Hooray! It’s time to spread a bit of new Beastie magic here at Beastie Towers!
This friendly little monster may look like any other Beastie… … But her accessories might give you a clue about her special secret identity! Crown, sparkly wings, tutu, wand… Yep, I think we might have a Fairy Princess Beastie here!
All her accessories are handstitched and embellished by yours truly… Well, apart from the tutu. I’m proud to announce that, for once, I embraced 20th century technology and used my sewing machine for the waistband!
So, without further ado, let’s see how Fairy Princess Beastie’s outfit comes together. Beautiful!
This little monster lady also marks another step forward in Beastie-volution – look at her paws, specially adapted to help her hold onto her wand without help. As we’re now just heading into summer here in the northern hemisphere, Fairy Princess Beastie should definitely be warm enough in her elegant floaty skirt. But what happens when the weather starts to get colder again?
Don’t worry, Fairy Princess Beastie – we’ve got you covered! I couldn’t resist knitting a couple of Beastie-sized sweaters in colours that would complement her lovely fuschia-pink skin tone. The blue one even has sparkles!
And of course, these open up all sorts of mix’n’matching possibilities… This Beastie has already headed off to Germany, to help her new best friend celebrate her birthday! She made sure to bring along a gift, too… Beastie colouring-in pages! Here’s wishing them lots of magical monster adventures together!
We’ll be back on Friday to share more tales of Beasties abroad… In the meantime, if you’d like a special monster friend of your own, give us a shout. We’d love to hear from you!
A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from LucyAnn at LucyAnn and Luna Craft. She told me that she’d finally had a chance to take her MiniBeastie for a trip to the Royal Horticultural Society’s garden at Wisley in Surrey, and the Beasties and I were so excited to see that she’d documented this micro-monster’s first day out in a post on her own blog! I thought it might be fun to share this with you all, so I’m going to take this opportunity to do my FIRST EVER REBLOG!
So, without further ado… Take it away, LucyAnn! And thanks again for taking the time and blog space to share your new little woolly buddy’s adventures with the world!
Regular visitors to the BeastieBlog might remember Pirate Beastie, who went to live with Pirate-in-Training Thom last Autumn. They’ve been having some great adventures together ever since – they even got to meet Captain Jack Sparrow at Hallowe’en! But it seems like these two daring buccaneers have run into some difficulty lately – namely, how do you get at treasure that’s trapped in a sunken shipwreck?
So a special request was put in, and this little monster answered the call! Um, can you really get down to the ocean floor like that? Where’s all your Beastie dive kit?
Oh, super! There it is. Don’t forget your flippers, too…
And now it’s time to put it all together! First of all, he has a belt with a felt dive knife…
…Then it’s time to put on the flippers!
His oxygen tank is mounted on the back of his BCD (buoyancy control device, the black vest-like thing), and it’s connected to his regulator and dive mask… …So it’s really easiest to put everything on at once!
And that leaves just one more thing to do – a little research on some of the interesting creatures he may encounter on his underwater travels!
(Diver Beastie is reading “Unusual Creatures – A Mostly Accurate Account of Some of Earth’s Strangest Animals” by Michael Hearst. Great fun for those of us interested in nature’s oddities!)
I can’t wait to see how this Diver Beastie settles into his new home. And thanks to Noémie from FocalHeart for welcoming another Beastie into her family!
Don’t forget that Friday posts are back, so we’ll see you later in the week for more Beastie antics with Paddy and Plunkett!
I promised to introduce you to a new Beastie today, and here he is! Fresh from the Beastie barber, it’s… Redhead Beastie! If I asked you to describe what a “typical” Irish person looks like, chances are that bright red hair would feature in there somewhere. Here in Ireland nearly half the population carry the gene for red hair, and around 10% of Irish people have hair that falls in that auburn-to-strawberry-blonde range. So I thought that a Barróg Beastie (my most Irish Beasties, made from 100% Irish wool) with luscious fiery locks would be an excellent addition to the family here at Beastie Towers! I used a wool and mohair blend yarn to get the perfect combination of vibrant colour and awesome curls – which means this Beastie’s hair is enviably soft and strokable! This little monster also insisted on getting his own teeny Aran jumper. Oh, okay then. (Any excuse…)Sharp-eyed readers will notice the lovely bright green stripes on this dark green Beastie’s legs, too – a perfect colour combination for this time of year. The trees here are bursting with fresh spring leaves, and Dublin seems to be getting greener by the hour! I still have a few Barróg Beasties to kit out with accessories, so you’ll get a chance to meet them soon! And don’t forget to pop back next Tuesday, when we’ll be seeing what Paddy and Plunkett have been up to lately…
We’re taking a leap forward in time on the BeastieBlog this week – after meeting a prehistoric proto-Beastie in the last post, you’re probably ready for something new and exciting! So here they are… the first two Barróg Beasties of 2016!
