Rag Pets

Happy new bear!

Say hello to my workroom buddy, Olivia!

I finally, finally finished her a few days back, having had her sitting on my desk for ages, waiting for me first to make up my mind as to what size eyes to give her and then to find the right size eyes in the rather paltry selection available here.

I made Olivia during a teddybear making course I took last autumn. This was the same sort of course -with the same teacher- as the one where I made Bluebeary, except this time the theme was great big teddybears. Once again, it was nice to be reminded how fun crafting with others can be, and how good it is to sometimes do something a little different from what you usually make.

It's funny how much of a difference eyes make when making soft toys. As I was working on this bear, I kept thinking it'll be a he and even had a name picked out and ready and everything, but then when I put in the eyes, it turns out that this is a girl bear after all! So there was nothing for it but to come up with a new name and give her a bit of blusher for her cheeks.

I've been reticent about posting any photos of Olivia before now, since I was thinking of giving her to my mum as a Christmas present, and I know mum follows my blog and I didn't want to spoil the surprise, but in the end I simply couldn't bear to part with her (sorry mum!). Olivia keeps me company at the workroom and is always game for a bear hug or two! :)

Hooray for 2012!

This year is the Year of the Dragon, which is marked by excitement, unpredictability, exhilaration and intensity. So we've certainly a thrilling time ahead of us!

Now that the old year is over and it's the new year, and has been so for about 12 hours now, it's time to make a new Creativity Calendar, fill in my new calendar and marvel at a whole new year before me! I don't really make new year's resolutions, but I do hope this year will find me filled with creativity and that it will bring with it lots of wonderful new experiences.

I wish you all a truly wonderful New Year! May 2012 be spectacular, sparkly and simply sublime!

Merry merry!

Merry Christmas!
Hyvää Joulua!
Joyeux Noëlle!
メリークリスマス！

And the winner is...

I shan't keep you in suspense since I'm sure you're all on pins and needles to know who Stella is going home to. So, the winner is...

Lucky commenter number 9! Great big congratulations to Amanda of FeltFinland! Yay! I'll try and get Stella on her way as quickly as possible, since the postal system over here tends to go a little messy come the holidays and it'd be nice for Stella to arrive in time to grace the top of the Christmas tree.

I'd like to thank you all, a honking 137 of you, for commenting and taking part in the giveaway. I'd also like to see pictures of all your homes decked out in holiday decorations! They all sound so very beautiful and wonderful and in many cases, really heartwarming too.
I'm looking forward to getting a tree this weekend, and I'm even more eager to get to decorating it. Putting up my lights and ornaments on the tree has become a wonderful tradition for me, it's something I've enjoyed doing ever since I was a kid, and I still take great delight in it. I even bought three new ornaments for the tree today! :)

Thank you once again everyone who took part, and I wish you all a beautifully decorated Christmas time.

Yay! It's Giveaway Day!

It's that time of the year once again, and Giveaway Day has come once more! I'm chuffed to be taking part in what has over the years grown into a week-long event of holiday spirit and generosity, so without further ado, here's the, ahem, star of my giveaway! :)

(I really wanted to take a photo of Stella atop a real tree, but it's been nothing but rain, rain, rain and drab grey here, so this is an artist's representation of what she'd look like sitting on top of a Christmas tree.)

This is Stella the rag-star and she's eager to get to grace the top of someone's Christmas tree.
Stella is made out cotton, and she's stuffed with rags and polyfill. She has little button eyes, an embroidered mouth and pretty blushy cheeks. There's a bit of elastic on her back, so she can be easily strapped to the tip of a tree. She's about 15 cm long from prong to prong.

I'm giving Stella to one lucky person who leaves a comment on this blog entry as to what their favourite way to decorate for the holidays is. I'll assign a number to each commenter, with the first person to comment getting number 1 and the second number 2 and so forth. Then, come the 16th (that's this coming Friday) I'll draw a number at random to see whose tree Stella will fly over to (it doesn't matter where in the world you live, I'm happy to ship internationally).

For me, it's hard to decide which is my favourite bit of holiday decor, lovely Christmas lights or the tree with all it's trimmings. Although right now, I'd have to say that the lights are the best thing, since winter has been a very dark and drab time over here this year, so all the shining, sparkling and twinkling lights that have appeared everywhere really do brighten things up a lot!

Be sure to check out all the other blogs taking part in Giveaway Day as well, there's a whole lot of long, long lists of them over at the Sew Mama Sew blog. :)

Edit on December 16th: Commenting is closed and I'll promptly pick a winner now. A great big thank you all who took part!

A happy haunted Halloween!

Just as the trees are shedding their colourful autumn coats and the days begin to grow ever shorter and colder, it's time for that most frightening of all festivities and horrifying of holidays, Halloween!

I celebrated by holding a little Halloween costume party (I dressed up as my cat, BooBoo -no photos of this though, I much prefer to be behind the camera) and making utterly delicious pumpkin pie, watching scary movies and eating great quantities of candy corn. In the spirit (pun very much intended) of Halloween, I also happened upon a ghostly apparition while out for a walk in the forest today.

This is the ghost of poor lady Elizabeth Von Cattington, who tragically lost all her 9 lives to an unfortunate bout of curiosity. She's now doomed to wander as a ghost for the rest of eternity, haunting the dark forest where she met her untimely end.

