With the immediate success of snailvaark, and the almost-as-immediate request from Danielle-inventor-of-the-mousevaark for a snailvaark of her own, I was carried along on a wave of creativity. This, in combination with the foul weather on Saturday lead to me and snailvaark #1 running a live ‘birth of a snailvaark’ on Twitter. What do you mean, you missed it? OK, I know Twitter isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, so here is a look at how our day went…
First, we headed to the limery with a all the necessary materials:
I bet you’ve forgotten something!
And then I started on the shell:
This doesn’t look anything like my shell
The first half progressed quite quickly and I moved on to picking up the stitches for the second half:
Well that looks more promising
And by lunchtime the knitting was done
Are you sure it isn’t going to be a butterfly?
The next bit is tricky – grafting
Apparently snailvaark does not like needles
And inserting the skeleton… hang on, where is the skeleton?
So, no needles, but you’ll balance a skeleton on your nose?
Finally I was able to continue grafting, stuffing and inserting the pipe-cleaner skeleton
This looks complicated
And snailvaark found some new friends who were watching the Six Nations rugby:
‘Come on Wales!’ What do you mean ‘This is France-Italy’?
Finally, the shell was complete:
OK, this is the ‘snail’ but where’s the ‘vaark?
And I made a start on the body:
You begin with the nose
It grows
Apparently embryonic ‘vaarks wear jewellery!
and grows
A ‘vaark bust
Until it starts to be recognised by other ‘vaarks
‘Hello… I said HELLO’… oh, sorry, no ears yet
And after a while there’s a body and a separate ‘vaark bottom
We can rebuild him!
All the knitting and crochet is nearly done – we just need some ears
Can you see the family resemblance yet?
For a ‘vaark stand up. it needs a heavy bottom, so they are filled with rice. To avoid unfortunate, embarrassing accidents, a little bag is employed:
No, snailvaark, that is not a snack
It is inserted into the base of the ‘vaark
Not looking!
And once the base is attached, the shell can be stitched on and the button nose added:
Oh look, snailvaarks are born blind and deaf
Crochet ears and button eyes soon follow, and ‘voila’ there’s a finished snailvaark
A new ‘vaark is born
Welcome to my world!
The Snail of Happiness 
Ann Pole
/ February 11, 2016What do I think? Your are delightfully bonkers Jan. 😀
Will we get to meet a snailvaark at the NDG? XXX
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The Snail of Happiness
/ February 11, 2016Maybe…
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Wild Daffodil
/ February 11, 2016Vaaarking-mad! 😃 👏 💜
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The Snail of Happiness
/ February 11, 2016it’s how I remain sane!!
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Wild Daffodil
/ February 11, 2016Ha! Ha! Know what you mean!
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nettyg
/ February 11, 2016*laughing*
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thecontentedcrafter
/ February 11, 2016Fantastic!! Fantastical!! Stark raving bonkers and madly creative! Totally in love!!
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The Snail of Happiness
/ February 11, 2016It’s been a very sill week. There is a small family )two mousevaarks and a molevaark) coming to live with me in exchange… they are en route as I type!
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shapeofthingstoni
/ February 11, 2016*grin*
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anne54
/ February 11, 2016I don’t understand how I missed the excitement on Twitter!! It may be because I am not on Twitter…..but this should have gone viral!! I love these little Vaarks and am what the next species will be. That gets me thinking, do they have scientific species names?
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davidprosser
/ February 12, 2016Fascinating conception to birth procedure Jan.Aren’t they born colourful.
xxx Massive Hugs xxx
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katechiconi
/ February 12, 2016Now I can see what the vaark you have been up to all this time…. Love the way the shell goes together.
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The Snail of Happiness
/ February 14, 2016Oooh , just noticed your fab hat
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katechiconi
/ February 14, 2016It’s certainly very pink, isn’t it? But the consensus is that it’s a nice photo of me…
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insearchofitall
/ February 14, 2016Absolutely adorable and the comments were pretty great too!!! I’m still grinning ear to ear about it all. I just can’t imagine how you created these in your mind then brought them to life!!!! Wow!
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claire
/ February 14, 2016love it !
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crawcraftsbeasties
/ February 15, 2016Welcome to the world, new Snailvaark! I love these little guys… And I just noticed their little button noses in these photos! I think I’m going into cuteness overload… 😍
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The Snail of Happiness
/ February 15, 2016Just made a third one to go off to another new friend… I’m running short of small buttons for noses, it’s a size that I have very few of in my button box. But I’m sure Jon won’t notice if I remove all the spares off his shirts… he hates wearing shirts anyway.
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crawcraftsbeasties
/ February 16, 2016Sounds like a plan to me! 😀 And I couldn’t imagine a worthier cause than bringing more Snailvaarks into the world!
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