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Thorin Oakenshield as a Needle-Felted Doll

3/28/2015

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For the first time in five years, I have decided to work very hard at getting my two entries for the State Fair finished before the actual day of entry! Well, I've been working at it since January, and I finally finished a second doll.
This doll is based on Thorin Oakenshield as played by Richard Armitage in Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" Trilogy. Thorin weighs 3-1/4 ounces, stands 9-1/4" tall and took 61 hours to complete. He is needle-felted out of Merino wool roving (with a little Cotswold for the skin tone) using .40 and .42 gauge needles. The wool in his pants and overcoat is a Merino/Silk blend of black and navy blue. His boots are felted from dark brown Corriedale roving, and they are completed with Rabbit fur and leather thong. He has a lighter-blue tunic, then a grey-leather piece of "chest armour". His short sleeves and the bottom of his armour tunic are felted Merino in two colors. The dark blue is put on the bottom and felted up into the light grey to give the modeled effect. His next coat is felted from dark blue Merino roving, and the belt is navy blue leather that Elizabeth painted with Thorin's designs. His "arm guards" are made of black leather with real metal "buckles" (also made by Elizabeth!). His overcoat is felted with real Mink trim sewn on and trimmed to shape. His face is completely felted wool (no paint or anything), and his hair is made from Mohair Kid Locks. Elizabeth also made the metal bands in his hair, which I think is just the perfect finishing touch. :)
I've been making Middle Earth themed dolls for Elizabeth over the past two years, and after seeing Tauriel (the first doll that I have been totally happy with in a while!), I thought that it would be fun to make a doll for myself. After all, years from now, I would like to be able to show my kids a nice doll that I made --- not just the photos. The only doll that I've actually kept is Carmen Miranda (which is one of the best, I think), but, since making her in 2012, I have improved a lot of my felting techniques and proportions on the figures.

Once I have finished a doll, I really like it for three days. I look at them all the time and just enjoy each one, but on the fourth day I am ready to get on to the next character. This is the main reason that I don't keep any dolls. I like them for a few days, but it is really the making of them that is the fun part --- not the owning of them. It seemed like a fun thing to make one that I would want to keep at this stage in my felting. Each doll is better in some way than the previous one, since I am always trying to work on some aspect of the felting or construction. Being the year of the final "Hobbit" film coming to disc, it seemed like a fun idea to have a Hobbit character of my own! We're also a bit "Hobbit crazy" right now, and it's always fun to work on a character that you are really inspired to make.

My two favorite characters from all six of Peter Jackson's Tolkien films are Bilbo Baggins and Thorin Oakenshield. Bilbo as a "hero" and general character and Thorin as far as character portrayal and acting. Bilbo didn't seem like he would be challenging enough (from a felting perspective), so I waffled for a few weeks about doing Thorin. Would he look good in felt? Did I think that I could make him? How would his armour piece work on a doll?

Mom and Elizabeth really encouraged me to go for Thorin, and I had a package of Mohair Kid Locks that looked exactly like Thorin's hair. They convinced me, in the end, and I started on him. Elizabeth had made the "chest armour" for Tauriel out of a piece of leather, and that gave a really rich effect to the finished doll. What appealed to me were the metal hair bands that she had made for Tauriel's braid. Thorin had four of those, so that was a real deciding factor in choosing to make him. Well, Elizabeth offered to try some more detailed leather work for Thorin, and it certainly made Thorin look really grand.
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Various Middle Earth Souvenirs

3/10/2015

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Having met some new friends who are as nuts about Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films as we are, Elizabeth and I decided to take some photos of various Middle Earth souvenirs that we've collected and made over the years. We bought the Extended Edition DVD of The Fellowship of the Ring in December 2002 and have crazy fans ever since. Our dream vacation (besides our trip to England, of course!) is to go to see the real Hobbiton in New Zealand. Sigh . . .

