allsorts

Home (really) Sweet Home

How to indulge your sweet tooth without all those pesky cavities? Hop on over to my latest activity and decorate a gingerbread house! Its a lot less messy than making the real thing, and almost as tasty. Easy peasy clean-up, too... just hit refresh to reset the candies and start over!

Hope you like it, I drew it up and wrote the code last Sunday, before Katy arrived and the craziness of Thanksgiving set in. So how was your Turkey Day? Mine was fantastic! We drove down to Lake Charles and feasted with my dad's side of the family. Wonderful food and truly excellent company, there was so much to be thankful for.

Anyhoo, back to work now (me that is). Have fun decorating! Oh, I added a linky button to my sidebar or you can click here to play with the candy cottage. And I warn you, I probably will add more candies to the page at some point... its almost irresistible!

Cheers,

Jenny

No mo NaBloPoMo

What was I thinking? 

That should be a new category on this blog. I have officially posted every day for the last sixteen days, counting today. But with company and Thanksgiving about to arrive, the chances that I'll be able to keep it up are slim to zero. That alone would prompt me to quit my daily posting commitment. But there is more to it. Every new post shifts the others lower, and soon they disappear into the mists of the archives. I would rather not increase the number of posts that stay on the front page, because it makes it load soooo sloooooowly. I'd much rather have a post stay up there for awhile longer, so readers who stop by less frequently get a chance to see it.

So, in an effort to get things a bit more organized, I added links to each of my patterns, tutorials and downloads to my right sidebar. I was pleasantly surprised there were ten of them! That should make them much easier to find. Also, I added a ton of blogs to my bloglinks, I was way behind on doing that!

So this is toodle-loo until the other side of Thanksgiving. I hope you have a safe, wonderful and gracious holiday! And then it'll be the mad countdown to Christmas!!!

Cheers,

Jenny

Somewhere an elf is looking for his shoe

If you see an elf who is looking for his shoe, tell him I needed it for a photo shoot.

Last night I broke down and made my own bitsy elf clog. You knew I couldn't resist playing, didn't you? To speed things along, I reduced the pattern by about sixty percent, and I think it probably works better this size.

It is a beautiful day today, so I snapped these out in the courtyard. I had three lovely candy canes for props, but unwrapping them yielded only this...

So I pulled out these child sized clogs...

So you could see how bitsy the elf clog really is.

I should make another one now I suppose. Or that elf is going to be really cranky.

Cheers,

Jenny

Ears to your elf!

Another elf clog pic, these are by my pal Vicki of Turkey Feathers. Her stitching skills always blow me away!

As promised, I created an Elf Clog group on flickr, so you can share photos of your creations, too. I'll add a button to my sidebar linking to it as soon as there are some images in the gallery. The hilarious thing about this is that in truth, I haven't actually made any of these little shoes, I just designed the pattern and tested it by making paper models. But based on Vicki's and others' creations, it looks like it works okay. They seem to lend themselves to creative embellishment. Hopefully things will ease up here soon and I can try my hand at making some.

Here's the pattern again. Click image for larger version.

By the way, these are not "sized" for people to wear (being for elves, you know) so if you want to use them for people feet, you'll have to make your best guess as to how to adjust the pattern. Also, no seam allowance is included.

So lets see what you come up with! Or, if you've already made some, add them to the group!

Cheers,

Jenny

Drive by elf

Hi gang, I am bound and determined to keep up with blogging every day this month, even if it puts me in traction. Today I did eighteen finished illustrations for a huge new project. My poor little hands are like limp noodles, and my brain is pretty much down for the count, too.

So I'll just let the pics do the talking... elf clogs on flickr! By tootieu...

By Miss Meshell...

And by string theory:

If you want to make your own pair of elf clogs, you can find the pattern here. I should start a flickr group for the elf cloggers to post their creations. I'll do that as soon as I can come up for air.

Cheers, I am so off to bed.

Jenny

Red and white and cute all over

Aren't these the cutest matryoshka you've ever seen? Spotted today on White Country, they are from this talented crafter. I have no words to describe how much I love these ladies.

