Wee Wonderfuls

a bib and some links

Did I mention I finished those bibs last week? Here's Miss Phoebe modeling hers and sampling some rice cereal. I love the laminated cotton! Almost as much as I love my new snap-putter-on'er device.

I have some links for you today...

Sew, Mama, Sew has compiled a list, "Handmade Holidays: 30 Days of Gifts to Sew!". Lots of great ideas here!

Sarah is *all over* Christmas this year. Check out how to make spun cotton snowmen, her free advent calendar download and cool fabric trees project and her wooden bead trivet!

If, when you're done with all that, you still feel like you have some crafting left in you, there's this awesome stuffed toy pattern book out... Softies. I am so so honored to have one of my patterns in there, a wee robot, along with so many people whose work I just adore. And sorry, I know I'm about 3 months late in mentioning this on the site.

One last thing, there's an interview with me over at plush you today. Thanks Kristen!

Ok, that does it for November! See you on the other side of the weekend with a bunch of photos of a (hopefully) super successful robot bash!

Oh, wait! I had a question too... does anyone remember reading about a site that has put up a bunch of old vintage kids records that you can listen to? I searched and searched for it last night to no avail. Thanks!

pester pester

daydreaming of being a robot myself

It feels like two weeks since I last posted, instead of the two days it's actually been. That posting everyday nonsense really gets into your head. So, things have not been going very smoothly around here lately, as some of you may have already noticed. We'd had the Christmasbot cards reprinted and up in the shop for about 10 minutes before Tim saw on screen what he thought he was seeing in real life but couldn't quite figure out, the inside had the ghost image of some other print job. Thanks overnightprints. So those were yanked. piffle. Then I had high ambitions for another PDF pattern that I posted about on Sunday and the day derailed so fast it was amazing. So that post got yanked and the flickr pic too. I never do that, but I couldn't even string together an explanation so... yank. It's been a lot of late nights and a lot of panicked last minute decisions around here but I feel like we're over the hump. The other thing sucking up time was a deadline that is now behind me (look for some cute hand sewing for fun fun in the spring issue of adorn magazine!) and many robot party decisions have been made and now hopefully the scales will tip back to manageable around here.

And just in case you think we're nothing but bah humbug grumpy over here...here's Tim up on the roof the day after Thanksgiving. I think the neighbors must be very excited the Griswolds moved into their neighborhood!

peppermint stitchettes in the shop!

Happy Cyber Monday folks. We're doing our part by adding a new holiday offering to the Wee Wonderfuls shop today. Peppermint Fairy Stitchettes (new and improved with wings!)...

Thank god for online shopping. I've done about half my holiday shopping and need to finish up tonight. All online. I'm going to have to add the UPS man to my Christmas list.  I wasn't a big fan of holiday shopping before I had 2 kids in tow and now I dread it so much that I'll pay just about anything in shipping to avoid the stores in December. Although I noticed last year that avoiding all those crowds also meant missing some of the Christmasness of the season, being out at night with the lights and the seeing all the decorations in the shops, etc. Maybe we'll hit some stores but without the to-buy list. Festive without the stress, perfect!

new flickr sets

This photo pretty much sums up what's on the agenda for the rest of the weekend. Plan a robot birthday party and get thinking about Christmas. I'm trying not to freak out that all I have accomplished is making a ginormous list and also trying not to think about the 1 gazillion stores I'm going to have to brave to collect everything we'll need. Tim says I keep flip flopping between totally overambitious ideas and completely lame buy-it-in-a-box party solutions. I still haven't figured out how to factor in this mysterious two-kid time suck with all my big crafty plans.

To get in the spirit I made 2 new flickr sets, holiday crafts and christmas.

and yes, I missed yesterday, so no more nablopomo for me!

happy thanksgiving

hope everyone had a great thanksgiving! I'm pooped but these two (Oscar and his cousin Maggie), with their endless energy, are getting ready for 4am doorbusters.

switcharoo

Today the craft room is switching over to guest room. Thank god I'm only housing guests and not hosting Thanksgiving, for many reasons, the main one being our fridge konked out. Gotta love the holidays. I'm off to the store for non-perishables and all I want to do is join Phoebe on the ginormous king sized guest bed and take a napper.

leave it to the boy

At every visit to the fabric store I find little surprises in my basket when I go to check out. Things I absent mindedly greenlighted with an uh-huh while trying to find the things I need. Today it was red buttons and silver pipe cleaners for an "ort project". Turns out they were perfect for making invitations to Oscar's robot themed 4th birthday part that I'm trying to pull out of my butt at the last minute.

The boy is having much more crafting luck than I am lately. I should have him finish out the month!

the peppermint fairy stitchette

the set will be in the shop next week.

Sunday

Well I think I'm going to be a much happier camper at 10pm tonight then last night. It's been a pretty productive day and I even had time to snap a few pics while finishing up this tester gnome. I've been getting lots of questions lately about how to embroider the face on an already stuffed head. You know, with no knot. Here's how I do it.

I insert the needle in the face a few inches from where I want to start embroidering and bring it up at the starting point leaving a tail at the entry point.

embroider embroider

then I send the last stitch a few inches away from the end and up through the face. I snip the ends at the surface, smush them down inside the face and rub the fabric to blend away the needle holes.

Hope that makes sense!

see you tomorrow :)

**updated to add: no, no knot my way and no, I haven't had any problems but yes, it's not as secure as knotted methods. read through the comments for other great tips including much more secure sounding methods, especially the neat bend the rules sewing way. gotta try that!