Knitted Sheep (with link to pattern)

Ages and ages ago I knitted this sheep from the pattern on the Flutterby Patch blog.  It’s taken me this long to get photos of it.  This is such an easy and quick pattern that anyone with half an idea about knitting can make one.

So, anyway, this particular sheep is called Mary.  One day Mary was out walking and came across the most beautiful felted rock and spiral basket.  Mary wished that the rock was in the basket and hey presto, her wish was granted (she’s a magic sheep don’t you know).

Mary climbed on top of the rock to get a better view of the valley below.  She smiled as she spotted some of her sheep friends frolicking through the fields.  Mary wanted to get down to join them but she worried that she might slip and fall.  Suddenly as if by magic (told you she’s a magic sheep) a pile of stones appeared.

Mary was overjoyed.  She climbed down the stones…very carefully…

… and toddled off to meet her friends and tell them all about her mini adventure.

Mary says while you’re having a look at the pattern, check out the rest of the Flutterby Patch blog…it’s very uplifting.

Tartan Owl Ornament

This tartan chap was created as a commission this weekend.  In keeping with our attempts to reduce waste, he’s made from a piece of tartan that would have otherwise been binned and some ecospun felt.  Stuffed, as usual, with reclaimed polyester stuffing.

He’s got a bit of a problem though.  Whilst out for his morning walk, he came across a very strange object.  It looked like a grassy mound but he couldn’t be sure.

At first he stood next to the mound, he thought it enhanced his green wings and the green stripes in his tartan, but after a while he became suspicious that the object wasn’t a grassy mound at all but an owl eating alien so he made a hasty retreat to his new home.

Sock Creatures

These fun chaps were supposed to be sock monsters but they just aren’t at all scary.  In fact, they are so cute it hurts me to look at them so I think they must be banished to the sock drawer from wence they came!  (They didn’t really, they are brand new non-smelly socks).

This is something of a brand new obsession for me and I can’t seem to stop making them, which is unfortunate because I should really be making up a stock of birds for the upcoming craft fairs.  There are so many possibilities and since making these two at the start of the week, I’ve made a further two that are entirely different despite being fashioned from the other sock in each of the pairs.  It’s so much fun seeing your creation come to life, it’s a bit addictive.

This happy chap is known to his other sock friends as Ben the Bovine.  His peculiarly dimpled lips make him look somewhat like a cow and he is teased daily for this unfortunate feature.  In reality he is a sheep (or at least that’s what our three year old thinks) and he needs a loving home where he can be supported in the pursuit of baa-ing.

Sergeant Slim here at your service…stiff upper lip and no messing around.  See the thin yet ever so carefully crafted moustache?  He spends hours every morning grooming his facial hair.  Those who know him better, see a twinkle in his eye though and we all know that when no-one’s looking he’s as batty as the rest of the sock creatures.

These and the other sock creatures I create will be on sale at the craft fairs we’re attending this winter…details soon.

pocket pillows – boys and bears

It seems that pocket pillows are becoming a favourite of mine.  So called because they are pocket sized rather than them having a pocket, although occasionally they have a pocket too.  They’re just the right size for little hands and are perfect even for pin cushions for those with grown up sized hands.

The two I’ve been working on this weekend are a boy in green and blue (I can’t remember where I got this pattern from) and the love bear from Andrea Zuill.

These are so easy to make.  All you have to do is embroider your design of choice onto your fabric of choice – my favourite is brushed cotton for softness.  Put your embroidery and backing fabric wrong sides together and draw a line round the embroidery (about 1/2″ from the sewing).  Sew round the line (I use back-stitch) leaving an opening for turning and stuffing.  Turn and stuff quite tightly, and sew up the opening with whip stitch.  I use invisible thread for this but that’s my personal choice.

For the red bear (shown below) I upcycled a dress that had a rather fetching pocket for whatever trinkets little girls like to carry around.

