Memo to me: Get a bigger and better punching block-the brush type which doesn't hold onto the yarn

So I turned it over and happily punched away. It did lock together better, but now there were lots of black fibers sticking through the pastel colors (the lesson here is not to use a dark backing under light colors). I added more blue, green, and pink yarn to the front, but still could see the black showing through. I kind of liked it like that, except that there was a small black cluster over the pink and down into the green that looked sort of like a swarm of bees, thus the yellow wispy piece diagonally across the front. Ms Muse told me to do it. ;)

Because I desperately need to do some cleaning, I'm calling it finished, for now. If I trim the black edge off it and add a decorative stitch around the edge it's an ATC. I'm kind of liking the black edges, and as I sit here looking at it, I see all sorts of possibilities, like maybe beads or charms or decorative stitching added...

Anyway, just thought I'd share what I'm playing with right now. Thanks to all you who inspire me every day by sharing whats on your work table! :)

Learning Needle Felting

I've been learning needle felting because I needed ANOTHER hobby. LOL

Seriously, I saw some little needle felted animals online and just fell in love with them, and I naturally thought, "I can do that!"

I've been looking at you tube videos and other instructional sites and decided to give it a try. The other day hubby and I were near a Hobby Lobby, so I went in to see if they had the tools and roving wool. They had sold out of several things, but they did have a couple of these little kits left for $5.00. It contained everything I needed to give needle felting a try, two  punching needles, black and white yarn, a foam block to punch into, a pattern already stamped onto a pocket, and simple instructions.

I started working on it that night and then skipped a couple of days and finished it in just a few minutes today. Now that I have the hang of it, I could do this flower in probably half an hour. It goes pretty fast. I love it! It's one of those projects that is conducive to listening to my mp3 player while sorting out the stuff swirling around in my head. It's a good frustration venter too. You do have to watch your fingers though. The needles are very sharp and have a little burr on the end that tangles the yarn when you punch it through.

Basically, you tear off some roving wool yarn, put it on your pattern and over the foam block, then with one or more needles held straight up, you jab the needle(s) straight up and down on the yarn into the block, thus fastening it to the base. My kit had the pattern on a pice of white felt, which could be used as a pocket on a felt purse, or you could cut the flower out and applique it to jeans, pillows, whatever. I chose to cut it out to applique.

The flower in the kit, as you can see, was supposed to be black with white. However, since I had bought a small  bag of different colored yarns, I decided to make mine white with pink. I'm considering adding a pink tinge around the petal edges. The top of the flower has a felted feeling to it and the underneath is fuzzy.

I am anxious to try some animals, but I need a little more practice first. I did okay on the flower for a first attempt and I learned, but it takes a little practice to get the density right, so it's a little lumpy. Like me! :)

I LOVE learning new things, and this was fun, so I thought I'd share it with you all...

Ink Experiment Gone Awry -Part 2

Remember this post with the ink blobs where I was trying to do a painting like Leah at Creative Every Day does? I appreciate your comments and suggestions so much, and I tried some of them, although you might not be able to tell. I've lost track of how many layers and textures I've added to this experiment, but now it looks like this...

I don't think there's actually any ink still visible. It's now all fluid acrylics. So much for the beginning ink blobs. Oh, how I wish I'd seen those pandas in the first one before I painted over them. The painting has gone through so many transformations to get to where it is now. Don't know what it means, and I guess I could do some more to it. However, I think I'm calling it done. I kind of like it the way it is now.

I'm thinking I may try something completely different without paint for a while...like needlefelting or crazy quilting. That looks really interesting to me. Or maybe I'll catch up on my reading. Or, since I finished this one, I may try another ink blob painting or finish some paintings I have started. Nothing like completing a project to inspire you to start another one! :)

There hasn't been too much going on creatively on Rabbit Hop lately. Life has taken over for the most part. We have added a donkey, a goat, a pony, and a horse to our family, so I've been spending time at the barn a lot for the last couple of months. I've taken lots of pictures of them and am feeling inspired to try drawing or painting them. When I do, I'll be sure to share them with you, or any other creative endeavors for that matter.

In the meantime, I hope my experiment made you smile. :)