Owlishly

Birthday sale 2010

Hi everyone, I'm popping on quick to let you know that today, and today only, I'm having a birthday sale on all my patterns, both at Etsy and Ravelry. Everything is 29% off since it's the 29th, so it's a great time to pick up a pattern or two at a good discount :)  Ravelry should automatically discount any purchase at checkout, but with Etsy you'll have to enter a coupon code: BIRTHDAY.

Have a great day!

Pearl the panda girl amigurumi pattern available & a giveaway!

Took me long enough, didn't it!  I hope she was worth the wait... 

The pattern is 6 pages long with 11 images including the one on the cover and is available for purchase on Etsy & Ravelry (buy now).  Here she is from the front-

And now the back :) It's always the silly things or minutiae that I get hung up on, and in this case it was the tail- I'd always thought pandas had black tails, but in all the pictures I could find, both in books and online, they don't! Their tails are that cream-ish white color.

 

She looked like she needed a bow on her hood too since there was so much black and cream everywhere, and it was convenient to use the same embroidery floss that I used for her mouth and hair ties.

This one was a bit different than my typical dolls, I added an animal face to the hood.  I think I like the way it looks, and it's only a little more effort.  I don't think I'll always do that, but it definitely adds something this time around, and I think it'll just depend on what I'm making, you know?

Anyhoo, to enter the contest, all you have to do to enter to win a free Pearl pattern is leave a comment and tell me- What is your favorite food of all time? And if you want to tell me why, that's always more fun. Only one comment counts per person, and no comments will be entered after noon PST June 16, 2010. Oh, and if you don't want to wait to see if you've won, you can purchase the pattern now and I'll refund you via paypal :)

Facebook and other musings

So school is out as of 12:30 yesterday.  Whew! I'm finding out more and more that I'm an all or nothing type of personality, and even though I tried my darnedest, I really did sign up to volunteer/help/do too many things that all culminated into the past 6 weeks of utter and total busy bee behavior.  I have 10 weeks until school starts again for my now preschooler (!) and first grader (!!!) to plan what I want to do next year and how to save time for myself to do things I enjoy doing also.

Meanwhile, I hadn't crocheted for almost 2 months, and while I was selling fundraising t-shirts at the kindergarten registration and assessments last week I was able to make 2 heads! Yay me :) Seriously, you wouldn't think this any major accomplishment, but I'm thrilled.  So, I'm just having my panda pattern tech edited and I should be releasing it next week.  I know, I'm so sorry it's taken this long.  Especially since I talked about it such a long time ago!

In other news, I finally figured out how to do a page for Owlishly on facebook. 

 

After much vacillating, I've decided to keep my MiaZamoraJohnson account for just family, and old and new friends, that way I can share personal information more comfortably with those that know me in real life and I don't have to worry about people taking things in ways that I don't mean them.  But now that I've finally made a decision I set up the page and added pictures.  Feel free to stop by and check it out, I'm embarrassed that I keep saying that I'll update things with more frequency, but I do really intend on trying to, and hopefully it'll be something that I can get done now that I have just summer time activities to participate in.

So I hope to be back soon with some new pattern news to share :)

What do you think- am I being copied?

I think I'm being copied. It's not in crochet, but it appears to be pretty blatant.  A site called Doodle Palace is selling digital stamps that look eerily similar to mine.  Take a look for yourself and let me know what you think!

   

   

 

 


Seriously?!

: : : : : ETA : : : : :

I had contacted them about it, and thankfully I received an interesting reply today with an apology and assurance that they had removed to images off of their blog and website.

When I'm designing a doll that I will be selling the pattern for, I do my absolute best to find images of anything similar to make sure that I'm not copying someone, even inadvertently.  I just expect that anyone else who does what we do would hold to the same standards too.  It's unfortunate that that doesn't always happen.

Within the last year or so, I just have gotten very discouraged by all the copying and pattern sharing on forums, and chasing down and all of the not fun stuff that has to do with designing these patterns.  Unfortunately I let that get to me to the point where I don't want to share what I make, but I do realize that almost all of the people that purchase my patterns do respect my work and my copyright choices and I wanted to let all of you who do follow the rules- I really appreciate you!

Happenings

Hey there, it's been a while hasn't it?  I keep having to take unintentional breaks for crafting, blogging and creativity in general and it's frustrating but I really want to keep trying, I figure if I can just keep coming back it'll stick one of these times :) Also, I have no pictures- I forgot to charge the battery in my camera and have been paying the price for that lately.

So in lieu of being able to do any crocheting/crafting I've been very busy with my son's school, I never thought I'd be *that* mom, but it is such a small school with great need and I can help, so I do, but mainly with the library.

