A Cheerful Start To The New Year…

Grim Reaper Beastie, by CrawCrafts Beasties
Yippeeeeee! It’s new Beastie time! And since I’m sure I’m not the only one who is still trying to get used to the transition from the old year to the new (anyone else out there steadfastly continuing to write 2015 dates on things? Because I am), who better to sweep away the clinging cobwebs of last year than…

GRIM REAPER BEASTIE!

Grim Reaper Beastie with Accessories, by CrawCrafts Beasties
With his sweet smile, woolly paws and little monster ears poking out through the hood of his robe, he is possibly the least grim Grim Reaper ever!Grim Reaper Beastie, Back View - CrawCrafts Beasties
He’ll use his felt scythe to clear away the clutter of the year that was, and make space for the new, better year that will be. Oh, and his felt hourglass will help him keep an eye on the time for us all, too.
Grim Reaper Beastie's Hourglass, by CrawCrafts Beasties
He can also embrace a more casual look, if it’s called for…
Grim Reaper Beastie's Casual Look - CrawCrafts Beasties
…But it’s getting colder outside, so he might be better off leaving his hood up, at least for the moment.

Before Grim Reaper Beastie headed off to his new home in Germany, I took him out for a walk in one of my favourite Dublin parks. Iveagh Gardens is right in the city centre, but with its high walls and hidden entrances, you really need to know where to look if you want to find it! The crumbling statues and stonework give it a real “Secret Garden” feel…
Grim Reaper Beastie in Iveagh Gardens - CrawCrafts BeastiesGrim Reaper Beastie's Secret Den - CrawCrafts Beasties

Grim Reaper Beastie with the Statues - CrawCrafts Beasties
…While the evergreen-shaded pathways make for some great spooky photos!
Grim Reaper Beastie Strikes a Spooky Pose - CrawCrafts Beasties
Grim Reaper Beastie on the Path - CrawCrafts Beasties
And what’s that down there?
Grim Reaper Beastie in the Maze - CrawCrafts Beasties
Yes, it’s a miniature hedge maze! The sundial at the centre is supposed to be very accurate – unfortunately a sundial in Ireland isn’t really the best way to keep time!
Grim Reaper Beastie Starts His Journey - CrawCrafts Beasties
As the winter daylight faded, it was time to head back to Beastie Towers, and ready Grim Reaper Beastie for his onward journey. Apparently he’s settling in well in his new home!

More new Beasties next week… until then I’m going to sit down and practice writing “2016” on everything. I’m sure I’ll get the message by February…

PS Drop in again on Friday for our first “Explorer Beastie’s Dublin” post! I’m not sure where we’re going yet, but he’s assured me he has a plan!

Fantastic Beasties… and Where to Find Them!

Hermione Beastie, by CrawCrafts Beasties
You may all remember how much fun I had making Harry Potter Beastie a couple of months back… So I’m sure you can imagine how happy I was to hear that he was in need of a monster-sized friend to keep him company on his adventures, and to help him take on the Dark Lord Wooldemort!

Hermione was selected to be Harry’s companion, which was absolutely fine with me! I was looking forward to trying out a girl’s version of the Hogwarts uniform – so although Hermione Beastie has the same white shirt, Gryffindor tie and black robes I used for Harry, I’ve given her black tights, a grey skirt (I had some suitably school-uniform-y material in my vast fabric reserves) and a grey knitted sweatervest.
Hermione Beastie's Hogwarts Uniform, by CrawCrafts Beasties
I also thought I’d make her a Time Turner necklace, as featured in “The Prisoner of Azkaban”!
Hermione Beastie's Time Turner Necklace, by crawCrafts Beasties
And of course, there was her hair. I was looking forward to recreating Hermione’s famously exuberant hairdo so much that I left finishing it until the very end! Here’s a closeup of the front…
Hermione Beastie's Hair - CrawCrafts Beasties
… And the back!
Hermione Beastie's Hair, Back View - CrawCrafts Beasties
I also had to make sure she had all the essentials to get her through another school year! So of course she got a wand, inspired by the one Human Hermione uses in the movies…
Hermione Beastie's Wand, by CrawCrafts BeastiesHermione Beastie's Wand, in her paw - CrawCrafts Beasties… And Hermione wouldn’t go anywhere without at least one textbook in tow, so I chose this one for Hermione Beastie – just as a little light reading.
A Beastie-Sized Copy of "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", by CrawCrafts Beasties
Then there was just time to make her a lovely cosy Gryffindor scarf (to prepare for the winter term)…
Hermione Beastie's Gryffindor Scarf, by CrawCrafts Beasties
…And she was ready to go!
Hermione Beastie, Ready for a new term at Hogwarts! CrawCrafts Beasties
I can’t wait to see where she and Harry Beastie go next! You can follow their adventures on Harry’s Instagram – find him at @harrypotterbeastie!

