Just Married! And a Few Changes Around Here

Hi!

We're back from our fabulous wedding weekend in Las Vegas, and it's time to update my blogs and show off all of the crafty things that were part of the celebrations. I am most proud of the wedding gift I made for Lucas -- a scrapbook. And if you've read any of my more recent posts, you know I mean a digital scrapbook made with My Memories Suite software. I showed off a Christmas album I made and an album I made of our two dogs... but for the wedding gift album I took it one step further and had Polaroid, the company that makes My Memories Suite, do the professional printing and binding of the digital scrapbook pages and ship it to me as a physical scrapbook. The result was amazing! I was worried that the print quality or the book quality wouldn't be as good as I was hoping for, but it was just as good if not better than I was expecting, and I will definitely be turning future digital scrapbooks into real life book creations this way. Kudos to Polaroid! I did my best to take some photos of the actual book once it arrived (see right), but you just gotta see it in person to do the quality justice. You can see the full digital version in my scrapbook.com wedding gift album. If that link doesn't get you there, head over to my scrapbook.com profile and navigate to my gallery and then to the Wedding Gift Album.

Our favours were a lot of fun. We didn't do anything too terribly crafty, but we did order photo coaster sets and personalized shot glasses. The photo coasters came in sets of two, and we put a 2"x2" photo of us (seen here) in one of the coasters, and printed text with our names and the wedding date for the second coaster. They turned out really well. We put them in little pink paper bags and stamped the little bride and groom design that we used for our invites on the front of the bags. We used some cute brown and pink polka dotted ribbon to close up the bags, and I made little personalized tags to string up with the ribbon. The tags sported little pink poker chips with our name and the date on them plus the words "thank you" scrolled around the outside of the chip. While it wasn't much, seeing all of the finished favours together made us proud of our efforts.

There was one other little thing I made for Lucas to go along with his album: a little stuffed ball and chain! As a joke I sewed a little stuffed ball and added a keychain chain to it to finish it off. He really liked the gesture and we got a good laugh out of it. Now my crafty efforts are focused on building an actual wedding scrapbook album now, showcasing photos from our wonderful wedding weekend and all of the fun we had with friends and family. I'm also trying to figure out what I want to do for a summer job since I'm done teaching this school year, so stay tuned for that wedding scrapbook as I have time to devote to working on it. If you want to see all of our wedding photos, we've got them posted HERE. I can't wait to creatively collect those into a digital album! All of the photos really turned out well.

You may have noticed that my posting name has changed slightly, the actual name of the blog is a bit different, and that my profile isn't quite the same -- due to my name change I needed to change my email address that was linked to my blogger account. I managed to shift this blog over to my new gmail account, so the profile is still me, just on my new email. It's all mostly the same, though! I also decided to give the blog a bit of a face lift since I was starting "fresh" with my new profile, and now more than ever, this blog's subject matter spand across many various types of craftd instead of just knitting or sewing... especially with my latest obsession with digital scrapbooking. Hope you like the changes, and thanks for reading!

Happy Easter!

Just in time for Easter, I whipped up a new little design: meet my tiny knitted "gribbly bunny!" This little guy is made from satin-y acrylic yarn, which makes it really smooth and easy to work with. The pattern is one I developed myself, and I have plans to make various creatures based on the same design in the future. The series will be called "gribblies"

from urbandictionary.com:
Gribbly/Gribblies:
“In gaming, an enemy/monster that is small and/or insignificant, and usually serves no purpose other than to irritate the gamer/opponent.”

and

“In tabletop gaming, a small annoying monster that does little more than irritate.”

So these are just tiny little insignificant creatures hiding in nooks and crannies that will do little more than just irritate you if they cross your path. They like to pester and annoy whomever they come in contact with, and I like to believe that gribblies are to blame for all of those little irritating setbacks in your typical day. Having a bad day? Blame it on the gribblies! Stay tuned for more in the series down the road when I get time to create all of the ideas in my head for other little gribblies :) There just aren't enough hours in the day!

Huug the Hug Monster©

On my way to work the other morning I got an idea in my head for a new knitted plushie pattern I wanted to create. I wanted to name him Huug, and he would be the Hug Monster... so Huug the Hug Monster©! I made a few sketches and started guesstimating stitch counts and then went home and began testing. My final result turned out pretty much how I wanted it; the face is something I want to work more on. The original idea was that Huug has two small beady little eyes and two fairly big buck front teeth sticking out. I'm not so good with embroidery on knitting, so I hope that my future versions of Huug's face turn out a little better with some tweaking. Anyway, he was originally released here as a fairly popular free pattern, however due to a retail venture I've decided to remove it. Sorry :( Huug the character and his knit/crochet pattern was officially and legally copyrighted recently for said venture. I will share more Huugs I make in the future and more backstory about this wonderful creature in the future instead.