I did get a chance to drive out to UCLA for the LA Times Festival of Books on Saturday.  As usual, it was fantastic! This year I had an ulterior motive- I was looking for book vendors that publish bilingual books, either Spanish or Mandarin and was pleased that I made some contacts.  I was excited to go since I usually see people that I went to library school with, or librarians that I worked with but somehow I didn't see anyone I knew.  I took my little girl and my sister (who ended up stealing the Babies t-shirt I won at the movie booth), and both had a good time, the only book talk we listened to was by Alicia Silverstone, who wrote a cookbook- The Kind Diet. It looks like a pretty good book, but my daughter wasn't in the mood to stay in one place very long and was still fairly upset over not being able to get a (WAY overpriced- $18!) Ponyo pencil topper at the Kinokuniya booth.

I can't wait to see the Babies movie when it comes out- it looks like it's going to be tons of fun and my kids can hardly wait.  Maybe I can finally finish my baby doll in time for the movie :)  Speaking of movies, I took my grandma on a movie date last week to see The Perfect Game, it was such a sweet movie and as a little league mom during the time the movie was set, she loved it.

I was also thinking about creating embroidery patterns or scrapbooking patterns of my dolls too, especially since not everyone can crochet and I think it'd be a cute medium to transfer them to.  During the course of researching this idea I've come across some major copying of my images so I'm working on that too.  I also recently bought a larger button maker- a 2.25" size that I can make mirrors with, I was going to do a fundraiser for my son's school with pictures of the students, but I thought that I'd try making a couple of mirrors with my dolls too. 

Anyway, I've got to go- I feel like a chicken running around with it's head cut off.  The golf tournament (that my husband and I are organizing) at my son's school is 5/14, he has his first soccer game 5/15, our kiddos are participating in the Mayor's Mile on 5/16 (celebrating the bicentennial of our city), I think our daughter's birthday party'll have to be that afternoon too, her actual birthday is 5/18, and we leave for Iowa on 5/20.  Geez, I'm feeling hive-y thinking about it all :) but I do hope to be back soon!

Zoe in a snowflake dress amigurumi pattern available & a giveaway!

Long time no pattern, huh. Well, let's remedy that one right now :)

   

Say hi to Zoe. 

I've started a running list of my favorite names and this one's at the top.  It was also the name my mom decided to give our dachshund when I was little, so there went any chance of naming a daughter that ;)

She's already at my parent's house right now, so I can't get her exact measurement, but she's a bigger girl, so I think she's at least 7 inches tall.  I missed the Rebekah snowflake girl pattern, so I wanted to create another pattern that complimented it, without being too similar.  I changed the foot design slightly from how I normally do the feet too.  I think I actually like it better. 

I ended up using the same yarn to make this one as the yarn that I was sent from Crochet Today! to make the Rebekah prototype for the magazine.  It's not my favorite to work with, but I can understand how so many people like using it for their dolls.  Perhaps if acrylic yarn didn't burn my hands so much, I might work with it more often, but I really like wool, so I'm not so sure.

 

The pattern is 6 pages long, with 9 images.  I didn't take as many pictures of the making process as I usually do, but I think the one's included will be helpful nevertheless.  I did have to end up using Lion Brand Alpine Wool for the embroidered/braided part of the hair.  I don't know where the heck the black Red Heart yarn had gone (though I'm pretty sure I donated it with a bunch of yarn I gave away), and the only other yarns I had that were black were 2 hanks of Malabrigo silk/wool blend, and the Alpine wool which is a bulky weight, but I didn't crochet anything with it, only used it to embroider the hair to the wig cap that I'd already made in Red Heart.

Anyhoo, to enter the contest, all you have to do to enter to win a free Zoe pattern is leave a comment and tell me- What was your favorite pet? And if you want to tell me why, that's always more fun. Only one comment counts per person, and no comments will be entered after noon PST January 4, 2010.

ETA- The pattern's available at Etsy & Ravelry

Birthday Sale!

Well, it's better late than never... right?

Since my birthday is November 29th, the Etsy sale will be- Spend $10 or more, and get 29% off your entire purchase- Just type in Birthday in the note to seller to get the discount!

The sale will run from now until 11:59pm PST November 28th, 2009, since we're leaving the morning of November 29th to camp at the beach for a week, and my shop will be closed while I'm away.  Today my in-laws leave, and I'll have a tiny breather before having to get into Thanksgiving mode so I hope to have a little time to get some pattern work done.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I'm trying to keep Christmas simple, so I'm making a waldorf doll for my daughter (fingers crossed!) and a spiderweb blanket for my little boy, since he is constantly caught using my little girl's flower blanket as a spider web that he catches things in. He likes spiderman a lot, but he likes actual spiders even more, so it's going to be black with white details.

If I have time I'm going to make a doll for my niece too, but with as busy as we ware lately, I can't make any promises!

