Old School Acres

Wiggles, Squiggles, Giggles, and...

Speedy?  Sneaky?  Fraidy?  Nope.  The shy one is Super Star.

Mama cat's name is Orange.  She likes to feed her babies outside the back door.

It's all about the eyes

One of the trickiest things about designing softies is placement of the eyes.  Well, the trickiest thing is gussets, but eyes are close behind.  I'm partial to a shiny eye, which gives a catchlight.  So, back to placement.  See Ed the Elephant?  He's cute, yes? But I can't get over the fact that his eyes need to be a tad higher. 

And the next version of Ed is going to have pretty pearly blue eyes.  

Wish I could wear ruffles on my butt

New item for The Baby Gardner (not on the site yet).  Vintage embroidery pattern on the shirt.  And! I'm sewing pigs this week!  I've missed the little guys and gals. 

Broken

Sidecutters are not a wedding ring's best friend; however, they were necessary last night when a bug bit my ring finger.  My finger swelled and my ring cut off the circulation and out came the sidecutters.  Boo hoo.

Neigh.

So you would think that with all the live models around here a horse would be easy.  Me, too, but not so.  I have a pile of failures.  Finally a keeper.

Lambie pie

On the way to my parents' house is a sheep farm.  The lambs this spring were as sweet as pie.  If I could have gotten by with it I would have jumped the fence, grabbed at least a dozen, and buckled their sweet wooly butts right into my van.  When I got them home I'd have tied little ribbons and bells around their necks.  My husband can't be convinced that sheep would be a good addition to the farm.  Party pooper. 

This is as close as we are going to get.  Lambie from a vintage pattern.

Itty-bitty yo-yo

What do you know?  I can follow instructions!

The process wasn't nearly as difficult as I imagined.  The yo-yo maker is especially handy for these itty-bitties.  Has anyone tried the hearts and/or flower yo-yo makers?  Thoughts?

This is Grace

The not so graceful horse that badly cut her leg 3 weeks ago.  We were never able to figure out where she caught her leg, but she has about 3 inches of leg bone exposed and a severed extensor tendon on the front of the cannon bone.  Not a good situation.  Brett's dad even brought the backhoe out so we could bury her.  Lucky for Grace our vet thought it a shame to put down an otherwise healthy, gentle horse.  So 2 weeks ago the vet put a cast on her leg to help with healing.  The leg looks so much better, but bone is still exposed.  So she got a new cast yesterday.  We'll take another look in 3 weeks.

Here she is with her new cast (the old one is on the floor to her left).  Ever seen a doped up horse?  A little bit funny; a lot scary.  The legs don't possibly look strong enough to hold up all that weight when they are wobbling around.

She got a quick-and-dirty pedicure, too.  The ugly hoof on the left is what the one on the right looked like. 
Blech.
 

Not too early to think about Christmas

At least not for me, the queen of procrastination.  I tend to work pretty well when under a deadline, but I have a big project I need to start.  See, my mother-in-law would love a yo-yo quilt/coverlet.  I'm thinking that if I start now I can at least get enough done by Christmas to make a little coverlet for the back of her chair.  If I'm really ambitious and whiz through them maybe a quilt isn't too far out of the question.

I broke down and bought these this past weekend:

I don't mind making yo-yos the old-fashioned way, but I want them to be as similar in size as possible.  The instructions?  Ugh.  I hope the process is easier than it looks, especially because I hope to put Katie to work making yo-yos! 

I want to get a couple pair of baby shoes done and ready to ship and then the yo-yo factory will open.

A Rhino on the farm.

A blue Rhino.  The 2 best things about this animal?  Nothing in; nothing out.