Owlishly

2009 Here I come!

Happy New Year everyone, I hope it's been a good day for you all.  As I was going though my google reader this afternoon seeing everyone's resolutions and past projects it got me thinking about mine. 

I'm really not at all good about making and/or keeping resolutions, so as far as goals, all of mine are the same as they always are, hopefully 2009 helps me get closer to achieving them!

In terms of what I did in the past year though- geez, I hadn't realized that I was as productive as I was ;) Especially of late, I've felt pretty ho-hum about my ability to get things done, but it was fun creating a mosaic of some of last years projects, and hopefully this new year will be equally productive, if not more!

1. Lounging at the beach, 2. 1 inch buttons of my dolls, 3. Miss S back, 4. Malabrigo cowl WIP, 5. bear costume big girl, 6. Chester the turkey, 7. Birthday boy's felt crown, 8. Mom's Patons silk bamboo yarn scarf WIP, 9. Marcus the lion close up, 10. Little Red Gnome-y Hood Baby, 11. Nichole image 1, 12. Size 3 Thread Crochet Luke & Alexa, 13. finished flower blanket, 14. I'm not sure about the eyes, 15. Ladybug party garland, 16. Mr. S showing how shiny his cape is, 17. Georgie, 18. Little boy, 19. Octavio image 1, 20. Red hugging Blue Happy Maracas, 21. Crocheted infant cape using heavily modified Japanese pattern, 22. Felt flowers, 23. Redwork embroidery mexicana couple dancing, mom's gift, 24. Raquel image 1, 25. Dave the shamrock boy amigurumi, 26. Alexa the bee pattern!, 27. S's ripple sweater, 28. Paz image 1, 29. Big Head Baby in infant gown, 30. Lana the little lamb

Commissioned Mere the mermaid doll- a blond!

I finished her up yesterday, but left my camera at my grandparents, though when I went to upload the images today I decided I didn't like them, so she had another photoshoot today. 

I used malabrigo kettle dyed worsted in pollen for the hair this time. I like the variegation, it makes it look more accurate for hair.  She was also posed on my little boy's playmobil volcano :) It looks rocky right?

I finished up the green cowl and wore the heck out of it in Iowa, but still haven't finished the aqua one yet, it may end up being a birthday present for my sister in law instead of Christmas... her birthday's in January.

I know there's a huge blond population, but it still felt weird making her, my husband kept saying that it just didn't look like Mere :) I did start on a couple of other dolls when we were in Iowa, but haven't really been able to work on them too much- it's amazing how much time I don't have when my husband is on vacation!
I seriously thought I'd be so productive, and we still have another week with him home. Dang. I love him, but he needs to give me a break! 

By the way, I'm really loving the malabrigo, I wish I could use it exclusively for all the delicious squishy-ness of making things with it. Anyway, I've got to get going, I've already "neglected" my family enough today.

Chester the turkey boy- pattern now available!

Ta-da!

He's finished.

Finally.

Detail.

Gobble gobble :)

As usual, he's available over at Ravelry & Etsy :)

November pattern deal!

Finally!

So because November is my favorite month, as well as the month of my birthday, my Owlishly anniversary & my favorite holiday (yum Thanksgiving!) I've listed in my shop a pattern deal that will run though the end of the month.

3 patterns for $11

$11 you say, why $11? Well, November is the 11th month of the year :) and I'm corny.

The turkey in the image is the pattern that I'll spend the next couple of nights typing up so hopefully it'll be available by the end of the weekend.

Amazing.

Really, I know a gazillion people have already linked to Kathleen Dougherty's awesome fantastic Grosgrain blog where she sews fantastic children's clothes and then GIVES them away, but her latest is too amazing not to post about.

By doing so, I'm entering her contest to win this fabulous Marie-Thérèse gown.  Seriously, if you don't read her blog, you need to get over there and take a look, and probably stay for a while.  Through serendipitous clicking I found her blog and subscribed immediately.  I think it helps that my daughter is on the smaller size of the dresses/clothes that she's usually giving away.  I've never entered one of her contests before, though I've been seriously tempted, but this one blows everything out of the water. Really.  Even if you don't have little girls, her clothes are so sweet to look at, so please do just that. 

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In the bat boy news, I've got him all finished up except his wings, oh, and his second ear, and part of his tail.  But other than that, he is finished.  I'm seriously always behind on holidays, but I can only keep hoping that one day I'll be ahead of the curve.  Hopefully I have some sympathizers.

I do know how I want to do the wings, I've planned the pattern in my head when I'm supposed to be sleeping, so I haven't gotten up and actually tried it, but I'm pretty sure it's going to work.  Lately, I've found that planning patterns while I'm going to sleep is actually becoming an effective way for me to fall asleep; except it's sometimes not the best plan for remembering my actual plans :)

Marcus' pattern is a go!

All finished up now!

All 7 pages and 30 images :) Though the mane section sucked up 21 images of the 30 in the pattern. Available at all the usual places- Etsy & Ravelry.

Geez, I've just finished this one and already I'm being asked for a bat boy by my little boy; hopefully that one whips up quickly!  I've put his requests on the back burner while working on my daughter's, so now I get to immerse myself in insects and creepy crawlies. The joy.

