Crafty Creatures

Little Sewing Mice - available on Etsy

19th April 2012
I was just thinking the other day how clever the wee creatures are - they've taught themselves to knit, sew, crochet and bake. The mice in particular have very nimble paws, but the occasional Snail has stepped up to the challenge too :)

Melanie the Knitting Snail

This knitting technique comes courtesy of the very talented Claire Wallis, and you can read a tutorial about how to 'knit' with polymer clay here. You can also see more of Claire's beautiful work on her Flickr page.

Little Knitting Mouse

For the mice, I extrude the clay using a fine die so the strands are very thin. It makes it more fiddly to twist the strands together because the strands are so fragile, but it makes the resultant knitting more 'mouse sized'. One thing to be careful of is not breaking the 'wool' at the top loops. What I have sometimes done is add a few extra strands of clay to form new loops.

Little Mice on Crocheted Pears

I used a variation on the knitting technique to create these 'crocheted' pears, which the mice decided they wanted to play on. I twisted two strands of extruded clay together into a rope and then coiled them around pear-shaped clay cores. For the cream pear on the right, to create the variegated 'wool' effect, I added small dots of browns, blues and purples randomly once the coiled ropes were in place. For the blue one in the middle, I created three different rope colours, and spliced them together at random points. I love these pears - thanks to Leslie in Canada for asking me to make them for Mother's Day!

Of course, sometimes the mice can get a bit over-zealous - thanks to Gemma of Autumnal Skies for commissioning this mouse!

The mice are also very good at embroidery, like this wee mouse who is now living with Deborah of Bee Honey Designs. She's perched on a cotton reel, which is of course perfectly mouse-sized. I shaped a thin sheet of clay around a small disk, and then added a thin band of brown clay to create the hoop.

The mice are also pretty handy with a sewing machine, as this wee mouse shows. This mouse was specially commissioned by Abi Manifold of SewYou - Abi is another brave soul who gave up the day job to follow her creative dreams, and is doing really well and loving it!

In a later post, I'll be taking a look at how else the mice keep themselves busy - they really are a very versatile group :)

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