allsorts

Man do I love me a good yarn!

Last week Vicky and I visited the Woolie Ewe, where we were delighted to find all their Cascade wool yarn on sale. Despite my limited yarn-wrangling skills, I couldn't resist indulging in this banquet of yummy jewel tone skeins. The colorway is clearly inspired by the gorgeous saturated colors used by Lucy of Attic 24. If you want to enjoy some major eye candy, drop by her blog and spend some quality time going through her posts. She even has me loving purple... now that for me is a seismic shift.

In fact, when I was selecting my colors, I opened her web page on my iPhone right there in the shop and we did our best to match this collection of colors from one of her projects. Yes, I know... shameless!

My original idea was to make a ripple blanket using her excellent tutorial, but after she showed off this scarf, I may hold out to see if she offers a pattern for it. But then she has an excellent technique for joining granny squares as-you-go, which tempts me to make another granny square blanket. At least I already know I can manage that skill-set.

I bought fifteen skeins and the gals at the shop patiently wound them into those squarish, squat little balls on their funny winding gadget thingie. But after bringing them home and looking at them a bit, I began to feel like they were lacking "soul" so I re-wound them into good old-fashioned squooshie yarn balls. Ah, I like them much better now. Maybe I won't even make them into something... that would at least guarantee a completed project!

Cheers,

Jenny

Making happy

Elizabeth of Creative Breathing has the most generous soul. She embroidered this fantastic apron with my pretty maids designs for her granddaughter, and lately she's been holding a "block party" ~ a fun swap of squares embellished with vintage paper goodies. I haven't had the chance to even start to make mine for her yet, but she sent me this bit of adorableness recently and I had to share.

She certainly has that making people happy thing down pretty well. Thanks again, Elizabeth!

Just finished up a couple of time-intensive publishing projects, so I hope to get myself into a more frequent blogging schedule now. Lots of ideas bubbling!

Cheers,

Jenny

Mini mushie from my little mochi

Myra of my little mochi created a great tutorial for making these adorable felt mushrooms. You can find it on the Etsy Storque page. 

I'm still in doll-making mode, but will probably be stitching up my own little shrooms very soon.

Polka dots... who could resist?

Cheers,

Jenny

My creative space - a peek into my drawers

Well, not my drawers, just one drawer, the shallow one in my fabric buffet (I have taken a shine to calling it that). Sorry about the blah photo, I'm not sure what the problem is, but I can't take a photo worth beans lately.  Well, you get the general idea.  The drawer is just deep enough for my art bin o' floss and a pink plastic divided thingie that once held my grandmother's costume jewelry and now holds sewing whatnots.

On top are some fq's that I picked up a couple of weeks ago at the Dallas quilt show, and Romsdol, an adorable folkster doll I snagged from the weewonderfuls etsy shop!  She's such a charmer!

So, that's my Creative Space peek for this week!  See more creative spaces here.

Cheers!

Jenny

Lula... the fashionable paper bunny

So, you have probably been wondered if I'd fallen off the planet. Nope, I've been playing with paper dolls!  I'm very pleased to introduce my first paper doll, Miss Lula Bunny.She was inspired by the dress-up activity on my web site, and has evolved from digital to a fabric design, to paper, to magnetic and back again to paper. I suppose you'd say I've been working on this one way or the other for years. So I am pretty excited to put this out there.

Miss Lula is four years old, four inches high, and has a very full schedule of social activities. She comes with four outfits that you can mix and match for a multitude of looks: party princess, play date, dance recital and swim time.

I used 60 lb. premium glossy photo paper, and archival inks, which gives a very colorful and vivid result. Also, I wanted to solve the issue paper dolls typically have with being floppy and not standing up properly. So I put on my engineering hat and designed a nifty card stock brace that allows her to stand up straight and not droop. Here is the complete set...

... which is now available in my etsy shop!  I really hope you like it, because I loved creating this and wouldn't mind designing a few more!

Cheers,

Jenny

Bounding Bunnypins - a Freebie for Friday!

Happy Friday! Wow, you guys outdid yourselves on the comments about my cleaned-up studio! I don't think I've ever had that many comments on one post before. Thanks!!! All those warm fuzzies made the effort seem a lot more worthwhile.

So here is a little something in return! I made up this little "bunnypin" and thought it would make a nice freebie pattern to share. It is really teensy, less than 3" across, but it looks very cute pinned to a sweater or a lapel.

They stitch up really quickly, so you could end up with a whole herd (flock?) of bunnies bounding across your Easter outfit. Or maybe tuck one into an Easter basket, very sweet.

Click here to download the Bounding Bunnypin pdf pattern*.

