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Just Ducky!

Posted in Featured, Knit & Crochet, Sewing , on May 14, 2009 ,
Photo copyright to Jill D'Aubery

Photo copyright to Jill D'Aubery

I love, love LOVE when people send me emails, showing off things they’ve knitted from a pattern or made from a tutorial of mine. This week I got a lovely email from Jill D’Aubery who made her own version of my knitted duck plush, [on ravelry as well] making some fabulous adjustments to the wings and beak to suit. She even added a tie! The changes and resulting duck is simply FANTASTIC and Jill has given me permission to share her pattern changes with all of you so that you can follow her method on your own ducks. But first, the back story. Jill writes,

“My brother-in-law, who is in his 60s, is in love with rubber duckies.  For years now I have knitted something for his wife, but never for him…until I saw your pattern!  I had seen the Lion Brand pattern and felt exactly the same way you did about it.  So I tried your pattern and made a couple of changes and the result is in the attachment.  It’s adorable!!!  I gave the ducky a tie since it’s for a guy and I knitted the tie out of silk embroidery floss with a #1 needle…very difficult but very wonderful.”

“The changes I made were to the wings and beak.  I did the wings lengthwise and bound off tightly which give them a little scalloped effect. 

Photo copyright to Jill

Photo copyright to Jill D'Aubery

Wings
Cast on 14 st. 
Knit every row for 10 rows or so…until the wing is the size you want.
Bind off tightly.
Attach to the body at the bound off end/side.
 

The Beak
Cast on 7 st.
Knit in Stockingknit stitch (knit on right side, purl on wrong side) for 6 rows,
k 2tog on each side, purl one row, add 1 stitch on each side and continue for 5 more rows. 
Bind off.
Attach to body from the slightly narrow middle with the smooth side on the outside.
The beak curls nicely and opens just like a ducky beak!  Of course, you can make the beak larger or smaller as you wish.  Also, I attached the feet on the narrow end so that they sort of flare out like a duck foot does.”

Picture copyright to Jill

Picture copyright to Jill D'Aubery

Now don’t you agree, the result is fantastic? Jill’s ducky rocks my socks off, and when I first read her email and saw the little knitted tie on her ducky, I squealed aloud. SO cute. Great job, Jill, and thank you so much for sharing your pattern with us!

Around here it’s almost time for a long weekend, so hope you all have a great weekend. I’ll be back to update you on our Father’s Day sock progress soon!


Queen of ALLL Things AWE-SUMMM Award!

Posted in Featured , on May 4, 2009 ,
Queen of ALLL Things AWE-SUMMM!!! award

Queen of ALLL Things AWE-SUMMM!!! award

I was generously bestowed the honor of Queen of ALLL Things Awe-Summm, an award granted to me by my friend KnitPurlGurl!  To accept this award, I am required to abide by the terms and conditions that come with it: I must list 7 awesome things about myself, and then I must list 7 others who I think are awesome to pass the award on to.

1. I’m crafty. But you already knew that. I knit, crochet, sew, paint, handmake cards and everything else in between. If it’s crafty, I’ll try it. I’m constantly crafting something and always trying to figure out how to make things; I prefer to make something myself if I can, especially gifts for others. I can’t remember the last time I purchased a greeting card for someone. Being crafty means I understand, appreciate and respect others that handmake things, too: the process, the effort, the time investment, the heart and soul…
2. In my professional life, I am dedicated to helping others. I’m an elementary teacher by trade, and have known my entire life that I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up. I’ve been teaching others for as long as I can remember and am proud to have a career where it’s my job to help others all of the time.
3. Along the same lines, in my personal life I am dedicated to helping others. I’ve melded my love for crafts and teaching together here, where I’ve made tutorials on the digital scrapbooking software, My Memories Suite, to help others get the most out of and figure out how to use the software.  My other pastime, gaming, has also been melded with my passion to help others as I write tutorial articles for various games, too.
4. I took a huge plunge and moved to another country in the summer of 2006. Moving so far away from family was hard, but it was the best decision I have ever made in my entire life and the best thing that I’ve done for myself, ever. If I had to do it all over again, I’d do so in a heartbeat.
5. That being said, Lucas and I have made the decision to move back to the states this summer (or ASAP) to be closer to family so we can start our own family soon. And while we’re moving back, which makes my family very happy, I’d still not change the three wonderful years in Canada nor change my decision to move here back in 2006.
6. I can multi-task. Seems boring, but I get a thrill out of having multiple things to do and managing them all at once. To be honest, I think I am more efficient when I’ve got a lot of things due and am up against a deadline. I think this is because I’m very organized and get excited about organization and prioritizing.
7. I can rollerblade. Don’t make fun, because not only can I rollerblade, I can do so without killing myself. While this may seem silly, rollerblading makes me FEEL awesome, and I can’t get enough of it when the weather is nice.

Whew! That was a bit challenging. Really, I thought about it for two days. However, it’s easy peasy to come up with 7 awesome people out there that I would consider Queen of All Things Awesome. In fact, the hardest part about listing 7 awesome people is limiting my list to only 7 people! Ugh! So here goes, in no particular order, the 7 awesome people I am passing this award on to:

1. Daniella of DaniDo Crafty! – fabulous patterns, owns a white mini schnauzer too, and an overall awesome person :)
2. Crazy Aunt Purl – love her writing style, humor, and perfect rolled brim hat recipe!
3. The Yarn Harlot – sure, this may be obvious, but it wasn’t until recently I started using Google Reader and actually following other peoples’ blogs more efficiently than just remembering to go down the list every week or so. Now that I’m on top of it and reading/following/stalking regularly, I can’t believe I’ve been missing out for so long. The Yarn Harlot’s blog leaves me in stitches! (See what I did there?)
4. Maria, creator and maintainer of the DigiFree digital scrapbooking freebie blog. I heart it.
5. Scrap Stuff with PSP – Shawna’s tutorials for PSP and PSD are my inspiration and where I learned most of my digital scrapbooking design techniques. I’d be nowhere without her!
6. Glamour Gals – My friend, Julia, is the director of program expansion for an amazing charity called Glamour Gals. Check her out!
7. Teresa Richardson’s Crochet Mania blog – I taught myself crochet via her YouTube videos. She has over 300 instructional crochet videos or something amazing like that. All I know is she is my top resource for all things crochet. She even has a Video Crochet group on Ravelry!

