Two christmas presents done. I think I have started everyone’s gift, but finished a sad few. The starting is the exciting part; the hemming and trimming thread and finding a #@*% box to put them in is not. I’m desperately trying to get at least most of the gifts that have to be sent in the mail by friday, but I’m sitting here eating gingerbread cookies (stolen from my daughter’s St. Nick gift–thanks mom!). These two are from Sock and Glove, the japanese craft book (in english) by Miyako Kanamori. I have a few japanese craft books (in japanese) and I can follow all the diagrams, but always feel like I’m missing something. And I am–to fold an opening closed these are the directions given in the book: “Fold the back of the head like a caramel-candy wrapper.” It makes perfect sense, but how bizarre. These were a lot of fun to make. There was quite a bit of hand sewing involved, but they came together pretty quickly. The horse is actually a zebra pattern–same thing, right? That’s what I thought, but I should have made the mane longer to make it a little more horse like (equine, I guess). Oh well, he still cuddly. It’s pretty fantastic that these two came from two pairs of socks. There is a great pattern in the book for a sweater made from a sock as well. If there’s time (ha!) maybe I’ll whip one up for the elephant. I found this soft toy glove book as well with patterns for squirrels and bananas!

click here to see all the faux bois builders.People love making forest creatures, so why not make the forest too. I tried my hand at this plush craze. But when it’s late and you should be in bed and not attempting to start something new, you don’t realize that if you make softie that looks like a cake that looks like a log it just ends up looking like a piece of wood. duh. I thought it was a genius idea to make a little plush buche de noel for the ornament swap, but it just looks like a sad little log. Oh well, I have a couple more ideas. My first ornament came in the mail today, so I better get a move on.

The campaign is in full swing! All of Jack’s friends came out to support him: his beloved pie backed him right away, Hickety Pickety thought him a fine gentlemen, Jack Sprat wouldn’t think of voting for anyone else, and his wife made the lovely signs. So now it’s your turn. Get the word out–Little Jack Horner’s got the prettiest plum pie in the Holiday Smorgasbord! Don’t sit in a corner, go vote!

1.little jack horner sat in a corner 2.eating his christmas pie 3.he stuck in his thumb 4.and pulled out 5.a plum 6.and said what a good boy am I!

I was short listed in the Softies Central Holiday Awards! What lovely news to wake up to. Little Jack Horner is a finalist in the Smorgasborg catagory. And he is in good company. There are a bunch of amazing soft toys in every category. The voting starts today and goes until Nov. 16th. So click over to Softies Central and vote!

After two days of two children whining non stop, I needed to reward myself with a little project. I started this digger months ago, but it sat in parts without it’s digger since then. So last night I watched some trashy tv (is there anything but?) and stuffed and stitched. I stopped working on it because I wasn’t happy with the design and because I wasn’t sure the digger part would actually come out. But it did. I never want to start working on the hardest part of whatever I’m making, but of course it always ends up being the most satisfying. I made some covered buttons for the button joints (do buttons with shanks even work for button joints?) but I liked the way it looked without them, so they went in the cab. There has been construction in our neighborhood, well, since my daughter was born and she points out all the diggers to me everyday. I thought it would be nice to make a digger for her that was a little on the girlie side. So there you have a slightly tufted, movable, flowery, digger. I’ve got another already cut out, with a slightly different pattern and I thought a patchwork digger would be cool. So more to come, hopefully.I think I’ll enter this into the Holiday Softies Central Awards (right under the wire) because I think it would be a great toy to find under the tree (if you are a 2 year old girl obsessed with diggers, that is).  Here are a bunch of other entries that I think are fantastic. Go look!