Huug the Hug Monster© can / will come in many different colours -- I just used orange because this Huug is for my fiance, Lucas. I envision Huugs of every colour of the rainbow and even made from fuzzy and furry yarns to make hairier cousins.

Quacking Up Over Knitting

I finally put the finishing touches on the knitted plush duck I attempted a few days ago. It's based on the pattern by Lion Brand with a few Toque-ish adjustments. The basic idea is that you knit a square -- I believe the pattern calls for garter stitch -- and then you fold it in half to form a triangle and sew up one side. You then have a cone that you need to stuff with polyfill, sew closed, and add your ducky details. The beak, feet, and eyes are all cut from felt just like in the pattern, (I wish I were savvy enough to have been able to knit them all together as part of the pattern instead), and sewn on. I was really unhappy when I was finished at first; I enlarged the pattern to begin with, didn't use fun fur like the pattern called for, decided to use a stockinette stitch instead, and somehow it just didn't look as "cute" and "duck shaped" as the Lion Brand pattern when I was done. Lucas suggested adding a few stitches to form more of a line/definition between the head and neck, and I did. I also decided to embellish on that by adding a ribbon. See what you think! I've decided to keep this one as a tester and perhaps use some more "fuzzy" yellow yarn that I found in my assorted box in the basement next time. I'd love to make one for Somer for Christmas. Oliver thought it was pretty fantastic, but he's a little biased. I think he thought that the duck was for him, lol.

Yesterday I posted my back-and-forth thoughts on whether or not to use circular needles to knit the blanket I was wanting to make for Lucas' mom for Christmas. I decided to take the plunge, risky I know, but it's going really well! I will admit I probably should've chosen a smaller project to serve as my intro into using circular needles, but it was only awkward for the first row. I'm only on the 6th row, but already by the 2nd row I was feeling more comfortable with the setup. I'm really looking forward to this blanket now! I can already see how much better the finished product will be. I'm not doing anything fancy; I nabbed a pair of size 10, 36 inch Takumi bamboo needles for the project and some jumbo skeins of yarn that fades between various shades of blues, which is Lucas' mom's favourite colour. On the needles I casted on 130 stitches and plan to go back and forth between knitting a row and purling a row, or stockinette stitch, because I like the way it looks when it's done. And that's it. I'm really excited about the final product already, and I've got loads of work yet to go. I'll keep you updated ;)

Zombielicious Halloween Bash

My friend Tom is MC'ing an event here in Calgary this weekend called GoreGames. It's basically a big Halloween bash with some interesting games like a "bloody t-shirt contest" and whatnot. Not really my thing at all, but Tom is being an angel and promoting my online craft shop by giving away some items I've made and donated to the event. He'll be giving away prizes to the various guys and ghouls for winning the different party games, and he's got 4-5 things just from me to give out! Over the weekend I made 2 hand painted zombie plushies and 2 plush "dead bunnies" with hand sewn skeletal faces as part of my donation to "the cause." The zombies will have my online shop website etched into their backs and the bunnies will come with tags, and Tom will have a whole slew of business cards as well. It's exciting being promoted to a large group at such a big event here in town, and I can't thank Tom enough for the exposure.

In related news, the official Calgary Zombie Walk was cancelled and rescheduled for in the spring, but many ghouls took to the streets this past weekend for fun anyway. In a way I'm kinda glad that they'll be doing it officially in the spring... perhaps that will give me enough time to fashion up a big load of mini hand painted zombies to sell cheap at the Walk... once again helping to promote the site and my art. Fun!

My list of crafty stuff seems to be dwindling down a bit... I'm still working on a knitted blanket for Lucas' mom for Christmas, even though it's been a week or so since I last did a square. I'm starting to wonder if maybe I should think small and do a pillow or pillow case instead. I should probably make my list of Christmas gifts so I can see how much crafting time I'll need to get everything done. We'll see how it goes!

Wedding Projects Completed!

In my last post I had quite a to do list, and some of those items were time sensitive and revolved around my little brother's wedding coming up this weekend. I am happy to share the fruits of my labour -- a plush 4 tiered wedding cake made to be a near exact replica of what my brother and Holly's actual wedding cake will look like on Saturday. I also finished the small handbags/wristlets that I was making for each of the bridesmaids from the alteration scraps of my bridesmaid dress. They turned out a little smaller than I would've liked, but they were as big as I could possibly make them based on the scraps that I had to deal with.

