Wee Wonderfuls

Big Footed Bunnies

Please meet Rosalie and Pickles, a couple of big footed bunnies. They're up for sale -- sold! hooray! -- in the shop, a little late for Valentine's Day but nice and early for Easter. Easter is going to be big around here at Wee Wonderfuls this year, but more on that later.

It feels like it's been a little bit of the 'calm before the storm' around here. I've been laying low working on these big industrious projects - the craftroom overhaul, the site redesign, the pointy kitty pattern. I have one last big 'reveal' that I'm hoping to get out this week and then things should be back to normal. Which will be a relief! I love the big things but they're exhausting. And anyway it's the little things that count right? Well I've got a lot of little things to dish about :)

correct terminology

Thanks everyone for all the awesome comments on the new dollhouse design!! I'm so excited for Tim to sit down and read them all. He did such a wonderful job! And it doesn't hurt to give him as much encouragement possible since I have yet another web design project for him to start on straight away. Good thing there's a chocolate mousse cake (thanks Super T) in the fridge for further motivation. I was going to bake him some heart cookies but I got distracted by a different heart project.

I finally actually felted something! I feel very proud to be able to use the term correctly. I've fulled knit bags or thrifted wool sweaters and called it felting but this time I got out the needle felting kit I received 2 christmases ago and the wool roving Amy sent me forever ago and actually gave it a shot. I needle felted this...

and wet felted these...

(thanks Darci for modeling them. of course as soon as I get some empty shelf space in the craftroom I had to raid my parents house for more stuff to fill them up!)

So I'm not too impressed with either result. My needle felting looks just like regular old felt except not as nice. I wanted a big rounded happy heart instead of a flat deflated heart. So I tried the wet felting method of rolling felt beads and kinda mushed them into heart shape along the way. That didn't really work either, they're all bumpy on the back. oh well, I gave it a shot!

I've got 2 new bunnies going up for sale tomorrow and these were meant to adorn their outfits. I'm going with cute button flowers instead. I'll be sending out an email to the mailing list tomorrow when they go up. Easter is right around the corner and we're getting ready early!

new digs

Thanks to Tim I have a new beautiful web design for wee wonderfuls. I love it so much! I feel bad for my poor valentine. I really wore him out with this one. I felt like Mike Brady's demanding client who wanted her factory to look like a pink powder puff. He was a real trooper and pulled off the 'I want  my weblog to look like a dollhouse' request without a hitch! I'm so excited about all the color. The perfect backdrop for all the fun things I have to show these days.

and just in time for our newest housemate, thanks so much Alicia! she's just beautiful!

first one's free!

A free pattern for Pointy Kitty is now available to download! She's a sort of trial run for the pattern booklets we're working on. The PDF includes instructions and the pattern pieces. If you give her a shot I'd love to hear how it goes. Any feedback would be great!

her bum here.

**update - thanks Jess and Jennifer! Hopefully everything is in place now. Anybody who downloaded this early will want to get the updated version. Also we reduced the size of the file so it should be much less painful to download.

**yes, another update! - download again if you've been confused by the where is "C" controversy. thanks :)

knots

This title could go either way for me. This week my stomach has been in knots over all of my in-progress projects that I just can't seem to finish. I get very anxious when I can't cross things off my list. I'm not a very zen, in the moment type of gal...much to my and everyone around me's dismay.

but I'm going to go the other way with this title...

Tying knots is one of my in-progress projects. I'm very excited about this idea I had for a friend's baby quilt. I came up with the idea after flipping through a few books on one of my favorite artists, Grant Wood. Besides satisfying my new round tree fetish I was also excited about an idea to tie the quilt off instead of regular quilting. I had envisioned all sorts of different textures made up of knots and x's and dashes with different weights of floss and yarn and string and in different colors. Something that would evoke the same feeling as the different fields in this painting. I started working on a little test quilt last night and I'm less than impressed with how it's turning out. The texture I was envisioning was so much more dramatic. I need to hunt down some precedents for this type of quilt. I'm sure someone has realized this idea wonderfully somewhere. Maybe I'll hunt through Kim's quilting resources for some ideas. I'm really feeling baby quilts right now. Here's another one I'm working on. Must be the new felt wall. Or... have I mentioned my sister is having a baby?! We're all very excited around here! Soon we find out if it's a boy or girl. I've got stacks of fabric lined up for either outcome.

32 things actually

I'm it! Thanks Jen. 4 things...

four jobs I've had
hollering after a toddler get back in the bathroom with that toothbrush
shredding paper at a bank
clerk at video hell
waitress at the track

four movies I can watch over and over
anchorman
dazed and confused
singing in the rain
pride and prejudice

four places I have lived
madison wisconsin
chicago illinois
austin texas
oak park illinois

four tv shows I love to watch
sopranos
the office
pingu
instant star

four places I have been on holiday
new york
duluth minnesota
south of france
memphis

four of my favorite dishes
chilaquiles
massaman curry
tim's beef stew
pho tai

four websites I visit daily
flickr
go fug yourself
ebay
imdb

four places I'd rather be right now
sleeping under an umbrella on a hot beach
at a fancy hotel snoozing in one million count sheets
dozing off in a rocking chair at a lake house reading a novel
well you get the idea

four bloggers I'm tagging
I don't know who has been tagged already so to not embarass myself I'm skipping it

H is for Hillary

My new Jess Hutch bear. I made this one for myself. I love him.

What else is going on? I've just been trying to keep up, to catch up! My bloglines is running out of control. So many great ideas have been sparked and now I'm just scrambling for time to try them all out. Right now I'm trying to learn how to draw with a Wacom tablet in Illustrator. Not an easy task. Especially since I can't really draw at all. I need to figure this out though. There is so much I want to do. I'm working on drawing out the patterns for the booklets. I'm also trying to make something fun for my miniswap partner. Oh and trying to "help" Tim with the new site design. I need to put my H bear over here by the computer to be my cheerleader while I try to figure this stuff out.

Speaking of catching up, check out all the great stuff from the Whip Up gals. They're going to be keeping us very busy!

Another crafty blog development, a sad goodbye to one of my favorites, Little Birds. I'm really going to miss checking in on her beautiful site. At least we'll soon have her etsy shop! I hope to console myself with one of her little lambs.

brand new shiny craftroom

My craftroom overhaul was successfully completed earlier this week and I'm in seventh heaven. It's so easy now to see all my fabric at once. And all this empty space to lay things out. My big clear work table surface to draw/cut/work on. It's awesome! And so worth the near panic attacks I had last weekend when the room was completely dismantled into one huge pile of chaotic mess.

I took out a whole set of shelves and redistributed stuff all over the house, mostly to the basement. Here the essentials are left over. My favorite fabrics and books. And off to the side, why the shelves were banished, to make room for my new felt wall! Thanks to Amy's great how-to post I now have a magic wall to which fabric miraculously sticks. What a great way to work on a design. I'm working on a baby quilt for a friend and it is so cool to be able to lay the whole thing out first.

I needed a new button storage system since the printers drawer they lived in was stashed under the exiled shelves. Jelly jars is what I came up with. Tim is skeptical as to how easy they'll be to access but right now I'm just in love with how they look. We'll see how it fares after the romance is over.

A new shelf for the dollhouse waiting to be redecorated.

All the CD's were banned to the basement and I got a whole new set of shelves for little this's and that's.

ahhhhh.....