Rag Pets

Hello 2009!

One of the best parts about the year changing, besides the fireworks and yummy food, is getting to start a new calendar. All those days, just waiting to be filled, a lot of shiny new time waiting to be spent. I have no idea what 2009 will bring with it, but I'm looking forward to finding out! :)

Filling in a new calendar is also a chance to look back on the past year. All the things you did, the people you met and stuff that happened. This ending year I made lots of new Rag Pets, started this blog, and I took part in the Plush You show, which was something I've never done before and a great experience, and I took part in Give Away Day, which was a super fun thing to do. I also attended three weddings, spent a lovely weekend in Stockholm, visited family and had family visit us and celebrated various birthdays and anniversaries. I'm amazed every time by how much one year can hold when I look back on it!

This little blog has had 5550 visitors since it was set up about six months back last summer (Thank you ever so much everyone!), and I hope there'll be lots more of you this coming year. I also hope to make many, many, many more Rag Pets and to finally get my shop up and running in 2009! I also hope that the coming year will be filled with happiness and joy and sunshine and all the little things that make life great.

My New Year's resolutions are to get that darn shop up, to spend more time with friends, to smile more and to live more.

I wish you all a wonderful, amazing and happy year!

Merry Christmas!

This is the first time in so, so many years that we have a real Christmas tree. And I might be a little biased in saying this, but our tree is awesome! The tree itself is from J's parent's land and it was delivered here by J's sister last Sunday. It's very pretty and stands almost 2 meters tall! It also smells just like Christmas trees did when I was a kid and I even managed to find old fashioned electric candles for it. Yesterday I made the little plushie star for the top. Just looking at the tree makes me feel jolly. :)

I've had such a lovely December. I put up my Christmas lights on the 1^st and I've been listening to Christmas music all month, baked yummy gingerbread cookies & Christmas tarts and I've had a lot of fun puttering about with presents and decorations and things too. I think I even managed to infect some Christmas spirit into J. as well! He can be a tiny bit of a Grinch come yule time, but there's a lot of jolliness under all that too.

To top it all off, it snowed today! This made me even jollier, as we haven't had a white Christmas in such a long time. There isn't more than a dusting of snow on the ground, but it's still heaps better than the grey drabness we've been suffering through most of this winter.

I wish you all a very merry Christmas, and a wonderful New Year. :)

Noëlle

Meet Noëlle and her teddy bear, Bear.
Noëlle loves Christmas decorations, gingerbread cookies and pretty twinkly lights. She's really good at wrapping presents and can wrap even the most unwieldy things with ease. Noëlle doesn't go anywhere without her dear Bear, who she got as a Christmas present years ago.

(Please click on the pictures to see them bigger.)

Noëlle is made out of soft toffee coloured wool & she's filled with rags and a bit of organic cotton batting. Her eyes are tiny little buttons and her nose is embroidered. Noëlle has sweet blushy cheeks and a shiny plastic button for a belly button.
Bear is made out of felt and filled with organic cotton batting. He has little button eyes and an embroidered nose just like Noëlle, and a little brown button for a belly button.

Noëlle is wearing a white cotton dress that has embroidery and decorative buttons on the pockets (that are big enough to accommodate Bear) and red ric-rac on the collar, cuffs and hem. The dress fastens in the back with a snap. Under the dress she has a red and white polka dotted long sleeved T-shirt that fastens in the back with velcro.
Bear isn't wearing anything, but apparently he's partial to bow ties. :)

Tweet, tweet, life is sweet

J. mentioned that Twitter might be a nice way of sharing my life & work and connecting with others on the net and he prodded me to take up twittering. So, I find myself there again after creating an account (I was first enticed by the whole avian theme) last year, posting one tweet and then promptly forgetting about it.

I must admit, I am a little fascinated by the minutia of other people's every day life and I really enjoy getting a glimpse into what others do with their days. I also really like everything and anything to do with birds, so Twitter's birdie theme taps right into my heart too. This will, without a doubt, lead to checking Twitter for new updates more often than is really necessary. :)

If you have a Twitter account, please post a link to it here so we can be Twitter-friends! You can find me here: http://twitter.com/kittyvane

And the winner is...

A big, gargantuan thank you to everyone for all your comments! I'm amazed, astonished and astounded by the amount of comments my Give-Away Day entry gathered; I was expecting to get about 20 or 30 comments at the most, and it ended up at over ten times that!

I'm sure you're all eager to know who Ginger will go home to, so with out further ado, the lucky winner is:

Number 171, MamáChanga!
Congratulations! I hope you have a super Christmas with your darling twins. :)

I'd also like to wish all of you having babies, spending your first Christmas as parents or grandparents, getting married, traveling around the world or staying at home, spending Christmas alone or with everyone you know, cooking and baking and decorating, and celebrating the festivities in your own way all the best for this holiday season. It really has been wonderful to read of all your amazing plans, it's hard to put into words how much I appreciate you all sharing with me. I've been moved to tears, laughed out loud and gotten all warm & fuzzy reading the comments. So thank you all again. :)

Give-Away Day!

This is Ginger the rag-gingerbread girl. She's been freshly baked out of gingerbread brown wool and she's stuffed with rags and organic cotton batting. She has little button eyes, an embroidered mouth and blushy cheeks. Her pretty bow is made from an old pillowcase and her buttons are all vintage. Ginger has white ric-rac icing on her arms and legs and she smells faintly of gingerbread.

To celebrate the spirit of Christmas and Give-Away Day, I'm giving Ginger the rag-gingerbread girl to one lucky person who leaves a comment about their Christmas plans on this entry between today and the 6^th of December (that's when we celebrate our Independence Day here in Finland). I'll assign every commenter a number so that the first to leave a comment is number 1 and the next person is number 2 and so on, and then on the 6^th I'll randomly draw a number to see who Ginger goes home to (I'm happy to ship internationally, so it doesn't matter where you're from). :)
Be sure to check out all the other crafters who are taking part in Give-Away Day too! There's a long, long list of all the participants over at the Sew, Mama, Sew blog.

My Christmas plans are pretty much the same as they are every year. I hung my Christmas lights up on Monday and today I baked gingerbread cookies. We're getting a real Christmas tree this year and I'm super excited about that! My old, small plastic tree is a bit pathetic and of course, it doesn't give a lovely Christmassy scent like a real tree does. I can even get a real star for the top now!
We'll be going over to my parents' for Christmas Eve to have dinner. We'll be getting our own Christmas ham too from J's parents and I'm going to bake some Christmas tarts later on as well.
I've been listening to Christmas songs all week and I'm in a jolly holiday mood despite the drab and wet weather and total lack of snow here. :)

Added on 6^th of December '08: Commenting is now closed and a winner has been picked. Thank you ever so much for making this such a wonderful event everyone! :)