My Earlier Carousel Project - A Retrospective

 I know a lot of people were expecting a new update on the carousel today.  I have been out of town and did not have an opportunity to work on it.  And, in the run up to going out of town we had heating/air conditioning issues as well as having to have some large and dangerous trees taken down, I was pretty distracted.  So, with no progress on the current carousel, I thought I would put up some pictures of my previous carousel.

It is hard to believe it, but it has been twelve years since I made this carousel.  The animals on it are a giraffe, a cat, a pig, and a camel.  Each of the four sides of the central pillar has a face.  

The faces are Johnny Cake faces.  When I was growing up, my mother had a Johnny Cake face from an antique carousel on the wall in the kitchen.  

The Johnny Cake story is an old English tale.  It is very similar to the story of the Ginger Bread Man story.  In this case a pancake was being cooked.  It jumps out of the pan and starts to roll away.  It is subsequently chased by a number of characters.  This story was one of my youngest child's favorite stories.  We read it often when he was little.                  

The cat.

Each side of the central pillar also has a small mirror.  When I was a child, I rode on a Merry Go Round at the amusement park that was at Virginia Beach.  It had mirrored columns on its pillar, and you could watch yourself and the horses surging forward and going up and down.

The armature for these animals was made from wire and covered with paper mâché. The armature photo for the cat is one of my most viewed photos.

The pig.

The rods holding up the animals are brass.  They are topped with a brass cap.  

This carousel did not go up and down, but it did go around.  It was not motorized, but it was mounted on a Lazy Susan type base.  You had to manually give it a push to make it move.  

The camel.

The floor of the carousel was made from wooden craft sticks.  It was stained to make it look like the real wooden floor of a carousel.

Even back then, I knew that at some point I wanted to make a larger motorized carousel.  It just took me a while to get to it.  I always felt I could have done better.  

I generally have way too many project ideas, and very little time to work on them.  Every once in a while, I hit a slump but that usually means that something is going on that prevents me from getting to my craft work.  

So, I will be home this week, and I hope that I will have some time to get to work on my current carousel project.  I will be posting new photos next week on Monday or Tuesday.  I am getting ready to work on my next animal, which will be a cat.  

After the cat form is completed, I still have one more animal to make.  I am still trying to figure out which animal I want it to be.  Once that animal is complete, I will be on to drilling a hole for the post, sanding and painting.  

I am becoming antsy on finishing this project.  I have had some new ideas that I can hardly wait to get started on.  So many projects, so little time.