So hine’s work is definitely “aspirational crafting” (I just made that term up).  She is certainly a fiber-textile artist, not your mamma’s felter by any means. I’ve been following her work for-evs (not really as she is probably younger than me) but I haven’t been sure when to “pull the trigger” and post one of her items. The truth is I’m in love with all of them, though some are geekier than others.

This week, I have found the thing I cannot resist posting, this magical daphnia. I remember coming across these crustaceans when I was a kid, pouring through an old biology textbook a much older cousin (sadly uninterested in playing with me) had laying around. The grades she was in “FRESH-MAN” “SOPHO-MORE” sounded so magical to me, a lowly first grader, I was dying to know what difficult, bizarre things a “FRESH MAN” learned about in their science classes. Flipping through her book, I learned that a single drop of water contained an invisible ecosystem of strange little critters, including these see-through cousins of crabs and lobsters!

Anyway, I suspect all of you have memories of your first geek thirsts, and the daphnia is mine (no implication of drinking a daphnia by accident intended!) and hine’s plushie captures that beautifully!

This also confirms my suspicion that these are happy little micro-creatures! Thanks hine :-)

• Felted Giant Daphnia
• hine’s Flickr site
• hine’s Etsy store