Teddy Talk: Creating, Collecting, Connecting

I'll be updating my links at the weekend.  I added all the initial teddy talk bloggers but I see lots more have joined the party.

To me blogging is all about the community and in fact the way I've discovered some of my favourite blogs has been through blogrolls (the linky bit!).    It's also why I think it's important to comment on people's blogs.  It's all about sharing in the creativity!

I do want to feature some specific works on my site and in that case I'll most definitely contact the artists in person.

  In wordpress (www.wordpress.com) the free blogging software that I use, you get both a feed counter and a stat counter for free - so I can see who's linked to my blog from where, and what search terms in search engines people have found me by (they are soooo funny sometimes).  I can also see roughly how many people use the various aggregators like bloglines, googlereader etc to read my blog.

snap!  I'm exactly the same Anna.  I made a bear for a swap last year and when I'd finished him, decided he was way to ugly to swap.  I took him to a show at the last minute - hid him on an unobtrusive spot on my stand and priced him about $20 lower than my nice bears.  Naturally he was the one bear that everyone picked up all morning.  I sold him just after lunch on the first day of the show and two people came back the next day specially for him  should have made him the most expensive bear!!

Having said that, my absolute favourite was the first one to sell. 

Back to the head thing...I will remake a head, very rarely.  At the moment though I've got one that I just can't get right.  She's meant to be delicate and girly and every head I make turns out a boy - and it's pale pink fabric - so frustrating!

I can totally see a doggy pirate in one of the dogs I know - who is also a terrier (australian terrier)...I can just see picture him in all his whiskery glory with an eyepatch and a bottle of rum tucked under one paw!

My mum's doggie is a fox terrier (fox terrible more like  :crackup: ).  She turned 16 earlier this year and I think my visit home in a couple of weeks will probably be the last time I see her.     She is soooo funny - fox terriers as a breed tend to go stone deaf within a matter of weeks when aound the age of 15.  Tanzi used to be able to hear my grandpa when he closed his front door a few houses away from us and would have run down the road to his house by the time he got to his gate.  Now that she is deaf she believes she doesn't have to obey a single rule and behaves terribly.  I am absolutely at the bottom of the chain of command and if I try and make her do something I swear she smirks at me and gives me her "I don't think so" look.

I definitely think later in the year would be better.  To raise good prices awareness of the event needs to be built (I'm thinking there was a fairly long lead in to the lemondae bears last year?)

The next couple of months are show season for me - I would want to make a special piece for this event and I definitely couldn't do it justice until after then.

Hi Jodi

This sounds like a fab idea.  I would love to donate a bear.

What I have and what I would like are two different things  :crackup:  :crackup:  :crackup:

I have mostly Australian artist bears...I've bought or swapped them when I've been over there for shows.    I guess I have maybe 10-15 artist bears and then some manufactured hangers on.

Tammy sent me this cute little swap bear ages ago and it's taken me so long to take some photos of him.  :redface:   Just as well Neige is wearing his winter scarf...it's getting chilly down here in the Southern Hemisphere.

Tammy created Neige from frosted orange and white sassy long pile and he measures approx 4" tall.  SHe made his snowball too!

Hey Connie
Probar, one of the German suppliers has it.  I got a small amount a few years ago and love the stuff.  The bear below is a little 2.5"  one so the no hair looks a bit longer.

Here's a link to Probar's page
http://www.probear.com/com/shop/pi37866 … tegoryId=1

he is adorable 

Water, lip balm and ibuprofen.  Yes venues have water but you dont always have time to rush away from your table and get some.  Plus, shows tend to provide itty bitty plastic cups that are prone to being knocked over.

Check out this cute site which I saw on one of the blogs I subscribe to- you can make your own virtual garden.  just click your mouse anywhere on the black page and start playing!  one of those mindless addicting things

http://www.procreo.jp/labo/flower_garden.swf

wow Brenda, I've never heard of martens or fishers before.  Wow, I know how destructive stoats and ferrets can be so a bigger more tenacious version must be absolutely destructive.

tee hee your porcupine story reminds me of the penguins here - we have tiny Little Blue penguins in the bays where I live.  They are really small but a friend of mine had breeding ones under the floorboards of her house - and ended up moving out of her house because of them.  She said the screams would wake her up in the middle of the night - she said it was like the most raucous baby amplified 10 times.

