Plimpy Pine Stuffed Animal
So I got the crazy idea that I could make a stuffed animal. More specifically I wanted to make a Plimpy Pine stuffed animal. 
Now Plimpy Pine is a porcupine and a pretty grumpy one at that. So on saturday my son Jacob and I went to the craft store and I picked up some felt and some yarn. I have never sewn anything in my life and really had no idea where to even start but I like to take on projects I have no idea what in the world I’m doing. I spent most of the rest of Saturday thinking about how I was going to execute my project. On Sunday I got up and got to work. I had knew I was going to use the yarn as the quills (even though they would not be sharp and would probably not look like quills) so I got Jake to start cutting them for me. Then I cut out an oval shape for the body of Plimpy and began to sew by hand every individual quill. THIS WAS TAKING FOREVER!!! Luckily my mother-in-law stepped in before to long and showed me a few tricks on the old sewing machine. This opened up a whole new world to me. I was able to apply all the quills to the body and tail in a much shorter amount of time. I would say the trickiest part of all was in figureing out how to make the nose and attach it to the body. Im not real happy with the face and nose but like I said this is only a first attempt. I also struggled with the arms and legs and how they should look and how to attach them and in the end they turned out pretty generic. 
Now originally I had planned on staying true to Plimpy Pine and make him grumpy, I had already made angry eyes for him, but in the end my sons ideas on stuffed animals won out. Jake said he didnt like it cause it had angry eyes and when I told him I was going to make a mad face he said ” Dad, what kid would want a mad stuffed animal?” So i ended up putting a small smile on the grumpy porcupines face and in the end it was the right thing to do because Jake ended up sleeping with it the entire night.
