Little Cotton Rabbits

getting there!

After two false starts thanks to indecision about typefaces and inexperience with thread thickness I now feel that I'm getting somewhere.

Now I'm off to find somewhere bright to stitch, so I don't end up with a squint!

tag from Shawn Mary

A couple of weeks ago Shawn Mary tagged me and as usual it has taken me ages to take it up (sorry Shawn Mary). Anyway, here's what she asked me and Molly at Molly's knitted teddybears -

1)  How does your creative process begin?

I knit every day when the children are at school and I often ponder what I'm going to work on when I'm walking back home from dropping Amy at school. It's pretty erratic really and completely on a whim - some days I want to just knit clothes, others it's rabbits, or cakes etc. and it often changes from day to day. Sometimes ideas pop into my head at strange times like the middle of the night when I'm up with Toby or I might be doing my weekly shop and see someone's clothes which inspire a certain combination of colours. I jot notes on various bits of paper and keep them in a file with scraps of boden catalogues and magazine clippings.

2) Do you start and finish one toy at a time, or do you tend to start multiple pieces for multiple ones and end up with lots of "parts"?

I'm a really messy worker and very rarely work on a toy from start to finish without at least starting several other things. I have lots of bags of bits stashed away! I'm particularly impulsive when I get a new yarn and will immediately drop what I'm working on to start knitting up something in a yarn that's new to me. It's embarassing to admit but I get quite excited by new yarns and I end up stalking my favourite on-line yarn sites in the early spring and autumn watching for the new season's colourways to become available (OK, I know I should get out more!)

3)  When it comes to clothes, do you knit these before you know who will wear them or does the finished face dictate what you will knit?

A bit of both. I often knit the clothes first and then make a toy to suit them but sometimes as the character of the toy emerges I get a picture of what kind of clothes I want to dress them in. Once the face is complete I usually know whether the toy is a girl or a boy and if I'm ever in doubt Amy always acts as my quality controller and makes the decision for me!

4)  Have you ever knitted one and after completion, just couldn't bear (ha, ha) to part with it?

I do have my personal favourites but I've never decided to keep any of them although I do have 'the one that came back' sitting right next to my computer as my lucky mascot!

She's special as she travelled to America, failed to get delivered and 6 weeks later ended up back here and she inspired a very special story wonderfully written by Jill.

Teeny tinies

This week I've had a lot of fun making some teeny toys for the little cotton rabbits. So much so that I thought you might like to have a go too.

So I've written up a free pattern which you can find here. It's a bit fiddly and is probably an evening's work but they are fun to make and at our house they are proving very popular, as you can see...

Honey loves her little bunny - she's named him Pip and she never goes anywhere without him!

Verity

This week is MS awareness week and Verity here is hoping to help Anna raise some money. She'll be auctioned off on saturday night together with lots of other wonderful crafts, but if you'd like to lodge a bid for her you can email Anna by visiting scrapping tonight.

calling all softie makers!

Did you know that the 2nd annual softie awards have just started taking entries?

It's not too late to get softie making and enter your own (closing date is April 18th). Full details can be found here on Softies Central but in short there are 5 categories and anyone can enter an originally designed softie. I've started thinking about mine and have a few works in progress that I hope to have finished over the coming week.

Why not take a look at the entries so far and get making yours? Good luck everyone and have fun softie making!