Elizabeth and I thought that we would burst while waiting a whole year for The Return of the King to come to theaters. A thrilling experience came with the announcements that a limited number of theaters across the US would be hosting "Trilogy Tuesday". This was an event meant for all of the loyal fans who had been supporting the three films as they came out. Extended editions of FotR and TTT were shown, with RotK starting at 10:00pm (two whole hours before anyone else could get a ticket to see it!). Tickets went on sale in October, and the price was fixed at $25.00 a seat. This was New Line's way of saying "thank you" to fans, since they weren't even charging extra on the tickets. Purchases were first-come-first-serve, and every last one was sold within twenty minutes of going on sale. Thankfully, we were able to actually get five tickets --- enough for us to go and take our friend, Sarah, with us! In the end, Dad had to spend a week in Cleveland in a training class, so we sold his ticket to someone who hadn't been able to get one and wanted to go with friends.
We kept scrapbooks (starting with "Trilogy Tuesday") all about RotK, and we've added to them since. Still have some stuff to stick in for the "Hobbit" films and the pages at the back aren't finished yet. The first spread with the detached black pages show Two Towers tickets that I had put into a different scrapbook (since torn apart). I took this scrapbook on trip to Tennessee once, and we were with our little cousin, Kelly. She decorated the inside of the back cover for me in her best Middle Earth style. (She was 7 years old at the time!) Click on the thumbnails to see my scrapbook:
As special "thank you" gifts, everyone in the theater was given a frame (made by Weta Workshop) featuring three film cells, one from each film in the trilogy. Elizabeth and I have ours in display boxes in our room. Mine has a picture of Frodo, Aragorn's hands and Aragorn. Elizabeth's (in the photos below) has Elrond, Haldir and Samwise. You can click on these pictures to see them at full size. I tried to get the film cells to show, too.
For Christmas that year, I made a handwritten book of Elvish for Elizabeth. The paper is handmade paper and all the pages are written with a fountain pen. Below are photos of some of the pages. The first pages are all of the Elvish lines spoken in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. There are also pages with the Lord's Prayer in Elvish, Psalm 23 (in Sindarin and Quenya), assorted translated Bible verses and Galdriel's poem in Quenya as written by Tolkien himself. Again, you can click on the pictures to see them at their full size.
That same Christmas, Elizabeth gave me the most fabulous present of a drawing and frame that she made herself. Well, Dad did help her with the frame, but she did the woodburning. She drew the picture of Aragorn's sword hilt, the Evenstar and the Leaf pin. She has the poem from the book written along the edges of the mat board and the Tree of Gondor wood-burnt into the frame itself. She's fabulous! Click on the pics to have a good look.
The waiting lasted another year, since the Extended Edition was not released until November 2004. Mom and I ordered it and gave it to Elizabeth for Christmas. Not that it was much of a surprise present! ;) All of Elizabeth's presents that year were Eowyn-themed and wrapped in gold and white paper. We decided to hold our own "Trilogy Tuesday II" on December 28 and watch all three extended editions back-to-back. Elizabeth and I made our own "rule sheets" (made just like the originals handed out at the theater the year before) and tickets (complete with Tree of Gondor background) with a ticket deposit box. We decorated the TV room with some of our Lord of the Rings posters and made food and snacks in advance. Here are pictures from that day (except the first, which shows E. with the RotKee still wrapped on Christmas!).
Between the years of the LotR and Hobbit trilogies, we made a set of mini dolls based on the nine characters of the Fellowship. We even entered them in our local fair and won Best of Show! :) They were really fun to make, and we even got Dad to make miniature accessories and weapons for each of them. The tallest ones are four inches tall (not including Gandalf's very pointy hat!).
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Somehow, we have always forgotten to take the camera to the theater for any of the Hobbit films. Too bad! However, we have gotten some really fun Hobbit souvenirs, as well as making them. We've got full-size sword replicas of Sting, Arwen's sword and Eomer's sword, but I don't have pictures of those. They were made by United Cutlery. These four pictures show souvenirs that we have from either Weta or the Noble Collection.
1) Kili's Rune Stone, a Dwarven Erebor coin from the premier of The Desolation of Smaug in Berlin (2013), and a keychain with the Key to the Lonely Mountain and Thorin's Map.
2) Letter Openers from the Noble Collection. going from top to bottom on the left column and then the right column they are:
Tauriel's Dagger, Hadahafang (Arwen's sword in LotR and Elrond's sword in "The Hobbit"), Anduril (from LotR), Sting (from "The Hobbit"), Orchrist and Sting (from LotR).
3 and 4) Prop replica of Thorin's Key to the Lonely Mountain from the Noble Collection. It weighs a lot!
During the Lord of the Rings films, we saved up and bought matching Evenstar pendants from Noble. They are sterling silver and have Swarovski crystals in the center (fitting, too, as all the gems in Erebor are Swarovski!). We've had a lot of fun with those over the years. Just a month or two ago, we found someone on Etsy who has a store and sells miniature Evenstar pendants for your doll. Of course, our dolls just have to have those! So, here they are side by side:
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Finally, we've made some Hobbit-themed dolls in the past two years. I made Elrond and Tauriel needle-felted dolls for Elizabeth. She is 9-1/2" and he is 11". I also made Beorn as a needle-felted doll, but he is actually made at 1:12 scale (making him 8-1/2" including his hair), as Elizabeth would like to make a "room box" of his house. We've also been making some more mini dolls. So far, we've done Thorin, Bilbo, Legolas, Bard and "The Bardlings". On top of that, Elizabeth has taken up engraving Hobbit-themed Rune Stones. There are tons of those (which you can see by clicking here), but one is shown here. The stone is engraved with the symbol of the Arkenstone. Photos below are clickable.
Well, this is now a loaded blog entry with an awful lot of photo galleries, so I'll call it quits. :) More later.
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A New Needle-Felted Hercule Poirot Doll

