Anatra and Norberta

I finished knitting Norberta a couple of weeks ago and she is now destined for a life with my nephew (if I can let her go). To be fair, I thought I should make a toy for my niece as well. Quizzing my sister I found out that she is obsessed with ducks...so Anatra was born and I spent a weekend quacking. Norberta has been spending a lot of time in the cupboard of late because we've seen a lot of these guys around the place lately, and a dragon can never be too careful.

Weird and wonderful things

We went to the Trieste aquarium the other weekend (and randomly managed to pick a day of "liberta entrata" - yay free stuff!). The funniest animal in the aquarium was the "Jackass penguin", I think named appropriately given the ass wiggling this penguin was doing. Upstairs there is a collection of snakes; being European most of the snakes are quite civilised and harmless. The ones that will give you a decent bite are generally cowards and will slither away. Also upstairs there was an exhibition dedicated to Darwin called "Nature Anomale". Basically a whole lot of stuffed deformed animals on display - two headed sheep, one eyed rabbits, four legged chickens.

After looking at such weird and wonderful animals, I decided to buy the giant bag of stuffing to stuff Norberta and make her a real dragon. Here is Norberta working out how to attach her limbs and wings...and a little while later, giving up and getting stuck into the limoncello!

Norberta

I've started knitting a baby dragon for my baby nephew. In Italian the same word, nipote, is used for nephew, niece, grandson and granddaughter. The gender of the person is given in the article before the word, e.g., il nipote for grandson or nephew, and la nipote for granddaughter or niece. Basically if you want to know more information you have to ask questions, this suits the Italian's love of talking.

Anyway, back to the dragon. I'm following a pattern called Norberta, using blue and red wool. I've pretty much finished the knitting and have been on the hunt for something to stuff her with. I found the translation for polyester stuffing, imbottitura in poliestere, and went looking in town. I went into one shop and asked for imbottitura in poliestere and the lady seemed to be ask me if it was for me, pointing at my jacket. I'm not sure why someone would want to stuff their jacket but anyway, I found the word for toy and showed her that. All became clear...she didn't have any, but she wrote down the name of a shop and what I wanted on a card "capok imbottiture - giocattolo" and told me to give it to the shop lady there. She then tried to sell me a "lovely" jacket with sequined writing on the front...not really my thing.

Not knowing what "capok" was I wandered off to find the shop. The lady there pulled out a gianormous bag of stuffing, I asked if I could buy half the bag, but no it was all or nothing. Not really having the need for so much stuffing (unless I did sucumb to the urge to stuff my own clothes) I declined. So Norberta is likely to stay unstuffed until I get back home, or find another source of stuffing. In the meantime, she does make a pretty amusing hand puppet. Here she is modelling a hat I just finished knitting (Urchin). I used Lion Brand organic cotton, it's ridously lovely and soft. The pattern is pretty easy to knit and is knit in wedges so if, like me, you don't measure your gauge you can easily add more wedges if it comes out too small.

Oh, I just looked up capok, and found entries for kapok which is a natural fibre, apparently much better than poly for stuffing toys.