My mom is making Herman and Holly's wedding cake, so I tried to make my replica look as close to what she is designing from cake and icing as I could. The cake is 4 tiers tall and made completely from white felt and every detail is hand sewed. It features frilly white scalloped trim on each tier and I used white fabric paint to embellish the sides with the "lacy" design, much like my mom has done with icing for the real cake.

All total this cake stands just over a foot tall with the flowers on top. I used a mixture of various purple felt (with green felt leaves) to make the flowers as well as fabric from the actual bridesmaid dresses (scraps) to decorate the top. I think I am mostly excited about the fact that Herm and Holly don't know that I am doing this, so it will be a surprise for them when Lucas and I arrive with it on Thursday evening. I hope that it will be a wonderful display piece at their reception and the best part is that it is a cake will last and can be kept long after everyone has eaten the real thing :)

I haven't totally finished my crafting project list -- now that the time sensitive stuff is out of the way in time for our trip to Indiana this weekend, I can focus on the zombie and monster plushies that I am making for our friend, Tom, to use as prizes at an event he is hosting at the end of October, and I can spend some time working on more squares for Lucas' mom's knitted blanket project for Christmas. I'm hoping to be able to get some more squares done on the flights to and from Indiana. Happy Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend, congratulations to my brother and his soon-to-be-wife, congratulations to our friends Joe and Jeri, who are also getting married this weekend, and happy birthday to our handsome dog, Oliver, who turns 5 years old this weekend while we're gone. What a busy weekend! :)

Anyone Need to Staple Something?

So per usual, I got busy and forgot to post my crafty endeavors. Recently I designed and brought to life a plush stapler that I envisioned in my head to give as a gift to my friend, Michelle. I worked with Michelle and a handful of other great people in an office building for a few months, and Michelle and I are big The Office fans. We kept joking that we were going to put each others' staplers into a Jell-O mold like one of the pranks on the show, and so as a parting gift I wanted to give Michelle something to remember me by when I left the office job to get back into teaching. I actually designed the pattern on scrap paper at work during some server downtime one day, haha. Armed with felt and my sewing supplies, I made use of my time as a passenger in the car when Lucas, Oliver, and I took a little mini family vacation to British Columbia over the Labour Day long weekend to finish it. Michelle loved her gift!

My new crafty to do list has a few time sensitive items on it -- my brother's wedding is coming up October 6 and I am making a plush wedding cake and 3 small bags for us bridesmaids for it. Also getting married on October 6 are our friends Jeri and Joe, and I'd like to make them a plush wedding cake, too. If Jeri gets the scraps from her wedding dress back in time, I'll be making a small bag for her, also.

Another time sensitive project is to make some plush zombies for the Calgary Zombie Walk 2007 coming up in October as well as a little event where a plush zombie or two will be donated as prizes at the end of October. And then... Christmas is coming up, and I of course am going to be making quite a few things. I've decided that since Lucas' mom taught me how to knit back in June when she was here visiting us that I am going to knit her a throw blanket for Christmas.. and that project is turning out to be bigger than I realized. I plan to blog more about that project specifically as I finish various knitted squares. More to come on that!

Whew! I'm a busy girl... stay tuned for more crafty goodness and to see if I can complete my project to do list in time for all of my deadlines!

Wolf Hat and Tooth Pillow Pocket

So what's new? This weekend I finished two projects for friends, a Wolf Ear Hat and a little tooth pillow with a pocket.

A good friend, Nanaki (Shane), requested a wolf ear hat, and so I immediately remembered a tutorial I'd seen on Craftster here. I then set to work on making a wolf ear hat, and this is my finished result! It's made from soft fuzzy polar fleece in a mottled gray and white pattern and soft pink inner ears that are hand sewn in. I hope he likes it! (Model in this photo is Lucas, he was so kind to help me by modeling the finished hat so I could photograph it before I sent it off.)

A friend and coworker has a daughter that is just itching to lose her first tooth; it should be happening anytime now! To help prepare, I designed this little tooth shaped pillow that has a front pocket built in that looks like a mouth, so she can safely keep her first (and future) loose teeth protected for the Tooth Fairy's visit. I can't wait to give this to her :)

That's about it for now, I've got some upcoming sewing projects to do, but I just received my official Alberta Professional Teaching Certification, so I'm busy in my spare time getting my teaching portfolio dusted off and ready to go for interviews so I can teach next school year. It's all so exciting!

