Rag Pets – Handmade soft toys from Helsinki, Finland

Love love love

With it being Valentine's Day, I've had love on my mind for a while now. There are a lot of people and things I love, like J., my family, BooBoo, my friends and sewing, reading, warm blankets and tea. I also love making Rag Pets and I especially love sharing them with you all!

And on that note, here's Valentine, or Val as she's known to her friends, the little Valentine's Day rag-cat!

Val the little rag-cat is made from linen and she's got little button eyes and a pretty plastic button for a bellybutton. She's a smaller version of the usual Rag Pets, so she's about 10 cm shorter than the big Rag Pets, standing 35 cm short from the tips of her toes to the top of her head.

Val is wearing a cotton patchwork skirt with an elastic waist, a pretty pink silk scarf around her neck and a heart & button ear-bow.
Val loves love, chocolates, and spending time with her many cherished friends. She's in the Rag Pet Shop wanting to make dear new friends. :)

As Valentine's Day is known as Ystävänpäivä, "Friend's Day", here, I'd like to send lots of love to all friends of the Rag Pets! You are all just so wonderful and I am truly thankful for all of you. Without you lot to share with, I don't think making Rag Pets would be even half as nice!

Have a really lovely Valentine's Day, and know just how very much you are all loved everyone!
Love,
Eerika and all of the Rag Pets

Hello 2015!

Happy New Year!
Hyvää Uutta Vuotta!
Bonne Année!
あけましておめでとう！

Hello to a brand new 2015 and bye bye old 2014, you were mostly good, but there were a few not very good bits here and there too.

I shan't dwell on the past, like I said, there were awful bits of the last year I would really rather not ever revisit, even though there were also brilliant bits that I never ever want to forget!
I'm looking forward to what this new year will bring with it. It's always just as exhilarating having all these sparkly new days before you, all so full of potential and promise. Getting ready for all this new time, I made a new Creativity Chart and ordered a new calendar (I'm getting a Hobonichi Techo again) today.

As we start page 1 out of 365, I wish you all a gentle, calm and warm as lambswool new year. :)

Pigeon Appreciation Day!

In addition to being Friday the 13th, today is also Pigeon Appreciation Day!

Pigeons might be much maligned and rather disliked birds to many, but they really are rather amazing once you look past the "rats with wings"-image. Mental Floss has a really good article on the history of pigeons, for those of you who'd like to know more about these fabulous fowls.

To mark this day of celebrating my most favourite birds, I finally finished Livia (she's named after the Rock Dove, Columba livia), my pigeon inspired rag-cat, who I mentioned in my Pigeon Appreciation Day post last year.

Livia the rag-cat is a huge big fan of pigeons! She goes to the park every day she can to feed her pigeon friends and she keeps her own small flock of messenger pigeons who take care of all of her correspondences.
Livia is made out of linen and she has a shiny pigeon grey corduroy dress with an oversized silk bow on it. The polka-dots on her tights are flocked!

Livia is waiting for someone to come appreciate pigeons with her in the Rag Pet Shop.

Even BooBoo took time out of her busy schedule of napping and meowing to appreciate my Pigeon Appreciation Day Rag Pet. :)

International Polar Bear Day

It's International Polar Bear Day today. This is a day for raising awareness of climate change, and the plight global warming causes polar bears as their natural habitat is slowly melting away. I decided to do my bit to draw attention to the polar bears' predicament, and made Martin the polar rag-bear.

Martin (David, a friend of mine, came up with the name, from the latin name for polar bear, which is Ursus Maritimus) is fervently campaigning against climate change, and fighting to stop his home from disappearing.

Martin is made out of warm white wool and he's stuffed with rags and a bit of polyfill. He has safety eyes, an embroidered nose and a snowy white button for a belly button.
Martin wears a stripy cotton overall with big pockets and smoky blue plastic buttons holding the straps. they close with a snap in the back. he also has a hand knitted dark blue cotton scarf to keep him warm.

Martin the polar rag-bear is in the Rag Pet Shop, waiting for a new friend to come protest with him.

As I was reading about polar bears today, I learned that the word Arctic is derived from a Greek word for "bear", and that Antarctic means "without bear", which I found both a great mnemonic for remembering where polar bears live and quite funny too. :)

Rag-bag!

I mentioned making rag-bags a while back, and now, here's the first one of them!

