No! Squirrels and Hedgehogs are the new owls!

Not Narwhals are the new owls, but squirrels and hedgehogs are! Barncat posted her lovely version of the Bunny Stitch Along and her daughter saw an embroidered owl rather than a hedge and squirrel. It really does look like an owl from a distance. I would love to say that finally someone saw the hidden picture in this pattern but I'm afraid the Owl was created completely unintentional!
Thanks all you Stitch Alongers for posting your work so far! Somehow I feel this pattern leaves not as much room for variation as I would have liked. Is it the fall colours or what?

Narwhals are the new owls!

At least that's what I think...I've seen quite a few of them pop up in the crafty scene lately. As I'm always looking for new and exciting animals to add to my Animal Alphabet I thought the Narwhal would be a perfect candidate for the letter 'N'.
This is a try out for the new Sea themed pattern and I'm quite pleased with the embroidered version of this animal. Just need to adjust it a bit here and there and he and his sea creature friends will be in the shop before you know it!

Hello again!

Just a quick hello from me! Thank you all for your sweet comments on my goodbye post.
This is my new view from the living room. Quite a change of scenery! Good news is that I get my own craft room in our new house where I can draw, paint and sew!

EECK! & bye bye

This is my Emergency Embroidery & Craft Kit (EECK!): a sketchbook + pen + pencil, a hoop with one of my new Sea creature designs, a needle pebble (thank you Georgia) and some embroidery floss. This will hopefully keep me occupied during the next week while our stuff is traveling from Norway to Holland. So bye bye for now and I hope to see you all back in a week or so!

No more wip's

I will not bore you anymore with wip's of my Sublime Stitching Pillowcase because it's finished! Towards the end of a large-ish embroidery project like this I become a bit manic, because I REALLY want to finish it. Anyway I'm really pleased with this pillowcase, especially the filled in hearts. And the birds are so cute!

I'm also looking forward to my next project. I just made a few test transfers from my new pattern which I will stitch (hopefully) during the week of the move. I've already made an 'emergency creative kit' with a hoop, my new transfers, scissors, my Emily Martin sketchbook and a pencil. Still have to decide which floss to take with me.

Sneak peek new pattern!

Yay! I'm nearly done with a new hand embroidery pattern. This will be one which will be great for boys. You can stitch the whole design or just use the smaller individual creature designs. Will be in the shop when I re-open!

Oh and about the price for embroidery floss *shudders* I bought mine for a staggering 2.35 usd per skein. About six times the US price!

Sunday stash #8 Woodgrain fabrics

This week I want to show you some yummy Woodgrain fabrics by Joel Dewberry for Westminster Fibers. I've ordered the yellow and pink as well but I can't show them to you yet! For a long time I was under the impression that Joel was a woman. There are not that many male fabric designers so I guess I therefore assumed Joel was a woman. Until I saw a photo and Joel is definitely male! I really like his new line of fabric too with deers and antlers and all.

I'm planning to make some cute things with these for the girls' new bedrooms. I want to make them both a nice reading (or in Luna's case 'to be read to') corner with lots of cushions! Zoe will have a nature theme in her room. Lots of blue and green, lovely wallpaper with birds, vintage butterfly pictures. And Luna will have a cosy fairytale/forest theme with lots of green (one of her favourite colours), pink (her other favourite colour), the same bird wallpaper and cute dots and gingham. These woodgrain fabrics match these themes perfectly!

Sublime pillowcase

Luna is showing the pillowcase I'm working on. Or was working on until I ran out of pink floss (DMC 963 for those of you who really want to know) So I decided to make the 20 minute drive to the craftstore to buy the missing colour. Usually I buy all my floss online because of the extremely high prices here and today it was even worse. Please take a guess (in us dollars) what I paid (because ofcourse I bought it, I had already made the trip!) for one skein of regular DMC mouline floss....

I've also been working on some new embroidery patterns. Hope you will all like it. So far I've been sketching a lot of Storks, Trees and Unicorns.

p.s. what do you call a really expensive item in English? In Dutch we say something is 'peperduur' (which means as expensive as pepper) which stems from centuries ago when pepper was very expensive.

Lazy Days & Twirly skirt

Just found a great link on Jean's blog of this cute (free!) sewing pattern on the Oliver + S website which I wanted to share with you. I've made several House on Hill road twirly skirts for the girls so it's about time I tried a new pattern. It looks very do-able even with my sewing skills!

<3

Thank you for all your sweet comments on my last post and restoring my faith in the goodness of the Flickr community! I guess the stress of moving is getting to me...

