kodama!

now that loudxmouse has received the package i sent for the miyazaki swap, i'm going to post my blurry pics here!

loudxmouse said that she was keen on kodama, among other things. kodama are little sprites that look like this:

so i decided, why not recreate that image as a handbag?

i made the handbag out of a few different-but-similar shades of dark green fabric. i appliqued a few leafy bits on, and to hold the kodama dolls, i made leaf-edged pockets, and top-stitched them so they'd stay nice and pointy:

then, i knitted and felted some little kodama dolls to tuck into the shrubbery:

here's a close up of my favourite little guy:

again, i chickened out of trying to felt them in the washing machine, and just did them in the bathroom sink - it only took fifteen minutes! - and then propped them in front a heating vent to dry quickly.

i've written up a pattern for knitting the wee kodama dolls, if anyone is interested. i made up the pattern using the two-needle tube double-knitting technique that erin explained to me a while ago. i also took a couple of snaps of the work-in-progress, which i'll put up tomorrow, since double-knitting is easy to do once you get it, but tricky to figure out the first time.