And to further cement in your minds that all I do is look at Scandinavian web sites all day, here are some more coveted creations, these from Fjorn in my favorite Christmas colors of red and white. Advent doodad dangles...

A sweetly decorated little tree...

And my personal favorite, these pixies, whose smock pockets appear to be another clever Advent countdown.

Speaking of pixies, have you seen Hillary's adorable gnomes? She's got a pattern available for download!

Cheers,

Jenny

Holly's List

Exciting news! Holly of Lakehouse Dry Goods has an article in an upcoming issue of McCall's Quilting magazine, in which she lists some of her favorite quilting blogs. And I am very pleased to be included! It's a great group of bloggers to be a part of, go check out the list and links over on Hollyblog.

Holly generously created this fun logo for each of us to feature on our blogs. I love the heart shaped button, very cute. I am not the sharpest crayon in the box, it took me a while to figure out that H2 stands for Holly Holderman!

Even though the article is in the February issue, Holly says it may actually be available already. If anyone spots one amongst the holiday mags, let me know!

Cheers,

Jenny

ps - I guess this means I'd better post some more stuff about quilting on here!

Wallpaper for walls, not your computer

Searching google images for illustration reference, I just now found a really cute blog totally by accident: London Mummy. She led me to the Sandberg web site where I've been ogling their wallpaper and fabric designs. I wish I could find this sort of thing in my neck of the woods. I'm off to a family birthday gathering in a sec so I only have time to post some quick eye candy pics. Enjoy!

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Cheers,

Jenny

Scotty Softies need love, too

A few sweet scotty friends from the Flickr group. Most seem to be named Scotty... how interesting.

1. Red Scotty, 2. Scotty, 3. Blue scottie for Mrs McD, 4. McDuff, 5. Scotty 1, 6. Scottie Stuffie, 7. Primeirinho ;D, 8. 2 Brown Scotties, 9. Tucker

I've been making a valiant effort to add buttons to my sidebar so you can find the various freebie patterns and tutorials I've posted. Due to lack of sleep my brain isn't cooperating much. I was so adamant that I have a background pattern but now I have to edit the html code myself if I want to make changes, and at the moment it all looks like greek to me. I blame daylight savings. I forgot to turn my watch back so when I looked at it this morning I thought it was 6 am and the alarm hadn't gone off, so I woke Ro up. Turned out it was actually 5 am, but by the time we realized it it seemed silly to go back to bed. Can you tell I'm not processing? This must be the most odd, rambling paragraph ever.

Anyhoo, I've put up links to the Flickr Scotty Softie gallery and the Vintage Childrens Books group. There are so many adorable scotties, and I'm sure there must be more of them out there. I hope you'll share some pics with us! If you haven't tried making one yet, you can find the pattern here.

Cheers,

Jenny

ps - my apologies if you saw the unfinished unedited version of this post. I meant to save it as a draft while Ro worked out some kinks with our modem, and I inadvertently published it. Oops. Told you I was loopy.

Snowy day

Well, before the pixels had dried on yesterday's post, Ro emailed pics to remind me that we did indeed have some snow in 2004. Valentines Day if both our memories serve. Not a lot ended up on the ground as you can see in this pic of our gate, most of it clung magically to every leaf and tiny branch.

I'm happy to be reminded, it was one of those weird and wonderful days. We woke early, shivering as the snow had knocked the power out for our neighborhood. While it was still dark, we pulled the two big comfy chairs from the living room into the dining room, moving the table aside to pull up close to the fireplace. We layered on wool blankets, and Ro read the newspaper to me by firelight. Eventually we heard that the power was working in other parts of the city, so we hopped into the car and found our favorite breakfast spot was open! We watched the snow continue to fall as we ate. Afterwards we drove around the neighborhood, enraptured by how different everything looked when covered in delicate lacings of white. We stopped to take this picture on a street near us.

So, I stand corrected, though technically it wasn't a really decent snowfall since there wasn't much snow actually on the ground. But it certainly was lovely... and memorable.

Thanks, Ro.

Cheers,

Jenny