Future plans in the sewing realm include a toque section on my store website to sell handmade fleece hats (toques) this season, and a couple of Canadian-related specialty items that I've got rolling around in my head. Until next time...

RAWR! Plush Rancor

So this is what I've been working on for the past week or so, a plush version of the monstrous rancor creatures from the Star Wars universe. I'm really proud with how he turned out! I had the idea and started sketching pattern pieces on lined notebook paper, and in the end, the finished product looked just how I wanted it to. It's a great feeling making something and doing it right the first time :)

The rancor is made from felt and stands nearly a foot tall at just over 11 inches. He's about 10 inches wide, and though he may look mean and grumbly, he really is sweet and cuddly :) So what am I doing with him? Well I'm auctioning him off for fun and in-game charity in the Star Wars MMORPG that I play, Star Wars Galaxies. I hope he sells well!

This weekend I have a few PinkToque shop orders to fill and overall life is really grand! I've not has as much time to craft lately now that I'm working (finally!) full time, but I'll do my best to keep updating and working on projects here and there :) Thanks for looking!

Ellie the Sock Elephant

Meet Ellie, a sock elephant!

Lisa of Q.D. Patooties made the tutorial and I just picked out great kiddie socks and followed it. Lucas' mom loves the color blue and collects elephants, so when I found these socks I knew it was just meant to be.

It's May long weekend in celebration of Victoria Day on Monday here in Canada, so I'm enjoying a relaxing weekend before I head out to Indiana next week. I leave early Thursday morning, so I've got a couple days to finish a few projects up before then. This weekend I made Ellie, a little dog bed/pillow to give to my brother and his fiancee for their two new Dachshund puppies, and I made a new bag for one of Lucas' co-workers based on an old bag that she had. I'm trying to think ahead, and Father's Day is the next big thing coming up that I need to craft for... we get back from Indiana on June 7, and Father's Day is a little over a week after that, so I need to plan now to ensure whatever I make will get to my dad on time due to shipping. I was thinking about trying to learn how to make felt or fleece slippers, so maybe that's what I'll do!

See you in a few weeks!

It's Been Too Long! What's New...

Wow! It's been so long since I've last posted, I'm way behind on sharing! There's so much new to share so I better get started. First of all, my online store opened on Friday of last week, and I've already got 5 orders I'm in the process of filling. The web address is http://shop.pinktoque.com :)

Most recently I've worked on Lucas' mom's Mother's Day gift. I made my mom a purse and already shipped it, but we worked on Lucas' mom's gift this weekend and I shipped it today. She likes Scrabble, so I came up with an idea to make a plush Scrabble board turned into a pillow.
The back is made from soft fuzzy "monster fur" to make it more snuggly. Isn't it great?

Back to my obsession with plush food... Last week I crafted some homemade plush sushi and fortune cookies. The fortune cookies can come with various personalized messages. I'm selling them now at my online shop.


And speaking of plush food, my plush cake and donuts are officially on display at the Cafe Kino exhibit in the UK this week. The exhibit of fake food runs until the first week of June. My cake already sold, so that's great! I get 100% of the profit from selling my items, so the cake alone will more than cover the shipping fees I spent to send the items out there. Yay for already being ahead on the first week of the exhibit!

Meet Bernard Moo! He's a cow that I designed and made from baby soft fleece. Isn't he sweet? He has a counterpart named Betsy that is designed in my head, but I just haven't gotten around to making her yet.


I also made a new moose plushie and named her Matilda :)


Here are a couple of the new purses and pouches that I've made. The purses are all "Banffs" and the pouches are called "Canmores". Pictured are Canmore Wristlets and Canmore Coin Pockets (slightly smaller than the wristlets.)


Whew! I think that's it crafting-wise! My application for Permanent Residence here in Canada was approved last week, and my appointment to pick up my Permanent Residency Card is set for May 17th. YAY ME! I'll be all official and able to finally work again this month :) It's been nearly a year since I've seen my family, so I booked flights today to make a trip back to Indiana to see family and friends on May 24th. I'll be staying a full 2 weeks. Since it's a black-out deadline period for Lucas at work, he'll fly out separately and meet me down in Indiana on May 31st and spend the second whole week with me. We'll fly back together on June 7, just in time to celebrate my one-year-in-Canada anniversary :) What an exciting month it's been so far!

