Crocheted Sugar Gliders

Sugar gliders (small, nocturnal marsupials native to Indonesia and northern Australia) are quite an addiction. It isn't just enough to have those cute, bugged eyed lovers, but you find yourself wanting to have anything and everything you can find that has to deal with them.

That is how I got started doing sugar gliders in crochet.

My dad (yes, dad) taught me to crochet when a was an itty bitty thing. I did it for awhile, then quit. I mean, I was about five! I had better things to do like dig in the sand box or chase cats.

Around 10 years later, I decided to pick it back up. However, I didn't really remember what he had taught me and neither did he. So, because this was the era before computers in every household with Internet connect, I had to reteach myself. That being said, I don't crochet in the correct, "textbook" way. I just kind of winged it, and it works for me!

I started out by being commissioned to do a sugar glider in a more animated style. From there, I decided to make a more realistic one.

One thing that I knew that I would do from the start was paint them. I wanted to get the individualized details of each glider that I do.

I created my own patterns, crochet them and paint them (with a watered down fabric paint) to look just like my clients' gliders.

Here are some examples of my work:

Animated Glider

Two animated gliders--one standard grey, one ring tailed mosaic

Unpainted body of a winged, realistic glider

Painted realistic of an intact male (notice the "bald" spot)

A very special realistic glider. He is an elderly glider who is missing his teeth so his tongue sticks out. Also, he had part of his left, rear leg amputated