How to make your Bunnypin: (sorry about the wordiness, I'm not great at this part)

Out of felt, cut two of the bunny shape and one of the flower. With matching thread, whip stitch the edges of the bunny pieces together, starting where the front leg meets the head. Stitch around the front legs, then stop and push a tiny bit if polyfluff into each leg with a skewer. Then continue around the back legs and then stuff those and also the body. Then stitch around the ears, stuff those, and then finally around the nose, adding fluff before tying off where you started. Don't overstuff, just enough to be slightly poofy. Tie some thin ribbon around the bunny's neck, knotting at the back. Then using embroidery floss, bring your needle from the back of the bunny, coming up through the ribbon and the center of the flower, keeping a couple of inches of floss hanging out the back. Loop the floss around the needle and poke it back into the flower at the same spot, making a french knot. Draw the needle out the back, tie the ends of the floss together, pulling tight, and snip the excess. If you like, you can add a pin-back, but its really not necessary since you can just safety-pin it easily fom the back of whatever you are going to pin it to.

Enjoy making your bunnypins!

Cheers,

Jenny

*note - I am doing something a little different this time. Because I'm seeing more examples of people lifting and adapting copyrighted images, this is a password-protected file. So it can be opened and printed only with Adobe Reader or Acrobat, it cannot be opened with a graphics program like Photoshop. If you don't have Reader you can download it for free here.

My creative space

This is for Kirsty's My Creative Space Wednesday... at long last, some new photos of my studio! They are not great photos mind you, the light in here is very uncooperative in the afternoons. It blasts into the two westerly windows so I usually have to close the shutters by 3:00 or so. But, today the room is as clean and the most organized it has ever been, so I thought I should document it.

My favorite part is the Liatorp buffet from Ikea that stores my fabric and tons of other supplies, and quite stylishly. Before, I had ugly white shelving. Boy was I glad to see that go! Someday I hope to replace the Scandia pine shelving and desks, too. I can't even bring my self to show you a photo of that wall. Yuck.

Ugh, I didn't realize how bad these photos are until now.  I need a better lens for my camera, and maybe learning how to use it wouldn't hurt!

The three red frames hold fantastic papercut prints from Elsa Mora, and Ro brought me the lanterns from Singapore. Right now the floor has horrible old berber carpet on it, but that will change as soon as I figure out what I want to replace it with. The worktable is a huge old map desk. I covered the top with oilcloth and painted the base. I keep tons more stuff in Ikea boxes that fit perfectly underneath. I have three of those blue buckets that I use for trash and recycling. My felt is organized by color in the white stacking bins to the right of the worktable.

So that's it! My creative space!

Cheers,

Jenny

Look...

I've got a new muse... and she'll be arriving soon!

Cheers,

Jenny

More Christmas frivolity

Well, compared to most people I get an early start, but I'm slow to finish in the decorating department. The tree in the den is finally up and decorated after a false start: I set up a new pre-lit beauty I bought a couple of weeks ago, but after seeing it looming in the corner, had to ultimately accept that it was just too big for the room (thank heavens we hadn't gotten around to decorating it). We shifted it to the dining room (temporarily - I'll get back to that in a moment) and hauled this one back down from the attic. Bless its little heart, it is so old... it was my in-laws' when they lived in this house! But I love that it has a vintagey vibe going on... the needles are soft and papery, and go well with the humble homemade paper and felt decorations. Yes, we had to go through the usual three tries to get the lights strung evenly, but it warms my heart to see it bravely facing yet another Holiday at the Harrises. Can you tell how much I love this guy?

I think the little star dangles are my favorite part of the decorations. I posted a pdf of them as a freebie last year, but somehow forgot to add them to my sidebar with the other patterns and tutorials. Look down there to the left, or just click here to go to the original post. They're a fun addition to a family tree, providing built-in entertainment as people hunt for intentionally (or unintentionally) spelled out words dangling among the branches. I also love the pipe cleaner candy canes I made... would anyone be interested in a tutorial on those? I don't know if there are already a zillion of those out there, but I'd be happy to do one if there is a need.

Oh, back the the story of the other tree. The small (large) kink in Christmas decorating this year is that we are having new hardwood flooring installed in the living room on Tuesday! Are we insane or what? So once that's finished, the tree will slide into the living room and finally be decorated. In the meantime the dining room is still a mess and nothing can settle down until those long-awaited blankety-blank floors are down.

Oh, and I'm so incredibly thrilled with the response to the Pretty Maids and the Elfies patterns. I created a Loopsies flickr group for you to share your creations, either elfies or maids, or anything from other patterns that might come along in the future... Join here!

And you will love this... look at Elizabeth's "jenny b tree" ...

Cheers!

Jenny

Advent Countdown

We're back from our annual trek to Lake Charles, LA (or the Land of Lagniappe as Katy calls it) for the week-long feast of Thanksgiving with my dad's family. It was fabulous as always, and was over much too quickly. Oh well, on to the craziness that is December!

But wow, can you believe that Monday is December 1st? Already time to get out the ole Advent Calendar. And to remind everyone of the Flickr group Creative Advent Calendars. Its just been added to the left sidebar with the other groups. There have been some new and very creative ones added since I last checked.

These three are all from neu4bauer...

And this...

And this...

This is from scrappyfran...

These adorable slippers are from Carla Alexandra...

And this is from leelaglitzer...

So creative! Lots of ideas abound, there is something about the nature of the calendar that excites one's creative energy. I love the variety!

Please feel free to add yours as well if you like, we'd love to see it!

Cheers,

Jenny