Oodles of Bunnies

Well, it's officially Spring and Easter isn't too far off... so I've been busy with an Easter project that involves bunnies, and then bunnies also became the theme of a set of gifts we sent off to various couples that we know who are expecting this year.

First, the "baby" bunnies


These little guys are 10 inches tall and made from mint green fleece. They have peachy fleece cheeks and felt eyes, all handsewn on. We know 4 couples that are due this year, including 2 from our families (Lucas' brother, my cousin) and so we wanted to send something cute and cuddly to congratulate them and wish them luck. Don't worry, I added a note to the tag to remind the expecting parents to remove the ribbon before giving to a little one. (because someone always asks.)

So there are the first 4 of a total of 12 bunnies I've made in the past week. Next up, the Easter bunnies! These will be gifts to our family members - my family in Indiana, and Lucas' family in BC. At the time of this writing I've got 4 of 8 completely finished and the last 4 are halfway done and just in need of some facial features and accessories.

Made from the same template, these are also about 10 inches tall and made from fleece with the same fleece and felt features. The biggest difference here isn't the color of the bunnies, but the fact that they come bearing gifts! In the left hand of each bunny you can see that it's holding a string, and hanging from the string is a tiny plastic Easter egg. Each egg has little hinges that allow you to open it and stick lots of goodies inside. An Easter gift that carries additional gifts... how genius! The real genius with this idea was Lucas, who saw the plastic eggs in a large variety pack at Michael's this weekend. I was originally just going to make 2D eggs from felt to have each bunny hold in their hand, but he saw these eggs and noticed that each had a pinhole in the top so I could easily string them up and sew the string to the bunnies' hands instead. I think they turned out much better this way!

So what kinds of goodies do I plan to put inside? I originally decided to make a set of spring magnets to put in the eggs using the glass pendant technique I described in an earlier blog. Lucas (always the genius and such a supporter of my crafts) suggested putting each of our faces on one and our dog's face on one to make a complete set of 3 magnets. The small pictures of us aren't showing up very well using the glass pendant idea, so I pulled out the bottlecaps I'd saved from our last poker night and started painting them. The idea is that I'll put a photo of each of us inside the painted bottlecaps, gloss and seal them, and then glue the magnet on the back. They're a work in progress, though. So far I have only painted the bottlecaps. Eventually each bunny will be bearing gifts of magnet sets ;)

Whew! I think once I'm done with all of this and have shipped off the last bunny I won't be making anything that has to do with bunnies for a very long time.

Simon the Claustrophobic Turtle

Meet Simon the Claustrophobic Turtle. You might think that the idea of a claustrophobic turtle is funny, but to Simon it's definitely no laughing matter! Because of his affliction, he wears his shell like a backpack instead of retreating inside of it when there's danger. So how does Simon protect himself if he never goes inside his shell? Why, he takes his shell off his back and uses it like a shield, of course!

Watch out for that angry murloc, Simon!!

Simon is made from felt and stands 6.5 inches tall and is 4.5 inches wide. He is a special present for my little (21 year old) brother, who actually has a live pet turtle named Simon, the inspiration for this project and its name. More pics from different angles here.

Plush House Ornament with Tutorial

Some good friends of ours just got engaged AND they bought a house and move in on April 1st. They have a thing for Christmas tree ornaments, so I decided to make them a little congratulations gift for their engagement and their new house by making them a little plush house... ornament :)

I had the idea the other night when I went to bed, and layed awake making a list in my head and designing the house and how I would make it and put it together in my head. (my brain never sleeps it seems.) The next morning I started working on it. I don't have a pattern to share since it's just a bunch of squares/rectangles with a couple triangles, but I did take a lot of pictures along the way to give you an idea of what I did so I could present a half-tutorial for anyone that might want to make one for themselves :)

Plush House Tutorial

First I cut out the pieces - no bottoms or tops for the square that made up the shape of the house nor the rectangle that made up the garage:
Every little item like the bushes, fireplace, window and door was cut by hand from felt and carefully handsewed on. No machine on this one! It's way too small and intricate for my personal sewing machine abilities, anyway. I'm digging the handmade look that the showing stitches give it, though.

I formed the roofs and then started putting the walls together:

Once I had made the walls and sewn the roofs to the walls, it finally started to look like a house. But as you can see in this pic, it wasn't holding its nice square angles very well, so I made a miniature cardboard version of the house to insert inside. It's important to note that even though the cardboard model looks like the house and garage are connected, they're not, and I inserted them separately.