Oh, and another thing- I made the Pioneer Woman's sweet potato dish for the Thanksgiving fiesta at my son's school last Friday- it's a keeper!  I usually make sweet potatoes with a tiny bit of butter and brown sugar, but I thought I needed to up the ante for his kinder class since all last week I kept hearing how gross sweet potatoes were from a lot of the kids in the class. 

I'm happy to report that all except 2 kids gobbled it up, but I think it had a lot less to do with my cooking skills as it did with all the sugar in the recipe :)  Nevertheless, it's going to be my contribution to our family Thanksgiving dinner this year!

So, that's it for now, hopefully this post wasn't too all over the place, and if I'm not here before- Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Back so soon?

Why yes, yes I am :)

I know, I'm horrible at blogging this year.  I blame it on a multitude of things that have happened since this summer that I have no control over and realizing how horribly I deal with them.

I did have a good reason for not coming back as soon as I wanted.  I was sicker than a dog last week.  I wrote that post and then the next day couldn't get out of bed.  And then didn't get out of bed for 2 additional days after that.  The flu really kicked my butt this year, and it's so nice that it happened when I have a million things to do.

Seriously, so many of you are better people than I am.  I don't know how you manage to run households, make gifts, get ready for guests, and just keep up with life in general! I was not even close to thinking straight last week, and I'm am so embarrassingly far behind on emails, but I'm trying very hard to make sure that pattern purchases get sent within the 24 hour window I've given myself. 

I have two dolls that I'm almost finished with, but I have no idea when I'm going to be able to type up/design the pattern- one is a panda girl and the other one is a winter themed girl.

So instead of dwelling on that and the other 32 million things I need to do, I'll share the two little knitting projects that I finished last month for my daughter's dolls- a sweater for the girl and a sweater vest for the boy.

Eventually I'll work my way up to knitting for bigger bodies, but it's nice to start small. (more details are at flickr & I'll add them to Ravelry soon)

I should probably start cataloging my accomplishments more often than talking about what I haven't done/need to do.  So I will share that I've finally saved my computer's guts to an external hard drive that I bought months ago, but never took out of the package.  I've also organized my desktop, deleted a bunch of useless photographs cluttering iphoto, reorganized my music on itunes and caught up on all the software updates I needed to get to. 

I also cleaned out the cupboard underneath the kitchen sink- I'm super sensitive to chemicals and when we moved 6 years ago the woman who came and cleaned the house for us left a box under there for me that I never opened... until 2 nights ago.  Got rid of that sucker, and breathed a big sigh of relief!

My brother-in-law and mother-in-law will be flying in for a visit this Saturday and will be here until Tuesday so I don't know how soon I'll be back before their visit.  Since this month is my birthday month though, I was going to have another pattern sale- it'll probably only run for a week, maybe like next week because we're going to be gone on my actual birthday.  We're stopping in at Disneyland on the 29th for a couple of woo-hoo-it's-my-birthday rides before heading down to the beach to camp for the week.  I love camping at the beach around my birthday- it's my absolute favorite type of beach weather :)

Well, that post was all over the place, but I always seem to be needing to play catch-up when I post lately :)

The rest of October pattern sale

 

So, I'd signed up for an Artfire account last spring, and then never put any patterns in the shop over there.  I thought I'd try it out, but maybe I'm just used to Etsy's format because I don't think it's as easy to find the patterns over at Artfire.  Anyway, maybe there's just a learning curve that I've yet to master.

But in effort to kick things off there, I'm having a better deal than the one I'm going to offer on Etsy- you can use the coupon code OCTOBER DEAL to get 20% Off on orders that totals above $18.00 in my Artfire studio. In addition to that, the first 10 sales made will get an free Chester the turkey boy pattern thrown in.  This sale will end at 11:59pm October 31st.

In my Etsy shop, if you enter the OCTOBER DEAL in the note to seller section, I'll refund 15% of the purchase price on orders that total above $18.00. This sale too ends at 11:59pm October 31st.

Custom Mere with a Hollyhock tail

Since I'm in a blogging mood...

I was asked to make another Mere doll that looked like the one I did for Plush You! so this was the result.  I think now you can sort of see it seaweed that I did to tie the hair back, since the red sea star didn't go so well with the colors of the tail.

I modified the tail a tiny bit, but not very much. I don't know if it's noticeable, but otherwise, everything else about her is the same.  I did use a yarn needle when I embroidered the fly stitch scales on the tail and it was so much smoother than when I used an embroidery needle, probably due to the blunt tip.

I hadn't been able to work on any new patterns lately, but now that I've finished up all my custom work, I'm hoping to get a couple finished up.  And I finally added all my patterns to my Artfire shop, I'll probably create a separate post about that and the special that's going on over there in yet another post :)