various stuffed animals Sorry Skyring, chocolate was a good idea but I thought of a better one :p My stuffed animals.

I’ll start off with my teddy bear. I’ve had this bear for a really, really long time – in fact I can’t remember not having her! And as I’m sure you can tell from the picture, she is extremely well loved. She used to have a proper nose, and no holes, and round eyes! I have an early memory of leaving her on the train coming home, and Dad having to go off and rescue her on his bike. No idea if I’m making that up or not, but I remember lining up all my other stuffed animals along the windowsill waiting for them to return.

Next along the line is my sock monkey. This was a gift from my friend Carrie1 for my birthday last year. Who says a girl’s too old for toys right :p Anyway, I first saw these at Cracker Barrel, and REALLY wanted one, but at that point in the trip I already had too much stuff, and knew I couldn’t fit something this big into my suitcase! I guess Carrie must have noticed because when I got home and unwrapped it, there he was!

The sheep is called Molly. I don’t know where I got the name from, she just looked like a Molly to me. I bought Molly from my friend Diana’s school fair last year. She’s hand knitted (Steiner school so they had a heap of hand made things!) and is kind of my markeroni mascot, although I never seem to have her when I see historical markers.

The smaller teddy bear is called Starfish, after the Sister Hazel song, because my friend Skyring sent her to me last year at summer camp (when I was a long, long way from home, as the song goes).

I’ve also got a zebra, called Aroha (Love), and a giraffe called Rangimarie (Peace) who were sent to me by my friend WingedMan after I told him my favourite animals were a giraffe and a zebra. He apparently had a dream about me living in a house with the roof cut out to accomodate for the size of the giraffe’s neck. At the moment my friend Debs has Aroha, and CreativeMGE has Rangimarie.