This particular one features an appliqued grey wool rag cat with little buttons for eyes and an embroidered nose, wearing a pink plaid cotton dress and holding a happy yellow balloon that has an embroidered string.
The bag is cotton and about 36cm wide and 41cm tall.

The first ever rag-bag is available in the Rag Pet Shop, for all your stuff carrying needs. :)

Yay! Christmas sale!

Because I love, love, love Christmas and because Rag Pets make for super presents, there is a Christmas sale on at the Rag Pet Shop! Starting today and running until the 25th of Devember, every Rag Pet will be 25% off!
There are a lot of Rag Pets waiting for new homes in the shop (and I'll be popping some new ones in there in a bit too), so go adopt a Rag Pet in time for Christmas! :)


P.S.: The discount will show at checkout, because we couldn't work out any other way of doing a sale without having to figure out coupons or some such that'd just make things more complicated than they need to be.

Nelly and Patty

Meet Nelly and Patty the rag-bear sisters. Neither will tell which one of them is the little sister and which one is the big sister, instead they'll just state that the older one is whoever happens to say so first.

This is Nelly, she likes to play with dolls and skip rope.

And this is Patty, she likes to skip rope and play with dolls.

Both Nelly and Patty are waiting for new homes where they can play with dolls and skip rope to their hearts' content in the Rag Pet Shop.

Nelly and Patty bring a bit of summery cheer into the grey drabness that is early winter here. We haven't had much snow yet, only a light dusting that melted as quick as it came. I am really hoping we'll get proper snow soon; these short, dark days and the drab, dark weather only inspire sadness and I just know that snow would brighten things up immensely!

Rita the rag-rabbit

Like I mentioned in my earlier post, I've finally gotten around to photographing Rag Pets that have been very patiently waiting for their turn for quite a while. And here's one of them now, Rita the rag-rabbit:

Rita is a graphic artist and an avid doodler. She loves colour, and pens and pencils of all sorts and she's rather particular about paper.

Rita is made from soft toffee coloured wool and she's been stuffed with rags, a bit of polyfill and lots of love. She has tiny little black buttons for eyes, an embroidered nose and pretty blushy cheeks. She has a textured beige button for a belly button.
Rita is wearing a flowery lilac cotton tunic with pleats on the front and plum coloured stripy tricot leggings. Her tunic closes in the back with a snap and her leggings have elastic at the waist and a hole in the back so her tail can poke out.

Rita is hanging out in the Rag Pet Shop, waiting to go home to someone who might share her passion for paper and pens. :)

Updating

Gosh I like how funny Rag Pet legs look all piled together higglety-pigglety. :)

I've been a busy little bee with Rag Pet stuff lately, as is evidenced, among other things, by this being my second blog update in as many weeks- as regular readers of my irregular postings will know, my updates can be a bit sporadic. :) I really, really, really hope that this bout of inspiration and motivation will last a long time yet, because I am rather enjoying this!

I've been taking pictures of old Rag Pets who I hadn't photographed yet, making wholly new Rag Pets and designing future ones. I stocked the Rag Pet Shop and we've been fiddling with promotion and advertising things. Although, when I say "we" I mean just J., since all of this promotion and pricing stuff makes me uncomfortable. It's good that I have someone who knows what they're doing with it all; I'm much happier sticking to the making and creating parts. In addition to J.'s help, my industrious assistant, BooBoo, has also been assisting me. Mostly by sitting on things, industriously. :)

So, Rag Pet things and the shop are chugging along nicely and I hope you are all keeping well too, dear readers. :)

Happy Vappu!

Wishing you all a very happy super fun Vappu, Walpurgis, or May Day as most of you probably know it better as! :)

We spent Vappu Eve by eating much too much yummy food and then we hied to a fancy hotel for a teeny tiny mini-holiday of luxuriating in the very cushy bed, soaking in the bathtub and doing nothing but relaxing and eating some munkki (a jammy doughnut) and drinking sima (mead) as they are the traditional fare here during Vappu, and really delicious besides.
Today, on Vappy Day, we woke up much earlier than we really needed to, probably because we're so used to getting up early thanks to the cat clamouring for food as soon as she's up. We had a really nice breakfast at the hotel, and then I wound my way back home through the Vappu celebrations in the city to continue merriments with the clamouring cat. :)

I popped some special Vappu-themed Rag Pets into the shop today, so go say hello to May and Polly and have a jolly May Day everyone!