Also, thanks Jen for the advice about the CF card software, I'm hoping to get to that tonight :)

Marcus the lion boy

Here's my latest request from a certain little boy-

He wanted a lion boy :)  I made him look like one of my childhood friends.  Marcus' dad had gone to high school with my mom & dad and they all got reacquainted planning their 10 year reunion.  After that our families were fairly inseparable for the next 10 years.  Marcus' parents went on a safari to Africa and came back with fantastic treasures and while making this little boy, I was reminded of them a lot.

As usual, I hope to get to the pattern soon, but geez, the way things go around here, I don't know when I actually will.

I've also been working on heads :) I find they're good to make when I'm undecided on what to do next, or trying to figure out in my own head what I want to do with a certain doll before actually trying it out. It was certainly a challenge balancing them long enough to snap their image!

Then this is a little owl that I couldn't resist from Etsy seller the buttercup! Super, super cute!

I used that big CF card for these and wasn't able to upload them on my computer, a cd came with the card but I can't even use that because it's one of those itsy bitsy cd's and it doesn't work with my laptop. So annoying.  I have to go get images printed/archived onto cd's before being able to upload the images from that CF.  Anyone with a lot more knowledge than me know how to fix that? Any help will be MUCH appreciated!

Unintentionally quiet & Naomi and Nichole

I don't know how I haven't posted in such a long time.  I think, because I've had a couple of things that I wanted to share but then didn't finish, and I was sort of waiting to finish them.  Make sense? I seldom do :)

I did finally get that little sister doll's pattern finished.

I'd not slept well one night and was pattern writing in my head what I wanted to do with her pattern and the Scott pattern.  I didn't have my pattern notepad in the bedroom with me, and as awake as I was I probably should've just gotten up to get it, but I was being lazy.  I'd grabbed a sheet of paper with a list on it, and did a shorthand version of my typical patterns for both of the dolls.  Not a good idea. Or, I guess it would've been if I hadn't changed it, and used a different color ink to mark the changes, and then probably written with my other hand since it was so messy ;) Another thing- probably not a good idea (again) to wait 3 months to try to type up the pattern and remember what the heck the changes you made were.

Lesson learned.  I don't think I'll be doing that again.

Meanwhile, I finished up the little bear girl too.  Or actually, I should say, this BIG bear girl's pattern.  For a while I'd been wanting to make one of my costume dolls bigger, but hadn't had much time or inclination when the little ones are so cute the way they are. 

I'd bought some Malabrigo kettle dyed yarn for something else in a yummy milk chocolatey brown color and thought that it'd be great for a doll.  And since I hadn't made a bear...and I wanted to make a bigger doll... Well, you get the idea!

This one is around 40% bigger than the other costumed dolls at a little over 9.5 inches tall.  For comparisons sake, I took this photograph of the Nichole & Naomi together so that you can see the difference.  I probably should add one of the regular costumed dolls in the mix too, that'd really show scale.

By the way, the dolls names are Nichole and Naomi.  The little girl is Nichole; my son and husband both thought I should name this one after me, since we'd named her big brother after my husband, but that seems sort of weird to me, so it's another family name.  Naomi, the bear, is named after my maternal grandma's sister.  My tia Naomi is one of 8 and has had *I think* 13 kids that made it to adulthood; she actually had 3 sets of twins, and some of her children died as infants, but I think 13 are still here with us. A lot, huh.

I'll probably be back later today with something else that I've been meaning to share.

By the way, both girls are available at Etsy, and at Ravelry- Naomi & Nichole . Thanks!

Ta-Da! Mere the Mermaid amigurumi pattern

She's finished at last!

I named her after a sweet mama friend- Mere, whose whole name is actually Meresani. She’s one of the kindest mamas that I know.   My two little ones love her,  and while my little boy was trying to come up with "M" names my little girl liked Mere's name (pronounced Mary) and I thought it was a good choice. It works out well too since Mere is the Old English word for sea, according to wikipedia at least.  Sometimes I don't research very well, and have spent far too much time fine tuning this doll anyway :)

Anyway, she was really fun to make, and I enjoyed trying to come up with my own version of a mermaid that wasn't like all the other super cute versions out there. I wanted to make her extra special by embroidering details like scales on her tail and giving her a little shell bra & sea star hair accessory. Additionally, I took pretty detailed photos of how I did the hair also since this was a bit of a departure from my regular hair.

Also, it helps that my little one LOVES her and wants to take her everywhere.  In fact, I had to put my foot down after she was sure that Mere wanted to take a bath since mermaids love the water.  Two year old little girls don't quite understand the logic that yarn mermaids and bathtubs don't necessarily go hand in hand.

So I'm happy to say that her pattern is up, both at my etsy shop and at my Ravelry store. 

At the beach

Yesterday we went to the La Brea Tarpits and then out to one of my favorite restaurants in Marina Del Rey at the Venice Pier.   I was still working on the mermaid doll, but since we were out there already, I thought I'd take a few pictures of her at the beach.

I embroidered here little shell bra and am now embroidering scales onto her tail.  I was kind of concerned that it might look funky, but now I'm thinking it adds a little extra to her, and the embroidery will be optional. 

Anyway, just a little update...