When I arrive in my new house there hopefully will be some crafty supplies waiting for me. I ordered quite a few Heather Ross fabrics, Mendocino mainly, because Zoe *needs* a new bed quilt to go with her new room. The other thing is a bunch of vintage embroidery patterns I bought on Ebay. There will be some 'doubles' so these will probably make their way into a Give away on this blog later this summer!

More moving stuff

but then of the kind that brings tears to your eyes...I have been on Flickr for a year and half now and found it to be a very pleasant friendly environment where people share stuff and support each other. This evening however I got a Flickr mail that made me very sad. I was banned from a group I had joined. I shall not name this group but it has to do with fabric swapping. Apparently every non-active member was banned. I shall not go on about the flickrmails that I sent to the admin and the, in my opinion, quite heartless responses I got, but this really brought tears to my eyes.

Moving stuff

I'm going to miss this view I think! Only a little over a week to go before the movers take over the house... That means my Etsy shop will close for a bit too so if you still need/want/crave something from it, hurry! I'm still in doubt if I will re-open shortly after the move or re-open later with a re-vamped shop with new stock.

In the photo you see our neighbours' house, they live 'downhill' and on their chimney is a stone (or should I say rock?). And on the stone is a bird. The bird is real by the way. I had never seen people put stones on their chimney before I came to Norway and I thought it was some kind of old Norse folkloric thing to do that. Apparently it's just to keep a little chimney-lid-kind-of-thing in place, but it does look nice with a bird on during sunset!

Traveldoodlestorylog

I love this book by Charlotte Samiec! Not just because the colour of the cover is chartreuse, one of my favourite colours. I could write an entire blogpost about that colour, and I will but not now! It's a great book for children of about 8-10 years old. Zoe is 8 and I think she will enjoy it. It features a range of creative stuff (drawing, writing) to do while you're traveling very much based on observations of your new environment. Like 'Write what you did today from your shoes' point of view'. Or a list of stuff children have to spot in an art museum or gallery like 'a loaf of bread, a suitcase and a painting with a really crazy name'. Kids can also record foreign words, traveldata etc etc. There's a mini Snakes and Ladders game in there as well. Too much to mention really. At the back of the book there is a place to store tichets and such. And last but not least: the book is wonderfully illustrated by Andrew Pinder.

Sunday stash # 7 Momo Wonderland

These are Momo's Wonderland fabrics I ordered a little while ago. The one on top is called Metamorphosis in the colour pistachio and the patchwork-y fabric is called Mad Hatter in the colourway Sugar. I would buy them just for the gorgeous names!
I bought the fabrics online (because of the Great Norwegian Lovely Fabric Shortage) and had not seen them beforehand so when they arrived last week I was surprised how beige they seemed. Less fresh looking than I thought they would be anyway. And when I washed them there was some fabric'bleeding' on the Mad Hatter fabric too. Any of you have the same 'problems' with this line of fabric?

By popular demand...

Well you've asked for it....check out this hen! Sure it may not look so bad to you. But it certainly doesn't suit my retro 30's-50's inspired interior! I don't think it wants to move the Holland either. ; )

To fill in or not to fill in...

As I only embroidered my own patterns in the last couple of weeks I was looking forward to try something else. So I got out a blank pillowcase and went through my box of embroidery patterns. I chose this sweet Sublime Stitching pattern from their Craftpad. The 'scandinavian' colours go with a pillow and lampshade in my bedroom. Stuff you already own and fabrics and such can be a great guide to choosing colours for your embroideries.

The question now is to fill in this bird design or not to fill in. I already did the little leafs. Maybe I will outline everything first and then decide. I'm also going to finish a Wild Olive pattern I started a little while ago. Making these embroideries makes me think I should maybe try and use some clearer lines on my own patterns too.

Oh and totally unrelated: I saw that my local Ikea sold Moose-lasagna! I'm NOT talking about cute lasagna in the shape of a moose but lasagna with moose in. I should already be used to all the reindeer, moose and whatnot consumption here after 3 years but Ikea managed to surprise me. I wonder what meat was in the swedish meatballs we ate...

Thrifted

My oldest daughter took this Italian small teapot home from a not very fancy fleamarket. Quite a good find for an 8 year old! This was a gift for me, whereas my husband got a not quite so pretty large 80's chicken figurine. :)

Moving

I'm writing moving cards for our upcoming move. Well not writing the cards, just the envelopes. I hardly write anything by hand anymore, except for a postcard every now and then oh and grocery lists of course. Anyway I ordered lovely moving cards on Etsy here. Do take a look in Laura Beth's shop, there's some lovely stuff there. I also stole the picture you see here from her shop (which I will confess to later) because I'm not Julie Wilson, but I wouldn't mind moving to a place called Pleasantville! And maybe Jack is a nice man too. I bet Annie, Sarah and Ben are adorable too. :)

Yartsale in my Etsyshop

Yay! Art+Yard+sale=Yartsale! I'm participating in the Yartsale on Etsy, visit my Follow the White Bunny shop NOW! 10% off everything, including the packagedeals! As all my patterns are dear to me I couldn't choose which patterns I would put on sale so they are all discounted! I've already marked down the prices in the shop.