These are so simple to make and a really nice way to display embroidery – go on have a go, you know you want to.

Pocket Pillows ~ Something Soft to Hug

These embroidered pillows are made of very soft cotton, backed with offcuts of upholstery fabric of unknown type.  They are perfect for little hands to clutch for comfort.  They could also be ornaments, displayed in a bowl or basket, or used as pin cushions.

Available in the shop

Scotty Dotee Doll

A while ago now onecrazywoman contacted me with the proposition to swap dotee dolls.  She is making me a dotee doll with a Texan theme and I am making her a dotee doll with a Scottish theme.  I’ve been making this doll on and off now for the past month and finally last night I finished.

This is Morag – she is a traditional highland Scot but a bit kooky at heart which is why she wears a traditional plaid outfit but it’s pink!  She her unruly hair – she never brushes it and the wild Scottish winds have whipped it into a bit of a bird’s nest!

She’ll be on her way to join onecrazywoman’s dotee collection in Texas next week.

~ You can also find onecrazywoman as lovetoquilt2 on SwapBot.

a flock of felt birds

I’ve been going through some of the things that we made for the last craft fayre and came across these gorgeous felt birds that Jolene made over the space of a few days when we realised that our stock on some fronts was limited and that some of that limited stock was being snapped up in advance of the fayre.

I’ll be uploading some of the other items that we made for the craft fayre over the next few weeks, in the meantime, I’ve uploaded these ones to the shop.

houndstooth scotty dog

What fabric would be more fitting for this delightful scotty dog than houndstooth felted wool?

I spied this pattern on the Allsorts blog about a year ago now and went scouring our local charity shops for the right fabric, which I found shortly after…actually getting around to making him took a good deal longer!

another felt bird and not so much papier mache!?

We’ve I’ve been a wee bit lax putting updates on the site recently, needless to say I’ve been busy busy busy, sadly though not necessarily with the arty stuff I’d like to be doing … and, to be honest, I’m not sure you want to hear about the neighbours ’soil pipe’ that I had to unblock so we’ll move swiftly along to the projects that are of an arty nature.

The papier mache sculptures I mentioned previously are progressing nicely although they’re clocking up a huge number of hours that I’d have never credited them with had it not become necessary to keep a time record in line with the pricing thing?!

Anyway, I currently have four projects underway, including three demonic character (small, medium, and large) and a ballerina … just for contrast!  I don’t really expect any of these to be finished in the immediate future and in light of that I’ve hijacked Jolene’s latest fabric bird to add a bit of colour to my post. 

Except it’s black and white!?

This and others available in the shop

A random act of kindness: “Veronica” goes international

Veronica is a plushie that Jolene made way back when she was just getting into crafting in a more substantial way, discarding patterns and trying things out for herself.  I’m pretty sure she was based on something Jolene saw on-line somewhere, although what or where is now long forgotten.

For a while I was uploading bits n’ pieces of Jolene’s work to my deviantart account and it was there that Veronica was spotted by fellow ‘deviant’ Bumba-Meu-boi, aka Marcela, who showed her admiration in the comments section.  It was admittedly a while before Jolene saw the comments, although once she had she took it in her stride and decided to offer Veronica free gratias as it were …

… it took a while to get  to the post-office although it turned out that it was cheaper (and quicker) to post the parcel to Brazil than it has been to post items to the USA!  I’d imagined it would have been the other way around?!

The picture above shows Veronica languishing on our window sill soaking up what little sun we get, you can even see the last vestiges of snow in the background.  Gladly Veronica arrived safely in Brazil and Marcela took a couple of pictures, below you can see Veronica lazying happily in the sun, yeah I know!  It’s alright for some!?!?

Anyway, I hope Veronica has a lovely life, not only in a different country, on a different continent, but also in a different hemisphere … where the weather is seems so much more appropriate for sun lounger like Veronica.  Now, we just need to find something else to fill the gap in the shelf!