Bird and Little Bird

500.

photo by Follow the White Bunny

Posts that is.  Yep, 500 of them.  For nearly six years now, I have shown up in this space some number of times per week to share pictures, words, projects and whatever else I thought was necessary.  I have written about birds, cupcakes, brussels sprouts and being a teacher. I have mused on motherhood, medical school, cross-country relocation and favorite trees.  I have taken you along for walks around the lake, through the forest and on the farm.  You have been amazingly supportive and kind and have allowed me to be unreasonably optimistic about difficult things, incredibly sarcastic even when it was perhaps inappropriate, and have cheered me on whenver I've mentioned the need.  And, on the few occasions where life made it necessary for me to bare my soul here in a way that I am normally loathe to do, you didn't give me even the smallest opportunity to regret it.  Thanks for that.  Really.

 

So, in honor of the thousands of words written here over the years, I have a little present for you.  Sweet Nicole from Follow the White Bunny has agreed to join me in providing a fun giveaway for you, my unflappable readers.

 

Leave a comment on this post to be entered to win one of the following lovely things:

 

 

-One of Nicole's final copies of her Castle Peeps Royal Sampler embroidery patterns. You can see another view of the project by looking at the picture at the top of this post.  It's really sweet and I love it done in the soft pastels.  

 

- A ten dollar gift certificate to Nicole's Etsy shop, to be used on PDF embroidery patterns.  

 

- One of three copies of Alphabet Glue.

 

- A copy of the Mostly Marvelous Ms. Rabbit pattern

 

- A copy of the Semi-Fantastic Mr. Fox pattern

 

- A copy of the unparalleled and incredibly brilliant Summerland, by Michael Chabon

 

I'll choose winners via random number next Wednesday, April 13th.

A Fox for Molly.

Some of you may remember my gushing over Molly's lovely little crocheted star garlands awhile back.  I had offered to trade someone a fox or a rabbit if they wanted to make me one, and indeed, Molly herself took me up on the offer.  So, we worked a little crafty trade.  The best kind, you know.  This is Molly's fox, now officially dispatched to his new home in California.  

And speaking of crafty trades, Molly has been secretly at work on a rock-your-socks idea. Very shortly she will be announcing the official launch of Blarter, a website devoted to helping bloggers arrange craft and craft supply exchanges.  Genius, no?  Watch her blog over the next couple of days for more news.  

 

Dressed in Cloud9.

A little while back, I got an email from Michelle of Cloud9 Fabrics, asking if I might be interested in making a couple of animals from my patterns for the Cloud9 Quilt Market display.  For reference, this is exactly the sort of thing that I say "yes" to.  Quickly.  I have long been a fan of Michelle's design work for her personal fabric line, Cicada Studio, and the previous Cloud9 collections have all been lovely.  

The new collection, Nature Walk, is no exception.  I love the diverse color palette and the brightness of the prints.  Like the rest of the Cloud9 collections, these fabrics are organic and are printed with low impact dyes.  They are also incredibly soft, which is somehow very important to me.  I'm planning to incorporate some of these fabrics into the quilt that I am now thinking very hard about making. But that is another story altogether.

So, these friendly fellows are headed for Quilt Market.  I'm sure they will have a wonderful time.  I kind of wish I was going along.  

Mildly Magical Mr. Meow

After various and sundry delays, Mr. Meow has finally hit the virtual shelves in the Bird and Little Bird Etsy Shop.  I'm more than aware that I intended for custom cat dolls to be available about four months ago, but then life kept happening in the way that it likes to and now it is suddenly October. 

And yes, I do remember that there was discussion of writing a pattern for this fellow.  That is definitely still in the works, and there is probably more hope of it actually happening now than there has been in quite some time, so I'll keep you all posted. 
This particular fellow has a final destination already determined, but now that I feel like my cat-making mojo is back, I'm looking forward to stitching up a few more.  I've also got some wheels turning about a fun twist on the cat, rabbit and fox patterns which probably wouldn't take too much doing if I could just find a few spare moments.  If you have any to lend, I'll use them wisely.  Promise. 

Excuses...

Yikes!  I've been kind of a bad blogger this week.  If it makes it at all excusable, I should probably mention that this week marked the return of my work life and all that it entails.  It's extra special crazy this year because our school underwent massive construction this summer that didn't get finished on time.  This means that our entire school is being temporarily housed at locations around town until the end of October.  My new teaching space?  The basement of a local church where my desk is reportedly going to be positioned between a pool table and sliding glass doors that open into a bowling alley.  A bowling alley that I am not even allowed to use!  Oh, and the ceiling appears to leak.  So that's my excuse.  I feel like it's a pretty good one, actually.

I did, however, want to tell any interested parties that there is a Bird and Little Bird giveaway over at Progressive Pioneer today.  And, it's a good one, if I do say so myself.

The Continuing Saga of Mr. Meow.

Quite a bit more time has gone by than I originally intended, but a second version of Mr. Meow is finally finished.  Well, I guess that it isn't wholly accurate to call it the second.  It is the second one to make it all the way to this page, but there have certainly been a few other incarnations that weren't quite right and didn't ever get past the phase of partial stuffing. I'm getting very, very close to the final version, I think, and I'm hoping to have the pattern written by the end of the month or so.  I don't always do so hot with self-imposed deadlines, so we'll see how that goes...  I should definitely be able to manage getting Mr. Meow into the shop for custom orders of finished cats within the next week or so, and I'll let you know when he's there and ready. 

