Grrrr! Don't let the name fool you.

Dinosaurs hold a special place in my heart.  I can clearly remember the first time I learned about them in a real way.  It was sixth grade and as part of the learning experience, the teacher passed a pair of plastic dinosaurs around the room for us to inspect.

Now these were far from accurate portrayals of dinosaurs.  One was a brontosaurus style dinosaur with a gaping mouth full of menacingly pointy teeth.  The other was a tyranosaurus rex style with the same menacing grin.  They were the hollow type toys (where you could put dirt or water inside) and they were the poster children for cheap "made in china" plastic junk.

And I loved them.  Not just love, I coveted them in a way that would have made my sunday school teacher retire in shame.

I quickly informed my mother that I wanted toy dinosaurs of my own which just about made her head explode.  These were the days when dinosaurs just weren't as readily available (in toy form) as they are now a-days.  Yeah, you could find them but they were mostly the aforementioned cheap-o types.  My mother was not about to waste money on something cheap (especially if it was a christmas or birthday gift and if her child had specified not to get the cheap-o ones because they weren't "right").  She's also never been one to give up when her children made a very specific gift request (we were taught from an early age to only ask for the things we wanted the very most, to keep our greed in check, so we usually received everything on our very carefully chosen lists).

Of course, she found me dinosaurs.  Really nice solid plastic dinosaurs.  The kind you get from a museum gift shop.  They were FABULOUS (and yes, I still have all of them).  They were acurate (no pointy teeth on a herbivore!) and each one had the name printed on the belly.  There were the classics (t-rex, stegosaurus, brotosaurus) and some exotic wonders like a pterranadon (teradactyl--my generic name for all the flying ones) and what quickly became my most favorite of the set, a blue plesiosaur who was just made for splashing around in the bath tub (my mother thought that one would be the one I liked the least, since it seemed to "dragon like" and fake to her).

Dinosaurs quickly became a staple of my childhood.  I had stuffed ones and little rubber ones.  Dinosaur bedsheets and dinosaurs even showed up on my birthday cakes.  My sister even sewed me a very large plush brotosaurus one year for a christmas gift (and yes, I still have it which surprises my sister, even though it shouldn't).  My parents even let me paint the side of our shed with a big ole brontosaurus (which became a bit of a landmark in our po-dunk neck of the woods).

So when I saw the latest pattern at Nuno Life (link is to the actual pattern but that whole blog is bursting with fabulousness) I went a little bit nuts.

And this weekend I got right down to the getting down.

Meet Snarl.  This is just his generic full body decently lit picture.  But he's so fabulous I had to take some more photos of him so. . .

Prowling the few potted plants at my office.

The pattern is fabulous.  It's a lot of sewing but not difficult sewing.  A perfect pattern to make while you're in front of the t.v.

I can totally see myself making another one of these using some better felt (I just used scrap for Snarl and ended up with quite a few seam blow outs). 

(and yes, he's named for the Dinobot.  What?  You think I didn't have Dinobots?  Hell, I adored Transformers and when the Dinobots came out I nearly had a stroke.  Two things I loved together at last.  They were better than the combo of chocolate and peanut butter.)