If you really care you can submit a comment to the FDA.  There's a tutorial on this page that even has a letter you can cut and paste.  Only US citizens can comment.

http://dontmesswithourchocolate.guittar … tohelp.asp

I so don't understand how they could want to ADD trans and saturated fats to cocolate.  I guess it's all in the name of profit.

try looking in your yellow pages for shops that sell cake decorating supplies - they often sell coloured foil on a roll that you can buy by the metre

Did you know that the chocolate industry is appealing to the FDA to change the law regarding what can be called chocolate?  Currently to be called chocolate it must contain bot cocoa solids and cocoa butter (a regulation that is pretty much the same in Europe and Australia and New Zealand)

The higher the quantity of cocoa butter the better quality the chocolate and the more expensive it is to make.  However the higher quantity of cocoa butter is also better for you than the vegetable oil compounds used in cheaper quality chocolate and mockolate.

New laws propose that "chocolate" need only contain cocoa solids - so basically any old nasty synthetic chocolate covering can now be called chocolate.  Does it have serious implications?  Well maybe if you love chocolate.  Think about your favourite chocolate coated candy bar...if the manufacturer's can cover it with a significantly cheaper product yet still be allowed to call it chocolate they probably will.  It's also likely to force prices for 'high end' chocolate higher.

Why do I care when I don't live in the US?  Well, I think we have too many synthetic additions into our food as it is and a change to the law in the US is likely eventually to have a trickle downeffect to law in other countries.  And good chocolate is one of life's pleasures and I don't want it to be rendered unaffordable.

You can read a lot more (and better written) here and even find information on writing a submission to the FDA.
http://www.typetive.com/candyblog/item/ … on_change/

Chris

Last time I came to Melbourne I went to the zoo.  I was totally excited to see the bears - extra special because when we arrived their area the keepers were there hiding food in barrels and in rocks in the river and trees etc so we got to see them in the water, and climbing and so forth.

I was most excited to see the Aussie animals...tee hee all I saw was a Koala's bum!  I'm sure they heard our Kiwi accent and hid deliberately.  Not a single echidna, wombat or koala would come out to say hello.  Found the snakes section fascinating.  Apart from an encounter with a water snake when I was in New Caledonia, I've never ever seen a snake.  We're a complete snake free zone - as far as I'm aware none of our zoos have them either.

I might be coming to Melbourne again in a fortnight's time for work.  If I do go I might have to see if I can fly in early the day before and go to the zoo again.

Oh I am so jealous!!!  Look at those racoons and those squirrels.  You are so lucky. And I still can't get my head around the fact that some of you like Daphne and Dilu have real live bears visit your back garden.

oh...another import that did make it here and I never realised wasn't in aus or the US is the humble little hedgehog.  I love hedgehogs - they are very cute.

Neither Australia or New Zealand has racoons, beavers, skunks, chipmunks, or squirrels, badgers, moles....or moose   (ok so mixing up european and american mammals here!)

We do have possums....the ones in Australia are smaller and cuter the ones here are big ol' nasty things and I feel the way about them that Shelli does about racoons.  We don't have foxes but I think Australia might??

Australia has the most fantastic animals: all those fab mammals and marsupials like echidnas, koalas, wombats, kangaroos, platypus etc etc
New Zealand has only one native mammal - two species of bat which are tiny and live in really remote parts of the bush.  We have loads of introduced mammals and as in Australia many of those have had destructive effects on the environment - rabbits in particular but also things like stoats, ferrets, rats, thar, wallabies here in NZ (aussie imports) and domestic and feral cats.

Unlike Europe or America, there's nothing higher in the food chain to eat these things and so they thrive and are incredibly destructive to the native birds and insects.

Interestingly here in NZ, because we had no mammals our insects and birds tend towards gigantism - thus birds like the kiwi and takahe who are heavy non flying birds, and big insects like giant weta.  Oh we also have the oldest type of reptile in the world - the tuatara.