Reader Beastie Meets Some Prehistoric Monsters!

Reader Beastie with some T-Rexes - N Couture/CrawCrafts Beasties
Last weekend, I got an update from Reader Beastie, who is now happily living in Saskatchewan in Canada! This time, instead of helping out on the farm, he made an educational trip to visit a completely different type of animal…
Reader Beastie at the T-rex Discovery Centre - N Couture/CrawCrafts Beasties

The T-rex Discovery Centre in Eastend, Southwest Saskatchewan, is home to Scotty – one of the largest and most complete tyrannosaurus rex skeletons ever found! There’s a great story behind the discovery too… the first pieces of Scotty to be excavated – a tooth and a tail vertebra – were actually unearthed by a local schoolteacher, who had joined a team of paleontologists from the Royal Museum of Saskatchewan on one of their digs to learn about how fossils are found and identified. Imagine how he must have felt when he found out what he’d dug up!

It was a couple of years before the rest of Scotty made it out of the ground… excavation began in mid 1994, and since then these remains have helped paleontologists to better understand this most celebrated of dinosaurs, and how life was for them in the Frenchman River Valley 65 million years ago. Since the skeleton is almost complete, the museum has also been able to make a cast of each individual bone and reassemble a life-size Scotty for visitors to meet! You can see Reader Beastie posing with the replica in the main photo… and here he is bravely demonstrating exactly how fearsome t-rex teeth were!
Reader Beastie with a T-rex Skull - N Couture/CrawCrafts Beasties
Of course, t-rex wasn’t the only creature roaming prehistoric Saskatchewan! Reader Beastie also got up close and personal with a triceratops (my own favourite dinosaur)…
Reader Beastie with a Triceratops - N Couture/CrawCrafts Beasties
… And a brontothere – a large prehistoric mammal that was a distant relative of modern horses, rhinos and tapirs!
Reader Beastie meets a Brontothere - N Couture/CrawCrafts Beasties
He even came across some dinosaur poop! Lucky it’s fossilised… Am I the only one thinking of that scene from “Jurassic Park” right now?
Reader Beastie with some dino poo - N Couture/CrawCrafts Beasties
All in all, it looks like Reader Beastie had a super day out! He might even consider a change of career… Hello Paleontologist Beastie!
Paleontologist Beastie! N Couture/CrawCrafts Beasties

Time For a Little Monster Magic…

Harry Potter Beastie, by CrawCrafts Beasties
It really has been wall-to-wall commissions for me these last few months! With so many awesome requests coming in, it does make me wonder if I’ll forget how to come up with Beastie ideas by myself… but I’m not going to worry about that too much. Especially if all my special orders are as fun as this one! Please welcome Harry Potter Beastie to the BeastieBlog!
Harry Potter Beastie (without his scarf this time), by CrawCrafts Beasties
Harry Potter Beastie is just like his namesake – from his spiky black hair to his trademark glasses!
Harry Potter Beastie Closeup, by CrawCrafts Beasties
You can also just about see his famous lightning-shaped scar poking out from under his hair – definite proof that he is indeed the “Beastie who lived”!

