#trawlerman

"In Wigan,"

*Cocks shotgun*

"You're as good as dead."

THE TRAWLERMAN

I've been poking around my database of chimerical creations while I work on my "What It Made" queue again and out of 1025 thrifted plushies I've used to make by weird little beasts, 370 of them were only used to make one new beast.

That's not necessarily a bad thing; sometimes I do use up a whole plushie on a single project.

Most of my cerberuses, for example, are an essentially untouched dog (or less often, a bird, cat etc) stuffie with extra heads sewn on.

And if I have a lot of little scrappy bits, I'll often use them to make what I call an "accessorised whole" - a rabbit gets horns added to make a jackalope, or something without wings gets wings added, or I sew a bunch of spiky bits along the spine to make a chupacabra.

So again, there's no seperation of the base plushie and no parts to be repurposed.

But as of right now, I've got 143 plushies that I've cut up and only used parts of, and only to create one new creature.

So, for the rest of July (and I know it's only eleven days, but I like an achievable target!) I'm only going to be making scrapbag babies (plushies made entirely from leftovers) or accessorised wholes (plushies whose extra bits and pieces also come only from the leftovers I already have on hand)

Gotta cut down on these scraps and make sure that I'm making the best of what I've got!

As inspiration, here's a quick look at the five different chimera plushies I made using parts of a single Flitter the Butterfly:

One pair of wings to make Sasha the Winged Dog (an accessorised whole):

Lavender the Winged Cat (an accessorised whole):

Agape the Magnus Archives Corruption / Lovebombing inspired Mega Bug (a scrapbag baby):

Funky Jumper the Chupacabra (an accessorised whole):

Augustus Roake the Silt Verses inspired crab amalgamate (a scrapbag baby):

Hoop for Episode 2 of @thesiltverses for @savvy_tiff who kindly donated to Food Not Bombs. Thank you!!

"That was how I found you, my Trawler-man.

Because there was a water tank out in the woods.

Rusted and sagging, its scummy innards exposed to the sky, sat next to a fallen mass of tin sheets and blankets that had perhaps once been a nearly-home like ours.

The water was deep, and dark, and the things that skimmed across the surface did not look like any kind of life that I recognised, and there were thick white markings in paint across the sides. You could climb the ladder, and gaze down into the depths of the tank, and see a version of yourself that was not yourself, but blurring and dripping and swarming with primordial movement all at once, shifting in the sun’s light with every second."