Two Decades Ago

Wow, these pictures of me and my bear Cyrano were taken 20 years ago! I can't believe it's been that long! I had been making my Crew members for about five years at that point. Cyrano was created from beautiful kid mohair and was named for his ample nose.

The last two weekends, my husband and I went driving in a new neighborhood and came upon a street called Dancing Bear Lane. I just love that name! Wouldn't it be perfect for a bear maker like me? Have you come across any fun street names? Do share!

I'm so excited that New Avenue Crew will be participating in the ONLINE Teddies Worldwide Teddy Bear Extravaganza Show March 17-19, 2017.

I've been hard at work on my first two bears for the show, and I love them already! You'll be able to see preview pictures and vote for your favorite bears starting Friday, March 3. Then the show starts on Friday, March 17. I hope you will drop in and visit all the wonderful bears!

I have been part of two Teddies Worldwide shows before in November 2010 and March 2011. You might remember a couple of my bears from those shows. The little brown bear is Mullins, and the large light green and ivory bear is Sprout. They are both adopted.

Smiles for My Childhood Bears

When I was a child, I enjoyed playing with an elderly teddy bear, probably from the 1930s. He was a good companion and even played with me in the sandbox. He had lost a lot of his fur, and its color was faded from a dark reddish-brown to a caramel color. The other thing he had lost was his smile. I always thought the tear in the fabric under his nose was his mouth! But there were remnants of the black floss that his mouth was stitched with. I had never seen him smile. Until yesterday.

Yesterday, I am not sure what got into me, but I decided that I wanted to see my elderly teddy bear smile. So I set to work with black pearl cotton floss, a long doll-making needle, and my magnifier. I stitched in the exact places where the remaining floss pieces were, and was delighted to see my bear smiling back at me for the first time.

I noticed during stitching that the bear's snout is stuffed with excelsior, also known as wood wool. And on close examination of his remaining darker fur, I found that his fur is actually mohair.

After seeing my elderly bear's smile, I had to give a smile to my little pink childhood bear. I don't remember what her original nose looked like. When I was about 12 or 13 years old, I stitched her black nose in place. I wonder where her original nose went! All this time, she has not had a mouth. But now, she and my elderly bear are both smiling. After all my stitching yesterday, I am feeling motivated to work on my New Avenue Crew bears! Stay tuned, dear reader!

Down Memory Lane

As much as I like to look forward to new experiences and new relationships, I also enjoy taking a walk down Memory Lane from time to time--sometimes revisiting my own memories, and sometimes discovering lovely parts of a past I have not known. Are you like me?

Today, a friend of mine shared a photo of a bear I created for her 13 or 14 years ago. I named him Juniper after the juniper bushes that grew in front of our house on New Avenue when I was young. My friend made Juniper some darling overalls to wear.

Juniper in his snazzy overalls

Juniper lives with my friend Hiromi Nagataki in Japan. Hiromi is a teddy bear artist and creates darling bears with exquisite clothing; her business is called Teardrops. She made a sailor bear for me named Satsuki. Before I sent Juniper to Japan, I took a picture of him with Satsuki taking tea in the garden.

Satsuki (by Hiromi Nagataki) and Juniper (by Debora Hoffmann) taking tea

I created New Avenue Crew 19 years ago, in 1996. The Crew entered cyberspace (cybearspace?) in about 2000 with a site on the now-defunct Geocities. I thought I would never see my website again, but three years ago, I found it on a site called Reocities and wrote a blog post about it. Imagine my surprise when today I stumbled upon my Geocities site in another place I didn't know it existed! You can visit my website and read all the pages and see all the photos as they appeared in 2008. It is a snapshot in time, a walk down Memory Lane.

The New Avenue Crew website on Geocities.ws

The Crew's Chief Bearcrafter (Me), Then and Now

The other day, my husband scanned a slide into his computer and sent me a JPEG of a photo I had never seen before:

Yes, it is a picture of me making a bear! I was thrilled that he had this photo. It was taken way back in 2000 when we were newlyweds. We had a second-floor apartment overlooking the Santa Ana River in Anaheim, California, the town we grew up in. The next picture below is a non-silhouetted version of my bear-making session. You can see Trudi in the foreground. I was working on Gunnison, a black-and-gold bear.

It occurred to me today that this coming weekend marks 12 years since I did my first (and only) major in-person teddy bear show, the three-day Teddy Bear Convention in historic Nevada City, California, in April 2001. Here I am with my table full of bears (and a kitty):

We had just moved from Southern California to the Seattle area to our new apartment, quite a long drive, and then got back on the road to drive south for the show. I still don't know how I managed to have a whopping 14 bears ready for that show when I struggle to find any time for bear making these days!

I do miss in-person shows, and I also enjoy participating in online shows. I have met so many lovely people in the bear world, both in person and online, particularly on Facebook, through the Guild of Master Bearcrafters, and on Teddy Talk. I'm eager to get busy again as New Avenue Crew's chief bearcrafter.

And here is a picture of me two weeks ago. Notice that I have a faux fur collar, even though I haven't been making bears lately. I am drawn to texture. In fact, maybe I should go paw through my stash of mohair again soon...