Oh the Cuteness!

Just a reminder for everyone that today is Small Business Saturday! Please help support independent artists and shops so they can keep doing what they love! My 20% off sale will be going on through Midnight on Cyber Monday, and remember the discount also applies to all of the owl plushies and owl pincushions that have already been marked down! Head on over to http://ohthecuteness.etsy.com and use the code SALETIME to get your discount!

It's finally here! I made the PDF version of my owl plushie pattern available for download in my Etsy shop ! I decided I'm probably not going to make these plushies anymore as the pincushions always sold much better, so if you want one you better go grab one here before they're gone! But I couldn't let my time spent drafting the pattern go to waste so it's now available to buy, and it's a Creative Commons license so you can do whatever you like with the finished product, including selling them at craft fairs. All of my free and for sale patterns are licensed this way, so feel free! I'm incredibly excited about this because it's the first sewing pattern I've ever sold and I hope to write many more in the future! Hope you like it!

I have to say I am in hog heaven with this  new craft room  of mine! There's been a big pile up of personal and business-related ufo's for some time now, so I've been going down the list finishing one business and one personal at a time. Today I finished a special secret project for my etsy shop that's been in my head forever, and to celebrate I took a little me-time and made a gigantic owl! I call him Gordie since he's so pudgy! He's made from some leftover felt and hand-me-down canvas material. Probably he will end up being a mascot at my craft booth. But! I made him for a very specific reason, namely this: I know I've mentioned before that I try to run a no-waste sewing studio. This means that every scrap of fabric, felt, and thread ends up in this bin and will eventually end up as stuffing for plushies. Right around when I moved house I noticed that I was not keeping up with using my scraps and the bin was completely full. So I decided wh...

I don't enter a lot of contests online, but when I saw that Heidi Kenney of My Paper Crane was giving away some of her new large plushies from Kid Robot, I had to try. And I won! She sent the different kinds out at random and I'm so happy she sent me the yellow jelly doughnut! It's so cuddly and adorable, and it's living on my sofa now. She's one of the crafters and bloggers who has always been a huge inspiration to me, and I'm so happy to have one of her pieces in the house finally. My favorite detail of this little guy is the little place where there's "jelly" seeping out from where the makers of plush pastries piped it in: Yay!

I made this little guy as a belated birthday gift for a friend, and I thought I should post the pattern! It's a great beginning amigurumi pattern because if it comes out a little wonky it's fine, because it's a mushroom, and they're all a little wonky in real life, right? I think it would be super cute with white pins in the top too so it can me useful. I was also playing with the idea of doing a "How I Make Amigurumi" photo or video tutorial using this pattern, might be fun... Anywho, if anyone catches any errors in the pattern please let me know! Mini Mushroom Amigurumi Pattern This pattern is worked in a continuous spiral, so be sure when you need to skip stitches for decreasing that you skip the very last stitch, which will simultaneously put down the first stitch of the next round, so you'll get the correct number of stitches. It measures about 3 1/2 inches tall when done. There's no guage, just crochet as tightly as possible. Siz...