I've made a few changes from my rough-draft pattern.  First of all, I added a colorful belly patch for Mr. Meow.  It is sewn down, but with an unfinished edge which I hope will fray a bit with appropriate use and love.  I do love a good frayed edge. 

Also, after giving the bow-tie situation more thought (probably too much) I decided to go with a simple wool felt tie instead of a patchwork one.  The fabric tie was cute, but getting it to stay on and look just right was much too fiddly a process.  Mariam was not into it.  At. All.  The whole concept behind these patterns is that they are really very easy to sew, and that even when fairly egregious mistakes are made, they'll still come out looking pretty swell.  A fussy bow-tie just doesn't quite vibe with my vision here.  But, the wool felt?  Soft, easy and readily replaceable when your little one takes it off and flushes it down the toilet or drops it in the heat vent.  That's much more the idea.

I also decided to heed the suggestion that many readers made and give Mr. Meow rounder ears that are a bit wider at the base.  I think I'm headed in the right direction here, but I may do a bit more modification before I commit to his final ear shape.  I've got one more idea to try out here, and I'll let you know how it goes.  

And, I'm still working on the tail.  That part is giving me absolute fits.  I think my vision of how I want it to look might be a little too inflexible.  Now I know why Mr. Fox and Ms. Rabbit are happily tail-less. 

So, we're getting closer.  And I'm definitely still open to feedback if you have suggestions that you would like to share.  I'll probably be giving the call for pattern testers later this month as well, so if that is at all of interest to you, keep checking back.  

Bird and Little Bird Giveaway at Progressive Pioneer.

 This is turning into a much busier weekend than I had anticipated, but I did want to poke my head in for just a second to let you all know that there is a Bird and Little Bird giveaway going on over at Progressive Pioneer this weekend.  If you've been feeling at all inclined to stitch up a rabbit or a fox, head on over and leave a comment to enter yourself in the drawing.  I'll let you pick your fabrics and everything! 

Meow.

After what can only be described as excessive over-thinking of various details, the cat is finished at last.  In truth, he's been sitting on my work table, fully stuffed with limbs attached and all, for at least the last month.  I was having a hard time deciding about such important inclusions as tails, whiskers and bow ties and the result of all this was that I didn't get much of anything done at all.  This is totally my way.  I finally decided to just go ahead and finish him, figuring that I could always go back and redo anything that I wasn't happy with.  This guy will be staying in-house since Mariam generally insists that prototype animals go straight to her room once photographed.  There have been occasional exceptions (can you spot the original Ms. Rabbit now living here?), but Mariam had staked her claim on this fellow before I even started drawing the pattern pieces.

Now comes the part where I have to decide what changes I want to make before I start writing the pattern in earnest.  A tail, first of all, is definitely something that I want to be part of the final version.  This guy actually does have a tail, but I'm kind of keeping it to myself at the moment because I can't decide if it's a keeper.  Oh, and also because a mini-storm rolled in as I was taking pictures this afternoon and the whole house got all dark and shadowy, effectively obliterating any chance of a decent picture of said tail.  I also need to work a bit more on the bow tie.  I like this one fine, but I think that I need to come up with a more child friendly (read: harder to untie) version.  Maybe involving some velcro? Hmm...  Also, Dan seems to think that Mr. Cat's ears are a bit too fox-like.  I'm on the fence on this one and and am happily gathering opinions on the matter, if you happen to have one.  

Oh!  And I'm also still musing over a proper name for my cat.  I'll keep thinking on it, but don't worry, you'll be the first to know when I've got something good.  

Mr. Fox Finds a Home.

(random pretty picture unrelated to the topic at hand)

Well, it's late enough now that my human random number generator has gone to bed.  I had to resort to using the official-like online one.  It does the trick though, and we do have a winner.  Mr. Fox is going to live with Tammie.  So, Tammie, send me an email at birdmail@gmail.com with your mailing address and he'll be on his way shortly. 

By the way, I really had a great time getting and reading through everyone's comments about their favorite animals and I would just like to say a heartfelt thanks to each and everyone of you out there that read my little blog.  And, I might also mention that you all have very good taste in animals.  Narwals, manatees and pine martens?  Solid choices.  I think that I will have to do giveaways here a bit more often in the future because you all really know how to make a girl (and her fox) feel loved.

Adopt a Fox.

This fine fellow is officially looking for a new place to call home.  He was originally intended to be sent to the winner of the Wise Craft giveaway that took place last month, but when I was finishing up work on him the other day, I noticed a small hole in the fabric on the side of his nose.  I can't repair it.  He is still a perfectly serviceable fox, but he is no longer quite suited to being sent off to someone expecting to receive a better than serviceable fox, you know?  He is now the stuffed animal equivalent of one of those wild animals that goes to live in the animal refuge because it had an accident or was handfed by campers or something.  In other words, I am giving him away to someone who doesn't mind that this particular fox is quite especially less than perfect.

The hole is actually really small, probably less than an eighth of an inch in diameter, and it isn't even totally clean through the fabric; there are still a few threads of linen there.  So, if you are the sort that doesn't mind a little hole in something otherwise reasonably attractive, or if you are living in the sort of household where gaining holes is something that happens to new things rather quickly anyway, this might be the fox for you.  It is free, after all.  Just leave a comment here.  Oh, and to make it interesting, use your comment to tell me what your favorite animal is and why.  I'll pick a winner round about Tuesday or so.  Well, probably Mariam will pick a winner.  I'll ask her to yell out a random number or something.

I'll start:  My favorite animal is the Great Blue Heron because it is very, very large, it is incredibly beautiful and graceful and also, it is surprisingly fierce.