3/7/2015

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Due to the amount of web work and felting that I've been doing, you'll notice that I've totally NOT been blogging. ;) Well, here is the latest doll. He was just finished last night. This is another needle-felted Hercule Poirot, and he's the best one so far. I was in the middle of making a needle-felted Thorin, when someone contacted me about a special order doll (being this Poirot), so I put Thorin aside and started on this. What a difference! It was really fun, though, and certainly turned out well. This is the fourth needle-felted Poirot that I've made, now, and it's very fun to see the difference between them all! I made the first one for Mom for Christmas 2010, and then there was a pair made as custom orders in May 2013. I've gotten a beautiful dark grey roving, so I'd like to make one with that color suit eventually. Mom's really keen on Poirot, so maybe I'll make a dark one for her!

This Poirot stands 9" tall (including his hat) and is felted in a non-poseable standing position. He weighs 2-1/4 ounces and  was felted with .40 and .42 gauge needles. He is made of Merino and Cotswold roving, and his non-fiber accessories include a wooden cane with metal handle, a quill and bristle fly-swatter and watch chain with fob. Here is a photo of all four Poirot dolls:
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All four Poirot dolls! That is the original one for Mom standing third from the left and the new one at far left.
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What is really fun is the fact that this new Poirot is actually to scale with the Captain Hastings doll that I had made about a year and a half ago! That being the case, I just couldn't resist taking a picture of them together (at left).

A very fun and exciting (to me!) fact about this doll is that it is the 25th needle-felted doll that I've finished. I started making dolls five years ago last month, so finishing 25 in that time seems like a fun milestone to reach. What's really fun is to look at the photos (or the dolls themselves) and see the progress with each different character and the differences. Felting is a FUN hobby!

Well, there isn't a lot more to report. I'll have to get around to posting an "everyday life" entry one of these days. I'm in the middle of a big web project, so that's taken a lot of time. Tons of snow and ice this year, and we haven't been able to get to church in four weeks. In fact, Mom and Elizabeth have only made it out and about two or three times to pick of groceries. Being in charge of the wood stove, I haven't been out at all. Not that I'm minding! Elizabeth's been busy engraving Hobbit Rune Stones . . . more later.
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    SAMWISE: MY HONEY-POT  
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              Colossians 2:8:
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