The publisher of Sock And Glove sent me a review copy of the new English version.  How cool is that?! Way-cool (Thanks, Melissa!). I don't have the Japanese version, but it seems like they just translated it without editing because the text is whimsical and cute.  Thank goodness!  I hope that as they translate Japanese craft books into English, they don't try to Americanize them.  It's easy to imagine how sweet and charming Japanese craft books are, but it's great that we are going to be able to actually read them soon, too.

The first time I saw the elephant, I fell in love!  That's the picture from the book on the left. I only had 30 minutes of craft time last week, and I spent it making the elephant pieces-parts above.  Oh!  He's so adorable already.

I think I got pretty far in 30 minutes.  The trunk, which isn't stuffed, is so crazy-cute that I just want to hold the decapitated head and pet it (I pinned the head on for the photo).  I am cutting a few corners to save time, like not making the round leg and arm ends ... although I'm starting to regret that because they are so cute in the book photo.  I hope that I have time to finish him soon, because I'm already smitten.  I'm making him out of a pair of old, faded, soft, black socks.

Being a control freak, I usually prefer to have pattern pieces.  This book just has little diagrams of socks and/or gloves with cut-lines drawn on them.  I was worried about doing a good job of cutting out the pieces, but I shouldn't have. It was a lot of fun to just cut into some socks.  Every time you make one of these animals, how you cut out the pieces will determine the personality of your creation.  I like that.

I love the black elephant, but I'm already plotting to 'liberate' a pair of Andrew's dark grey socks to make another one.  I'm even thinking of doing a little sock shopping, which isn't like me, to see what's out there for even more elephant fun.  I'm totally getting ahead of myself ... since I haven't finished my first elephant, but the book is so inspiring and the projects are so easy and cute, I can't help myself.