Meet Mössbauer ~ the glam funk love punk!

I have been particularly inspired by the 600monsters group and their wonderful work. Even though my toy will likely go to a new home via my charitable project here, Mössbauer is certainly kin to all the many wonderful monsters being created in that group.

As you can see, Mössbauer is a cheeky sort of fellow and loves everything to do with music, especially playing his custom love-star bass. You may know of the fabulous funkmaster, Bootsy Collins, but you may not know that Bootsy got some of his stylin’ and groovin’ tips from that galactic punk funkster, Mössbauer, the original pilot of the Mothership (cf. Parliament) and the keeper of the ONE. :) Don’t know what I’m talking about?? Check here & get funkin: on the one, baby!

Mössbauer loves being full of color from head to toe and especially his special heart-shaped mohawk and starry-eyed shades…..plus his matching stripey socks and bass strap always make him giggle. Despite his iconoclastic appearance, Mössbauer also moonlights as a consulting physicist, and shares his name with a very smart man whose discovery led to a very specialized type of spectography used to measure teeny tiny changes of an atomic nucleus to/within its environment. You can read more about Mössbauer spectroscopy here…or you can skip that and just listen to some P-funk here & here. :)

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Construction notes

Mössbauer was another improvisation, a kind of doodling in 3 dimensions, which has been buckets of fun. The tweedy rainbow flecks on the Impeccable yarn are a great match for the solid colorways of the Impeccable and really allow the rainbow effect of the design to pop. The yarn itself is a bit stiff but it works up well and seems to be holding the polyfill stuffing well so far.

Everything is worked in the round but the arms and legs are not stuffed through their lengths, just at the ball ends of the “hands” and “feet”. I am quite pleased with the nice roundy shape of Mössbauer’s head and body -- even if he looks a bit like a pepper pot.

The “heart-hawk” hair was a fun experiment -- I used part of a fringe design from one of Nicky Epstein’s books and went through the rainbow colors and sewed them together. The fabric naturally wants to make small hearts, so that seemed perfect for the top of his head.

The star-shades are 2 layers of felt with peltex between and peltex star shapes on the front. The layers are affixed together with the shiny silver embroidery around the perimeter as well as a bit of the Impeccable glued around to hide the “sandwich” edge. The stars are glued and embroidered with a small bit of the silver thread.

Mössbauer’s bass was a labor of love. :) Bootsy is actually well known for his custom star-shaped bass (which he calls Space Bass), so that was my inspiration. As with the shades, I used 2 layers of felt with peltex between for the bass body, and embroidered on small bits of felt and peltex for the p-bass-style pickups, knobs, and bridge.

The neck was a bit more complicated but turned out pretty well. It too uses a similar construction (inside) but I also made it more dimensional by wrapping some sheet polyfill with a long length of tightly wound black yarn. This created a nice effect of being round(ish), like a real bass neck.

The frets are just loops of strong upholstery thread, sewn at decreasing intervals. The 4 strings are more of the silver embroidery thread.

The headstock has a fun little embellishment: a bit of the purple felt, carefully cut with tiny scissors, to read “LOVE” and glued onto the face. It also has a bit of dimensional glaze on it to give it some shine and a slightly raised effect.

The strap is a bit of ribbon that I was happy to discover in my stash, as it so perfectly matches Mössbauer’s socks! I knew I wanted to use a ribbon because I needed something that would fit tight to the body and not stretch. The strap is permanently attached to the bass, but the bass itself can be removed from Mössbauer very easily.

The final touch: I had to make it so Mössbauer looked like he was actually playing his bass! So, I rummaged around and found some tiny snaps and sewed them in strategic locations. The small protruding bits are on the bass and the indented sides are on the hands, so they won’t catch on anything if the bass is off.

I love Mössbauer and I think I’ll have to make him some additional band mates :)