Once the sturdy cardboard inserts were in, I stuffed it with polyfil and then traced on a piece of cardboard the shape of the full bottom. (instead of a separate bottom for both the house and garage.) Theoretically this shape would just be one of the squares that made up the house and the longer rectangular side. I also cut a felt piece of the same shape to form the final bottom:

I sandwiched the cardboard between the bottom of the freshly-stuffed house and the white bottom felt piece and sewed up around the entire bottom edge:

Voila! I forgot to mention that just before I inserted the cardboard supports in the house that I used embroidery floss to make the hanging loop, and knotted it well inside so it'd not come out. I chose a spot in the roof that was somewhat centered as far as the entire final piece goes so it'd hang as evenly as possible.

And that's it! This is a really basic house - if you use your imagination you could make many more squares and rectangles and make your house much bigger and more complex. It's all up to you! I hope that our friends like it! :) The cardboard inserts and polyfil really makes it sturdy and hold its shape well. I'm really happy with it!

Maple the Miniature Moose

Maple is a legend (to me) and she doesn't even know it.

Much to the dismay of my close-knit family, I moved 1800 miles away from my hometown in Indiana to Calgary, AB Canada back in June of 2006. No regrets... it was one of the greatest decisions I've ever made, and I am now living happily ever after here and am really happy :)

I planned to make a trip back to Indiana to visit my family at Christmas, but by the time October came around, I realized that the Canadian Immigration process takes much longer than I had anticipated, and I had to accept that I'd not be able to make the trip as planned. Instead, I decided I'd handmake something soft and huggable to send home to my family members in my place for Christmas.

I've always been crafty, but I'd not done much with plushies, let alone made a pattern for what's in my head. Back in 1995 I created a group of storybook characters for a children's book project that I wrote and illustrated. It wasn't until 1998 that I finally got the series of characters copyrighted, and by that time I had written several children's books that I'd also illustrated using these little characters. (I never pursued getting the books published - that college thing and starting my teaching career was a bit more important.) Anyway, my family was well acquainted with the whole gang because I used the characters on the front of all the handmade cards I'd made for various occasions. They were "famous" to my family and friends.

So here I was, back in October, trying to come up with what I'd make for my family for Christmas that could be hugged in my place since I couldn't make the trip personally. I wanted something that was somewhat representative of Canada since that's where I was, and it hit me... Montgomery Moose! One of the characters from my little series seemed perfect. The problem was capturing the original drawing of Montgomery in a plushie pattern... something I had no experience with. I knew how Montgomery needed to look when finished, but creating a pattern that preserved that look was harder than it seemed. I tried, but it didn't seem to be quite right. I was talking to a new friend here in Calgary who told me to check this great crafting forum, Craftster, and see if I could find a pattern or someone else who had made a moose plushie before to give me a hand or help critique the pattern I'd tried to make. And the rest is history. Here is my original post (one of my first!) looking for a moose pattern. In the end, I scrapped the pattern I'd made and modified a plushie pattern from a japanese crafting book that sewingstars had posted in another thread, and I was happy with how the new Montgomery turned out. I then crafted 4 that got sent to my family back in Indiana for Christmas. They were a hit!

So where does Maple come in? Well, today I was cleaning out my craft pattern drawer and trying to organize. I found the original sketches of Montgomery Moose from back in October - my first attempt at a pattern - and I decided to finish that original moose that never came to be. I also decided to name it Maple instead, since I'd made a little maple leaf cut-out to put on her tummy... it seemed more fitting. Now that she's done, and not to mention now that I've had several months' worth of experience in making plushies and even drafting my own patterns now (thanks to the great people of Craftster and their support!), I can see where I'd make changes now in order to get her to look just right. I know what I'd do differently "next time", and if there is a next time with this pattern, I know I'd make it better. But for now, the one-and-only original Maple will sit here next to me at the computer so that I never forget where I've been and where I'm going... in life and on many other different levels, too.

Maple is made of felt, and for this project I completely sewed her by hand because it only seemed natural... when I designed Maple's pattern, I didn't have my sewing machine yet, so I would've sewn her by hand anyway. The one arm and leg that I'd already started on before scrapping the project was handsewn, so I made sure the rest was done just the same.

What else did I do this weekend craft-wise? Well I made a decorative gift bag to package up my Stuffiepup for craftymumto2 so I can send it to her this week. It's denim on the outside and lined with cute spring Scooby-Doo fabric that has Scooby-Doo wearing a raincoat and playing in puddles with a little yellow duck. I love it! And I hope she does, too :)