[Groop] Minstrel felt soft-sculpture

[Tone]

	A while back I posted a message with a bunch of photo links of Groo and
Rufferto soft sculptures my wife made for me using a technique called
"felting", which is a hobby of hers. Felting involves repeatedly poking
various colored felt or wool fibers into other felt balls or pieces of
cloth using a barbed needle, so that the rough fibers stick together and
become denser with more poking. It is a tedious process and many a finger
is pricked.
	Anyway, she made me a Minstrel soft-sculpture to keep Groo and Rufferto
company, so I thought I would share some photos:

http://www.cranksgiving.net/xs/GrooFeltMinstrel1.jpg
http://www.cranksgiving.net/xs/GrooFeltMinstrel2.jpg
http://www.cranksgiving.net/xs/GrooFeltMinstrel3.jpg
http://www.cranksgiving.net/xs/GrooFeltMinstrel4.jpg

	The first thing you may notice is she made the ornament at the head of
the lute a bicycle. Obviously that is to keep with the endless changing
to the lute decoration Sergio draws every time the Minstrel is seen. In
this case she chose a bicycle because (for those who do not know about my
interests) I like riding bicycles. In fact when Sergio visited the
Baltimore Comic Con I biked down from York, PA and back in a day to see
him in person for the first time in my life, which was a 114 mile round
trip.
	There are also some other nice details she incorporated into her
felt-figurine. The strings on the lute can actually be tightened by
twisting the tuning knob. Everything in the Minstrel figure is made of
felt/fabric except for the jingle bells in his hat. She felt those should
keep making their sounds. Another little touch, which is partially
visible in the fourth image, is she included the little utility knife on
the back of the Minstrel's belt. This is not usually seen in the comics,
but if you take a look at the PVC figure set, then you will see it.
	I should mention my wife did err. She made the Minstrel a little larger
in scale than the Groo she made for me earlier. There are times when the
Minstrel is depicted about the same height as Groo, but there are also
times when he seems taller. Well, she made him just a bit taller than the
latter, so I kind of scrunched him down for his pose next to Groo.

	Here is an image of the hanging display box, which all the felt figures
hang out in:
http://www.cranksgiving.net/xs/GrooFeltDisplayBox.jpg
	Besides acting as a floating stage for the felt figures, the top of the
box also acts as a display shelf for other Groo/Sergio collectibles. The
box itself is actually made of a re-purposed aluminum-framed industrial
HEPA filter, which I salvaged from my last job when we were going to
throw it out. I cleaned out the filter parts inside and used a Dremel
with a wire brush attachment to give the outside a brushed metal look. At
the moment the background for the felt figures is just a nicely curved
white poster-board sheet, but someday I might scan in one of Sergio's
forest backgrounds and reprint it as just his black and white detailed
line work and use that as the curved backdrop. Another thought I had was
doing something similar, but coloring it with light water colors to give
a hint of color to the background so it does not distract too much from
the figures.

	Speaking of display shelves for Groo stuff, it has been a while, but I
did finish a project involving just that for some of my other Groo
collectibles.
http://www.cranksgiving.net/xs/GrooShelvesClose.jpg
http://www.cranksgiving.net/xs/GrooShelvesSide.jpg
http://www.cranksgiving.net/xs/GrooShelves.jpg
	As you can see I am using wood wedges to tilt the shelves forward. The
shelves are fairly high up with the lowest shelf right about eye level,
so I wanted to improve the visibility of the items on the shelves. The
height of the shelves is due to an enclosed storage bench I built below
the shelving. Among other things I keep two long comic book boxes of Groo
stuff inside. Obviously, the shelves have to be a certain height so that
anyone sitting on the bench does not hit their head. Also, having display
shelves higher up prevents young curious guests from easily reaching the
Groo collectibles, which are colorful and appealing to children's senses.
	Another cool feature of the display shelves is the lighting involved with
it. In the previous photos all the light is coming in from the windows on
either side of the shelves. However, the shelves can be lit up by
dimmable track lighting, hidden back-lit white LED strips, or a
combination of both:
http://www.cranksgiving.net/xs/GrooShelvesLit.jpg
http://www.cranksgiving.net/xs/GrooShelvesLitBack.jpg
	Clearly the "GrooShelvesLit.jpg" image is a combination of both and
"GrooShelvesLitBack.jpg" is just the LEDs. The photos do not give the
lighting justice because there is still daylight leaking in through the
slits in the bamboo blinds. It took a bit of time to run all the wiring
like I wanted, but it was not that expensive to do. The track lighting is
my home office's primary light source, which I managed to buy very cheap
at a local contractor surplus/salvage distributor. The dimmable bulbs
were the most expensive part of the track lighting. Apart from that, the
white LEDs are simply three strings of Xmas lights, which were on sale
after the holidays last year, so I got those for about $3 a piece. They
are wired to an extension cord, which runs above the drop-tile ceiling
and down behind the wall shelves over my computer desk to a wall outlet,
which has its own switch.
	At some point I will also be mounting the Groo "Siege" poster in the
middle of the wall to the right of the felt-figure display box, but I
have not found or made a frame for it yet. When I do I will also assemble
and hang Sergio's double-sided sports puzzle, which you can see in its
box above the felt figures. I intend to make a custom double-sided
picture frame, which will hang suspended from an arm sticking out from
the wall above the "Siege" poster. I will mount the arm on a hinge, so
that I can swing the framed puzzle flat against the wall in either
direction to display either side.

	Well, that concludes our tour of Tone's displayed Groo collection. The
end of this visual trip through Tone's home office also presents everyone
with yet another example of Tone's bad influence (at least according to
Gary) as well as a return to Tone's long-winded e-mails. Therefore, in
the interests of whatever remains of Gary's sanity, everyone should no
longer feel the need to attempt to substitute their own extensive e-mails
for my own... at least for the near future.

Best wishes to all, including even Gary...
_TONE_