Peek inside my sketchbook

Recently I bought some lovely stuff from TheBlackApple. (see lower picture) A print to hang in my new house next to this print I bought earlier this year. I love that creepy bunny! And a sketchbook in which I put sketches and little drawings of new ideas. (see picture above)
News from the StitchAlong front is that a) it was mentioned on Craftgossip earlier today and b) I finished my own StitchAlong! I shall post a nice mosaic on this blog from the Follow the White Bunny Pool, when a few more are finished!

Giveaways I came across while surfing crafty blogs...

Tell us bunny, tell us! Which giveaways came to your attention?
Well I found one on Ravenhill's blog with lovely fabric-y goodies and the brand new issue of the British magazine Sew Hip! If I should win I will pass the magazine on to one of you because I have a subscription. :)
The other one is on quarterofaninche's blog it's the latest issue of Mixtapezine, a crafty magazine.

Sunday stash # 6 Pantry

This is one of my first fabric buys. I don't remember what I paid for it or what I was planning to do with it. Maybe I intended to make an apron with it. Anyway I still love it. It's from Alexander Henry and it's called Pantry. Because I'm a historian (well trained to be one anyway) I'm going to give you a little background about Pantries (if that is the correct plural for pantry). The Wikipedia says this: "In a late medieval hall, there were separate rooms for the various service functions and food storage. A pantry was where bread (as in the french word 'pain') was kept and food preparation associated with it done" No sign of bread in Alexander Henry's pantry though...

All alone in Twitter

I'm not sure about Twitter. I recently joined and thought I'd leave some messages but it feels like I'm drifting all alone in space. Are any of you twittering? If so, go and find me and maybe I won't feel so alone! My twitter name is Followbunny. I can't promise I will keep on Twittering though. One of the annoying things is that there are nasty followers there. It's really not o.k. for some people, those with indecent stuff for example, to follow bunny! But crafty and nice decent people are very welcome!

Isn't it ironic?

This is a WIP of my Frog prince embroidery. All was going well, I'm especially happy with the little frogeggs, until I started to tidy up my box(es) of embroidery floss... Because in the process of reorganisation I somehow managed to loose one of the flosses I'm using in this embroidery. It's the water plant colour that has mysteriously dissappeared. I have a colour very similar to it (the one I used for the lily pad) but it's just not right... If I had just let my floss in the chaos it was, I would surely be able to find it right away. : / Anyway that reminded me of the Alanis Morisette song 'Isn't it ironic' which has no ironic examples in it. I didn't figure that out myself, it was on a tvshow. They even had some language professor explain why the lyrics of that song weren't ironic at all and that was in itself ironic. :)

Happy and sad

Yay! The Bunny Stitch A long has officially started. My patterns are always produced in a flurry of energy and somehow I felt I needed to finish this one today. So I did! All the sweet comments and people signing up cheered me up. I needed that because I was saying goodbye to a good friend today who is moving to the other end of the world. More than a few tears were shed. Thanks to all you sweet embroiderers who want to Stitch A long with me!
p.s. by clicking on the pattern you can enlarge it and print it.

Sign up for the Bunny Stitch A long!

Sign up for the Bunny Stitch A long here. Bunny wants you!
This (photo) is what the pattern will look like. Just need to tweak it a little and turn it into a PDF with my magic wand and it's ready to post on this blog and in the Follow the White Bunny Fllickr Group.

Favourite cup

One of the good things of moving house is going through all your stuff and having a good clear out of all the unloved stuff. I even bought a book about decluttering, but I didn't finish it. The pressure of an upcoming move was enough to throw a lot of stuff out. One thing I did learn from the book is to get rid of stuff you don't enjoy having in your house. So I got rid of a bunch of old cups and mugs. Amongst them one from a company I used to work for and that sure didn't bring back any happy memories for me. I was very happy to see it go.

These two cups in the picture however (well one is a mug actually) do make me happy. The one on the left is an Iitalla cup designed by Klaus Haapaniemi. I've also got some dinnerware with the same pattern in different colours. And I just spotted a new line by him, gorgeous! The Paddington cup is less glamourous I suppose but it is my favourite cup to drink coffee from for the last 15 years or so!

Frog prince shoes

Of course I want to show off my Frog Prince shoes too! Aren't they sweet? They're Camper shoes. Camper has a 'twin' line of shoes every season, shoes that match but are not the same. I bought these second hand on Ebay a couple of years back. I love these from their new collection.