Her wails can be heard through out the forest on windy autumn nights as she floats about through the trees and laments her wretched fate. I was lucky enough to capture this eerie specter on video, with the kind help of my friend, Jenny. (Please ignore the sound, a plane flew overhead and while I'm so used to this occurrence that I pay it no mind, it does make for a bit of a bit of an odd soundtrack.)

Spine-chilling, isn't it!

I hope you all have had a terrifically fearsome Halloween, and that the ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggidy beasties and things that go bump in the night don't frighten you too much this All Hallow's Eve!

rabbit, rabbit, rabbit

There's a superstition that if you say "white rabbit" (or just simply "rabbit") three times the first thing when you wake up on the 1st of a new month*, you'll have good luck for the rest of the month. It's a bit the same as saying "A pinch and a punch for the first of the month", except with less pinching and punching of your friends involved.
I faithfully recite my white rabbits every morning on the 1st of each month, being somewhat superstitious myself and wanting my months to get off to a good start. Seeing as autumn tends to be a bit of a gloomy time for me with it's endless grey rains, dropping temperatures and shortening days, it's nice to think that I have a bit of luck tucked away should I need it.

Speaking of rabbits, if you happen to be in Örebro, in Sweden right now, you can go see a very big yellow rabbit that's seemingly been dropped by a giant child in what I suppose is the town square.

The enormous bunny is the work of giant crafter Florentijn Hofman (that is, his work is giant in scale, I'm sure he himself is normal human sized) and it's made from concrete, wood and metal.

The "Stor Gul Kanin", as it's called in Swedish, reminds me of the giant (and I'm not even sure "giant" is a big enough word to describe the sheer scale of it!), pink, knitted rabbit tossed on to an Italian hillside in Artesina.

The piece, "Rabbit" is the work of an artist collective by the name of Gelitin, and it will be laying on it's hilltop until 2025 for people to climb on, explore and even sleep on. It is so very giant that it can even be seen from space!

All these gargantuan rabbits make me want to try making a giant Rag Pet, although I doubt the scale I'd work in would be quite this huge!

White rabbits to you all! :)


*I was originally going to post this yesterday, but seeing as I went to the Japanese ambassador's residence for a tea gathering (it was a truly amazing evening that I shan't forget in a hurry!), I didn't quite have the time to do so. So, here we are now, a day late.

3rd Blog-anniversary!

Today marks the three year anniversary of this blog. It's quite amazing to think I've been happily blogging away for such a long time now, especially since it doesn't really feel like that long a time at all. I know I don't post very regularly or very often, but having said that I do have lots to blog about at the moment, and I suppose I'd best get to blogging it all soon, really.

In these past three years this little blog has had a whole lot of visitors too, a very impressive 42915 of you in fact. I'd like to thank all of you who've come by here to read my posts and look at my pictures, you're all awesome and one of the main reasons I blog! The online craft blogging community is really and truly wonderful and I'm very proud and happy to be a part of it, with my now-3-year-old Rag Pet blog.

I hope there will be many, many years of Rag Pet blogging to come yet. :)

Happy Vappu!

There's been a lot to celebrate in these past weeks, with first Easter, then the royal wedding and now Vappu, or May Day, or Walpurgis as it's also known. Here Vappu tends to be a carnival-like, rather wild celebration, but we much prefer to simply stay at home and to spend the festival eating (see, I did say celebrations often mean food for me!), resting and just loafing about.

Alongside food, for me holidays and festivals often also involve making a fitting Rag Pet. So, here's May, the Vappu rag-fox. :)

May is the life of the party, and she knows all the best jokes. She makes yummy munkki (it's a type of doughnut) and brews really good Sima (mead, a traditional Vappu drink).
I'm going to take some more photos of May later, when I've had a nap (that's how we party!) and the sun makes another appearance. She has the cutest belly button that deserves to be shared with the rest of the world and her tail is really pretty too.

Me, May and the rest of the Rag Pets wish you all a very happy Vappu! :)

A royal brunch

Me and my friends Aliisa and Jenny had a royal brunch today, to celebrate the great British Royal Wedding. Mostly it was an excuse to dress up, have lots of yummy food and to offer some sartorial critique, but my time spent in England seems to have rubbed off on me a little bit and I admit that I am rather fond of the royals and any ways, there was no way on earth I would have missed a momentous event like this!

We made scones (served with strawberry jam and whipped cream), cupcakes, cucumber sandwiches, and of course, tea.
We also -rather hastily- made ourselves paper Union Flags to wave. Our flags turned out quite badly and a bit incorrectly too (hence no photos of them), but they were still great fun to have and to wave about. :)

As we watched the proceedings and oohed and aahed over all the fabulous fashion, we ate and ate and ate, and drank milk tea and we even had shampagne (sparkly wine) to toast all the really exciting bits with!
All of us got a bit misty eyed when William and Kate (or is it Catherine now?) said their vows, and we all agreed that Kate's dress was utterly gorgeous and perfect. We loved the trees in the church, they added such an enchanted, fairytale feel of the wedding. We whooped and cheered when Will and Kate kissed on the balcony and we were thoroughly giddy with the joy and thrill of it all!

And they lived happily ever after.

The End