I would love to see some of your Northern Hemisphere animals - especially those little ones.  They have formed so much a part of my childhood reading but they are almost mythical to me!

I agree with Kim, carrot cake with pineapple is the best.  Try putting lemon zest/juice in your cream cheese icing instead of vanilla.  The tartness of it balances really nicely with the richness of the cream cheese and complements the denseness of the cake.

thankyou so much!  Ilze it was great to see an example with your camera.  I know I found a review a while ago on macro photography and I think panasonic/lumix was what they recommended too

and Edie...I know how titchy your bears are so value your information too.  Your model is only $199 here so that might be a good stop gap camera until I can afford what I want.

tee hee Sarah.  Planning to do pretty much that. Am trying to figure it out before the GC show so that "if" I sell some bears (fingers crossed) I might be able to pick up one cheaper while I'm in aus.

Thanks guys - the macro on my camera  (a fuji) works fine for my bears around 3 inches - it's capturing those tiny less than 2" beasties that I'm having problems with...and unfortunately that's what I make most of.

I didn't know you could get super macro function...at least that gives me something to look for!  We  pay really high prices for electronic goods here in NZ so I don't want to make a mistake!  i.e one product in particular that I want I could get in the States for US$139.  Here it costs the equivalent of US$500

OK....I know that like sewing machines, cameras are very much a matter of personal taste BUT for macro close-up photography of little things which camera do you use.

I simply cannot get crisp clear photos of my micro-mini bears and I know I need a better camera.  But the choices are  baffling and I would like to hear from people who use a product rather than sales people who are paid on comisison 

So mini bear makers especially.....please help!

I like the plumber too Of course that down time happened right in the middle of my setting up an account for one of our clients.  One minute we're setting up all sorts of feeds then the plumber appears.  I never can figure out the time diff between here and the States

Aleta, no it doesn't bring up the whole blog...but if you want to click out to the blog, you just need to click onto the subject line of that post and it'll open up the blog in a new window for you.

I totally agree - I don't specifically hunt blogs down - I just stumble on them via links in other blogs.  Lots of people embed links right into their posts,  and those will show up in the bloglines posting.  So, if I want a quick catchup, I'll just go and read my blogs on bloglines.  If I have time to play around, I'll click out to a blog and go exploring.  I love the serendipitous nature of blog surfing - I think it appeals to the part of me that likes hunting for treasures in junk stores too.

When you subscribe to a feed you get to see how many other bloglines users subscribe.  I found a craft blog today that had about 890 subscribers - and that's just those people using bloglines.  It doesn't count all the people who subscribe via other feeders or have it stored in their favourites.  Wow - 900 people reading a little old craft blog!!

I know I know, enough already!

but I'm hoping this is helpful.  I totally forgot when I was yammering on about bloglines that I can show you all what my bloglines feeds look like.

for those of you who didn't read that post - Bloglines is a service that allows you to manage all the blogs, newspapers etc you visit in one place.  So instead of going and visiting 15 blogs and seeing if they've been updated, you can go to your bloglines account and see in one glance, which of those 15 people have written a new blog post today.

I like it because I follow lots of different crafts.  I can easily separate these out into folders and then decide that today I'm just going to read the entries in my recipe blogs, or listen to a radio story or whatever.  It makes keeping up with stuff so much more manageable for me.

You can view my bloglines "blogroll" (geek speak for a list of blogs) at the URL below.  It's not exactly the same view as you get when you subscribe to bloglines - when you subscribe after each blog you see a number in brackets telling you how many new posts there are on that blog since the last visit - so if  there's zero new posts you don't have to bother to open the blog.

http://www.bloglines.com/public/honeythorpe

It's not just blogs that you can add either.  You can subscribe to particular news-stories (eg I have the books pages from the Guardian and the NYT in my account) or tables of contents from magazines like Time.  If you belong to a listserv you can even have that email directed to a bloglines folder rather than your email box.  Some movie theatres have rss feeds of their screening times and oh so much more.  Lots of cities have blogs with their city events listed.  If it has a feed, you can add it