For anyone who doesn’t yet have a working knowledge of the various species of Beastie out there, Barróg Beasties are a subspecies native to the island of Ireland. Their skin is made from 100% Irish wool, and they can be recognised by their slightly smaller size (we Celts are generally a diminutive people) and their typically Irish accessories… Like Irish humans, they’re prepared to travel pretty much anywhere, but they always like to bring a piece of home with them. And that word “Barróg”? That’s Irish for hug, which seemed to sum these friendly little monsters up perfectly!
So, first up from this pair is Aran Beastie! Remind you of anyone? I’ve noticed that a lot of Irish knitwear companies have started to think outside the woolly box lately, and make traditional-style Aran sweaters in colours other than cream! So I thought I would hop on the bandwagon myself, and give this Beastie a jumper in fresh spring green… And as for his friend… Meet Leabhar Beastie! “Leabhar” is the Irish word for “book”, and this literary little monster has taken on quite the reading challenge… Yes, that is a hand-embroidered copy of the rambling Beastie yarn “Spin-egans Wake”… This monstrously convoluted, near-impenetrable book is loosely based on James Joyce’s novel “Finnegans Wake”, often cited as one of the most difficult, complex pieces of fiction ever written. In fact, there’s a book group in Cambridge, Massachusetts who have been reading “Finnegans Wake” for the last 18 years! They’re currently on their second read-through, which began in 2010… Their first reading took 13 years. I wonder if we’ll have to set up a book club here to help Leabhar Beastie tackle his own literary adventure?He seems to be getting on fine so far though – just look at that contented smile.
There will be more new Beasties joining these two soon… And tune in next week to see another hidden Dublin treasure with Explorer Beastie! See you then…
Happy Easter, everybody! The Beasties have been busy organising their own festival, featuring a traditional Beaster Egg Hunt… Let’s see if they can gather up the last few eggs before Explorer Beastie’s backpack bursts at the seams!
Hope you all have a great weekend… We’ll be back on Tuesday with more monster mayhem!
I’m delighted to announce that a whole herd of brand new Barróg Beasties – special little monsters made with 100% Irish wool – have invaded Beastie Towers! Earlier today they emerged from the box where they had been hiding… … Assembled the tools they thought I might need… … And only got a little distracted by some shiny things! They also made a start on deciding which colours I should use. And now they’re sitting back and waiting patiently for me to make them the accessories they want! I’m sure a few of them will be looking for old favourites, like books and mugs of tea, but I have a feeling that there might be some requests for new, never-made-before items too. So with that in mind, I’m going to be taking a bit of a “spring break” from blogging over the next couple of weeks, and slow my postings down to once a week – at least until we get these guys sorted out, anyway!
In the meantime, you can keep up with the whirlwind of monster activity here in Beastie Towers by joining us on Facebook and Instagram!
Here’s wishing all our BeastieBuddies a very happy St Patrick’s Day! Hopefully you’ll get a chance to raise a glass (or at least a mug of strong tea) sometime today to celebrate all things Irish… Sláinte!
I celebrated a birthday over the weekend, and I got some very special greetings from a pair of adventurous little monsters! It seems they are still speaking, despite the hiccup at the end of their last holiday… What a relief!
Anyway, I wanted to share their birthday greetings with you… and experiment with a new format. Let me know what you think in the comments!
Awwww, you guys!
Hope you all had a great weekend, too! We’ll be back on Friday to share another Dublin treasure with you… Provided Explorer Beastie doesn’t party too hard on St Patrick’s Day, of course!