And there you have it! Special thanks to these lovely people for being blogs I enjoy following and for doing amazing work in your field. You’re all an inspiration! And thank you to KnitPurlGurl for thinking I’m AWE-SUMMM enough to deserve this award in the first place! I’d have included her in this list but since she just had to do it… I figured I can’t really send it back to her. But she’s definitely an AWE-SUMM crafter and overall fab person, and you simply have to pop in and check her out :) Have a great afternoon!


A Craftzine Feature!

Posted in Featured , on April 7, 2009 ,

WOW! Two posts from me within a few hours of each other… something must be wrong with me. Or really good… I just wanted to share some fabulous news!  A friend of mine, Claire, just noticed that I was featured on the Craftzine Blog for the custom handpainted Mahjong set that I made for Lucas for Valentine’s Day this year. How amazing is that?! I am so honored that it’s making me blush. Thanks for the shout out! <3


Cool Stuff to Share!

Posted in Featured, Scrapbooking , on November 25, 2008 ,
Lauren's Fall Festival Layout

Lauren's Fall Festival Layout

So I’ve got some really cool stuff to share with you today. Not a freebie, but something even better — a page created by a reader of the pink toque craft blog using a lot of my past freebie giveaways, and another blog award!  How exciting, huh? :D

First of all, Lauren created this beautiful page for her son’s Fall Festival.  Isn’t it absolutely gorgeous?  She used my chalk alpha, pinktoque dots font, the chalkboard background paper and some elements from my Asparagus freebie, too!  You may even notice some of my freebie crayons and one of my notepaper tags, too!  The awesome notebook that Lauren used was created by Pamela of DigiTreats.  SO cool!  I love this page and love that Lauren took the time to share it with me AND give me permission to share it here with all of you :)  Thanks, Lauren!  It’s absolutely stunning.

Also this week I received another blog award.  This one is the Fabulous award, given to me by the very sweet and talented Knit Purl Gurl over at Scrap Paper Scissors! How lucky am I?  It’s been such a wonderful week.  Thank you so much for the award, KPG! :D  And I don’t know about you, but WOW isn’t her blog design FABULOUS?!  It looks so professional!  I love her blog; you should totally check her out!

The instructions for the award are that I need to list 5 addictions and pass the award on to 5 deserving bloggers.  So here goes!

My 5 addictions (at the moment):
1. World of Warcraft
2. crochet
3. digital scrapbooking
4. coffee
5. Cadbury 100 calorie almond bars

5 deserving bloggers (in no particular order):
1. The Chronicles of Nani
2. Treeparty
3. How I Pinch a Penny
4. Mrs. Multicraft
5. Hey, Knit Happens!

Congrats, award recipients!  Hope you’re having a great week :)


Tags and Scraps

Posted in Featured, Freebies, Scrapbooking , on October 7, 2008 ,
Lesley's "Tags and Scraps" PU Freebie

Lesley's "Tags and Scraps" PU Freebie

So I’ve had this freebie element pack sitting around, finished forever ago it seems.  I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to release it; my only thought is that I keep coming up with new ideas that I can’t wait to make ASAP, and then those take priority when they’re finished and I release the new stuff instead.  Maybe it’s because I’m getting better and better as a designer and so I get really excited when I make something new because I like the way it turned out?  I’m definitely trying and I’ll just pretend that’s the reason ;)

Free for you today is my little “Tags and Scraps” pack, which is filled with… you guessed it: tags, tags and MORE TAGS!

Download “Tags and Scraps” set HERE.

More often than not I tend to find myself near the end of designing a digital scrapbook page and suddenly lacking a good vehicle for dates and short journal wordings.  What’s a girl to do?  Sometimes I try to be artistic and pick an area on the page where I can type my wording alongside a photo or on the edge of a mat, but sometimes you just need a good tag for dates and little quips.  My solution?  Make a set of general, all-purpose tags!  And even better: share them as a freebie with the rest of the digital scrapping world. 15 personal, non-commerical use tags and two notepapers that you can use with just about any layout!  So today I present to you my set of tags.  I hope they help you add that finishing touch to your scrapping projects when you need just a little word space.

Nani's Hoosier State layout

Nani's Hoosier State layout

And also in digi scrapping news, my Ohiogander friend Nani sent me the sweetest email showing off a fabulous layout that she created using pieces of my Hoosier state kit for her scrapbooks.  Isn’t it awesome?  You should really check out her blog: The Chronicles of Nani.  Thanks so much for sharing, Nani!  Page posted with Nani’s permission.  I really love seeing what others do with my freebie kits.  I’m so lucky to have such kind and wonderful readers! <3 :heart:

Enjoy today’s freebie and Nani’s layout and blog! You can be sure there are more freebies on the way; I’ve got so many waiting to be released that I’m just not sure what I plan to give away next! Haha, there are worse dilemmas to be in I guess ;) Take care and happy Tuesday!