And of course, he could hardly head to Hogwarts without his trusty wand…
Harry Potter Beastie's Wand, by CrawCrafts Beasties
Although it looks similar to human Harry’s wand from the movies, this special Beastie edition is made from feltwood, with a core of rarest Polyfill fibre!

Beastie Harry has also brought along his favourite school textbook to show you… Yes, that is indeed “The Monster Book of Monsters”!
The Monster Book of Monsters, by CrawCrafts Beasties
Just be careful not to take the…
The Monster Book of Monsters Attacks! (CrawCrafts Beasties)
… belt off it. Ooops!

Still, with a little magical wrangling…
Harry Potter Beastie Recaptures The Monster Book of Monsters! (CrawCrafts Beasties)
…This badly-behaved book can even be made to pose nicely for the camera!
The Monster Book of Monsters (1) by CrawCrafts BeastiesThe Monster Book of Monsters (2) by CrawCrafts Beasties

Harry Potter Beastie in full Gryffindor Uniform, by CrawCrafts Beasties
And finally… yes, I know it’s summer term, but I couldn’t resist knitting a cosy Gryffindor scarf to complete Harry Potter Beastie’s uniform! After all, you can never tell where his adventures will take him next…

By the way, if you want to accompany him on these adventures, you can! Within minutes of meeting his new Beastiebuddy, Harry Potter Beastie had his own Instagram account. You can find him there as @harrypotterbeastie, or non-Instagrammers can take a peek here!

In other news, the rest of the Beasties were so taken with Harry Potter Beastie’s online antics that they insisted I join Instagram too! If you don’t have enough monster madness in your life already, come and join the party – we are @crawcraftsbeasties!

Beasties Don’t Cry…

Robert Smith Beastie

My first encounter with The Cure didn’t go so well. It was 1990, they’d just released the remixed version of “Close to Me”, and the video for the song was played over the closing credits of Top of the Pops that week. And it FREAKED ME OUT. The wobbly camera work, the whole band trapped in a wardrobe that’s just fallen off a cliff into the sea, the over-friendly trumpet-playing octopus with the human face… GAAAAAH! Horror! Anyone with nerves steelier than my 8-year-old self can check out the video here, if they dare.

I’m not sure what changed my mind about them, but somewhere along the way The Cure ended up being one of my favourite bands. I’ve whiled away many long bus journeys listening to “Disintegration”, and danced like a loon to “The Lovecats” more times than I’d care to think about. And who could forget Robert Smith stepping in to save the small town of South Park from total destruction by a rampaging Barbra Streisand? I figured it was high time I paid tribute to one of the most recognisable faces in rock, Beastie-style.

Robert Smith Beastie 2
After I’d finished his trademark dark eyes and red lips, I added a mop of curly hair and a tailor-made black shirt, and then…
Robert Smith Guitar

… a hand-stitched guitar, based on one Robert Smith actually plays!

Has anyone any ideas for other musicians who deserve to be immortalised in wool and felt? Let me know in the comments!

Rambo Beastie

Rambo Beastie

About a month ago, Boyfriend and Flatmate decided it was time to revisit the Rambo films. I have to say, they don’t make especially good knitting radio, since the soundtrack is more explosions, gunfire and screaming than actual dialogue, but they did give me an idea for a new Beastie. I am proud to introduce… Rambo Beastie!
Rambo on the Rocks

He’s a little less smiley than some of my other creations, but he’s had a pretty rough time of it these last few years.
Rambo Closeup

However, I did my best to cheer him up with some authentic Rambo accessories – combat trousers with a real leather belt, red bandana and an awesome 80s hairdo!
Rambo Beastie with Accessories

Oh yes, and he has a replica of the knife from the first film – lovingly recreated in lethally sharp… felt. Ahem.
Rambo Beastie's Knife

I was hoping he’d stick around for a while, but it wasn’t long before he escaped back into the woods on another one-Beastie campaign…
Rambo Beastie in the Woods

More new Beasties coming soon!