awww

In case you're hesitating over participating in my hubbie's contest, I say go for it! He's really excited to draw the portrait, and we're both excited to read your stories. They don't have to be long or perfectly written, just tell us about how great or funny your kid was this one time... I think all moms are pretty good at that, right?

As for my contest, I've decided to give away a copy of Festive Knits! A shiny new printed copy to whomever wins. However, if the winner has already bought it (and lots have, thank you so much!) I will put together a package of goodies for you, probably involving some combination of yarn, fabric, buttons, and chocolate.

And to round off the week properly, here is an absolutely adorable bunny made by Kelli. I spotted this little treasure on Ravelry a few days ago, and she made even my husband say, "awww."

Mr. Mitten's holiday give-away!

Pensive, originally uploaded by mricon.

Hi, everyone -- Mr. Mitten here again. Usually it's Barbara who announces the giveaways, but I figured I shouldn't let her have all the fun. :)

I'm going to be giving away one custom-made portrait! I'm not a professionally trained artist, but I do enjoy putting pencil to paper every now and again.

Since we're getting ready to welcome our first child into the big wide world, I think that "kids" would be a good theme for the giveaway. If you would like to enter the contest, send a short funny story about your child and a portrait picture you would like done to konstantin@fuzzymitten.com. Drawing from photos can be a little tricky, so it's best if the picture is a studio portrait, or even just a high quality digital shot with good lighting. The deadline for submissions will be December 1st -- and I'll try to get the portrait done by December 10th so I can mail it in time.

I guarantee to be completely arbitrary in my selection of the winner, though I'm sure Barbara will have a say. :)

Cheers,
-Konstantin

give-away day

One of the blogs I read regularly is Sew-Mama-Sew. Even with so little time to sew things for myself, it's always fun to see what interesting ideas they've dug up, and they often post links to useful tutorials. They've decided to have a Give-Away Day on December 3, where they will list any blogs that want to host a give-away contest on that day. The items are all supposed to be hand-made themselves, or materials for making things. By visiting their site for the list of participating blogs, you can easily participate in a whole bunch of contests, and so increase your chance of winning a little gift for the holidays!

Since I haven't hosted a give-away in months, I think it's a great idea to join in! I have no idea yet what I might have as the prize, or if I will make it a contest or a draw. Whatever I decide, make sure to check in on that day for your chance to win! (don't worry, I will mention it again before that date for all of us forgetful people :)

busy weekend

I hope you all had an excellent weekend! I had a busy one. Saturday we went to town and spent lots of money - babies require so many things! Good thing we've been saving up for a while. Just one quick trip to Ikea, and our spare room will be all ready for our little boy. I've had to give up my sewing room, but we had empty space in our living room for the sewing table, and I don't mind, given the reason! Yesterday I spent the whole afternoon making curtains for his room. I wanted to do them well, with lining because of the street-light outside the window. I didn't expect all that fabric to be such a big job to haul around, from pinning on the floor, to sewing machine, to lap for the final hem. It's all done now, though, and looks great!

I also found time to work on something new for the holidays! A free pattern for little decorations, a bit like I did last year. I need to knit a few more to double check everything, and take photos, but it should be all ready by this time next week!

hint #9

I've been asked many times how I shape the heads of my toys so they don't just look like round blobs. While proper stuffing helps a lot, I have a little trick that helps the face keep it's shape.

Here you can see a very basic diagram I've drawn. It shows the toy head from the front, so you see both eyes and the nose. The blue line shows the seam. I have drawn the diagram as if you were using safety eyes, so they are already attached.

The purple lines show where to make the stitches to shape the head. You'll need a tapestry or soft-sculpture needle with about 12" of yarn the same colour as the face. Insert your needle with yarn at the bottom of the head, have it come up just under one eye, and make a short stitch towards the centre of the face. Have the needle and yarn exit the head near when you started. Then snug up the yarn to shape the face, and knot the yarn securely. Repeat this for the other eye.

If you are using buttons for eyes, the process is the same, except you are making the stitches through the buttons, and you'll want to use heavy thread instead of yarn. Passing the thread through the button 3 times is usually enough to hold it on securely. This process also allows you to hide the yarn or thread ends when you sew the head to the body.

I hope this was helpful! I am thinking of making a video of the process for my blog, but I'm not sure when I will have time to do that.

slipper pattern

I promised a few weeks ago to share this pattern, and finally had a bit of time to find it and fix it up for you! These slippers are knit flat and seamed up the back, and shaped to fit the toys with rounded feet (not the toys with big feet like the bunnies and monkeys). I don't remember how much yarn I used to knit these, but it wasn't very much. If you try out the pattern, maybe you could leave a comment telling others how much yarn you needed.


Slippers (make 2)

Materials: small amount of fingering or sock weight yarn, 3 mm (US size 2.5) needles, tapestry needle

Cast on 14 sts. P 1 row.
Next: k1, [m1, k1] across. (27 sts) P 1 row.
Next: k3, m1, (k2, m1, k2) 6 times. (34 sts)
Work 5 rows in st st.
Next: k11, [skpo] 3 times, [k2tog] 3 times, k11. (28 sts) P 1 row.
Next: k8, [skpo] 3 times, [k2tog] 3 times, k8. (22 sts)
Work 3 rows in st st.
Work 3 more rows in [k1, p1] rib.
Next: cast off in pattern.
Sew together back seam and sole of sock.

The slippers will be a bit snug to get on, but this way they don't fall off!

Book pricing and costs

Hi, everyone. Mr. Mitten here with some more info on the book's pricing. As Barbara said earlier today, Lulu recently had a price hike on all printed materials. Before, you were paying $12 in printing costs per book, but now it's up to $15, which is quite a significant difference. Unfortunately, that means that we couldn't continue charging $19.95 per book, especially considering that we also have to pay Lulu's commission on each item sold.

This is why the price for printed books went up by a bit. We tried to make it up to you guys by lowering the price on the download version to $17.50 -- hopefully this will help those of you who aren't interested in getting the printed version (though it's nice and shiny! I'm very pleased with it.)

Just a couple of words about our operating costs -- we barely have any. :) The book was written entirely in Free Software (pictures done in Gimp, covers and charts done in Inkscape, and the layout done in Scribus, all of it running on Fedora Linux). Apart from Lulu (or Etsy), there are no other middlemen, so anything you pay goes straight to the artist, making sure that she is always pregnant with new ideas (*badum-pum!* ;)).

Overall, this distribution model works out pretty well for everyone, and unless Lulu's printing costs go up again, we should be able to continue to offer patterns at comparatively low costs (at least compared to some other pattern designers.)