OK, so normally Explorer Beastie and I would be taking you to one of our favourite Dublin places today… But when a rare opportunity to visit Belfast presented itself, we could hardly say no!
Although I originally hail from this part of the world, I very seldom get to hang out in Belfast any more. Trips “Up Home” seem to skim by in an instant – by the time I’ve shared all my news, heard what my parents have been up to, said hello to the cat and sampled the latest batch of my Dad’s homemade wine, I almost need to pack up and head south again! So when we heard there was a Rembrandt self-portrait on loan to the Ulster Museum, it was a perfect excuse to take the bus from the family homestead and pay a visit to one of my favourite childhood stomping grounds. On the way, Explorer Beastie had a quick look around the historic Lanyon building at Queen’s University…
…Then we grabbed a quick bite to eat before heading into the museum!
It turns out that there are lots of monster-like things living in the Ulster Museum, if you know where to look!
Clockwise from main image: Totem pole, gold salamander pendant from the wreck of the “Girona”, Bacchus jug spout from the “Girona”, Sri Lankan Kolam mask
And you really need to watch out for those dragons flying around the atrium too… These incredible sculptures are made from woven willow, and they’re the handiwork of local master basketweaver Bob Johnston. They’re so lifelike that you could almost imagine them swooping down from the ceiling! Fortunately, they seem more interested in each other… for now!
This trip was a great opportunity for me to check in with some old favourites – the exhibits I’ve been coming here to see since I was a small, creepily-obsessed-with-Ancient-Egypt-and-vampires child. Even after a complete refurbishment a few years ago, many of them are still on display! That includes Takabuti, the Eygptian mummy who has been an important part of the museum’s collection since she was first introduced to the public in 1835. Since long experience has taught me that not everyone shares my enthusiasm for mummies, I’ll just include this photo of a lock of Takabuti’s hair here instead… but you can find out more about her on the Museum’s website if you like!
Next, we went in search of some dinosaurs… …And some prehistoric creatures that are still with us! Explorer Beastie was pretty intriuged by this coelacanth – a fish that was thought to be extinct until a live one was captured off the coast of South Africa in 1938. Before this, it had only been seen in fossils – ones that were at least 80 million years old! The Ulster Museum’s own “living fossil” was caught in 1973 off the Comoros Islands, and has been here ever since.
Also high on Explorer Beastie’s must-see list were the finds from the “Girona”, a ship from the Spanish Armada that was wrecked off the coast of County Antrim in 1588. He examined one of the original cannons… …And discovered the kind of treasure that would make Pirate Beastie’s one remaining knee go weak! Then we had a go at building a Neolithic stone tomb… Wait a second… Tomb? Shipwrecks? Mummies? This is all getting very morbid! I think it’s high time we headed off to find that Rembrandt! Wow. The detail in the face is amazing – you can almost imagine him opening his mouth and launching into his life story. In fact, this is one of the last paintings Rembrandt completed… a final addition to the collection of 80 or so self-portraits he produced in his lifetime.
We could have stayed in the museum all day, but it really was time to head for home. At least we still had a few spare minutes for a leisurely stroll back into town through the Queen’s Quarter… …And a quick hot chocolate on the way! Thanks for joining us on our adventure north of the border! We’ll be back in Beastie Towers next week, bringing you monster news on Tuesday and another Dublin day out on Friday. In the meantime, have a super weekend!
Hooray! It’s time to spread a bit of new Beastie magic here at Beastie Towers!
… But her accessories might give you a clue about her special secret identity!
Crown, sparkly wings, tutu, wand… Yep, I think we might have a Fairy Princess Beastie here!
Beautiful!
As we’re now just heading into summer here in the northern hemisphere, Fairy Princess Beastie should definitely be warm enough in her elegant floaty skirt. But what happens when the weather starts to get colder again?
I couldn’t resist knitting a couple of Beastie-sized sweaters in colours that would complement her lovely fuschia-pink skin tone. The blue one even has sparkles!
This Beastie has already headed off to Germany, to help her new best friend celebrate her birthday! She made sure to bring along a gift, too… Beastie colouring-in pages!
Here’s wishing them lots of magical monster adventures together!
…So it’s really easiest to put everything on at once!
