The next day after playing with Crochet Me I got my Ravelry invite. It was all I could do not to dig through all day while I was at work. Ravelry has a great database of patterns. Unlike CrochetMe’s the patterns are not all free, but rather soemthign that lets you know before you buy or download basic info about the pattern and what others rate it. How great. Ravelry wants to make it when one day you will be able to sell your patterns trough their service. What a great idea.

All this talk about patterns. I should tell you what I have been up to. I have spent most of the last two weeks or so working on writing patterns. While I never lacked respect for designers, I have gained a deeper appreciation of how hard it is to write clear directions. I usually write my patterns in my notebook as I go, it is a strange shorthand that I doubt anyone but myself could follow. Hopefully I will be able to have some sort of pay off for all this work. Wish me luck!

Other than working on the site I have been doing some light crafting. I have been working on a set of costars from the Purl Bee’s site for a friend. I also was going to make one for myself. Other than that I have been letting my hands rest a little.

I will start with the new guy. I have not come up with a real name for him yet (a reoccurring problem I have) but I referred to him on the inventory sheet as just “Cyan” for obvious reasons. He is made from Brown Sheep Company’s Cotton Fleece Yarn in Robin Egg Blue. He took almost a whole skein to make and was by far the largest amigurumi I have ever made at about 9 inches tall. The foot pads are made from fabric from a local quilting shop that I think might be an Amy Butler print.

Now lets have a group shot…

I made some stickers for promos…

And cute paper tags.

Therese has also started her own mini Oscars – The Softie Awards. Amazing work from all over flickr, the blogisphere and from anyone else how has a digital camera. I know personally that the Softie Awards pushed me to make better softies. Unfortunately I did not find out about them until a week before the deadline so I had to franticly crochet my Kitsune for the amigurumi category.

Now Therese has a book out full of fun patterns from some of the best softie designers on her blog. It looks fantastic. I am ordering my copy today and I will post more about the book once I have been able to read it.

Softie Central has been such a huge resource for me in the last few months. Therese has also been more then kind herself when we have exchanged e-mails. I know it sounds silly but I jumped up and down and clapped my hands the first time one of my toys made it to her blog. I am glad that the book gives me and other Softie Central fans a way to support her financially.

One of the main reasons is that I really wanted new pictures of the pacman toys. That towel makes me cringe every time I see it. I have learned my lesson and will never again do a quick shot with whatever I can throw together in 5 minutes.

Making the toys for a second time was surprisingly enlightening. I found that I wanted to change parts of the pattern a little because I have learned better ways to so things. I reduced the number of repeat rows on pacman’s body from 8 to 4, which gives him a better-rounded shape. I also came up with an alternative way of making the points; the result is a slightly different look but a little easier on the hands.

R1: Form Amigurumi ring and single crochet 3 times into it.
R2-5: inc 3 evenly
R6: sc evenly

All that is left to round out the set of pacman/men toys is to make and sew on the eyes for the ghost. I just realized that I am out of blue buttons so I will have to make a trip to Hancock today if I want to finish them. I have been stash-busting lately in a way to offset the cost of the new craft room. I like how it forces me to use what I have and try color combinations I might not otherwise have tried.

In the sprit of what I just learned from redoing the pacman toys I play on reworking some of the toys I have done in the last year to go out in the Plush You show. I already have a new Lil Ugly on the needles. This time knit and not crocheted so I can get nicer increases on the belly. Also I have not knit in a while and I miss it.

Before the glamor shots, a little history. I did not start regularly crafting until I was in collage working on my degree in graphic design. I started to crochet crazy then. I had a good yarn stash in various plastic shopping bags under my dorm room bed. Then when I “grew up” and got an apartment everything was shoved into a cedar lines chest my grandfather made me. Now I love that chest. I loved the idea of keeping my materials for making hand made stuff in something so wonderfully hand made. But I had to sit on it to close it and that was with bags of roving and my new sewing machine not even on the inside. There was just no way I could continue to use it.

So it was time to put the interior design books and all the great photos I have seen in the craft room flickr pool to good use. I knew I would need a table for my machine and lots of storage. So my husband and I started a hunt for a table. After looking around lots of stores and not finding what I wanted. Then we got lucky at Kudzu Antiques in Decatur Georgia and found a great old metal table. After loading it onto our truck we made a happy discovery – the table top was slate. Ooh swanky. The top had a mysterious epoxy company sticker on it and it needed some cleaning and fresh paint on the metal but that is not a big deal.

Now that I had a work surface I needed a place to put all my goodies. Now I have two cats that love wool and cotton, they seem to ignore the acrylic. More than once I have found a very long trail of yarn wrapping around my old apartment. And they also figured out that spools of thread make a really cool sound on the hardwoods… Have I learned my lesson and stopped leaving yarn around? No. But I have learned that cats can only jump so high.

So overhead storage was a must. But being short, 5’3”, I needed overhead storage that I could pull down to a height. I had been eyeing a set of cubes at target for a while but I needed to find shelves first. Ikea to the rescue with bjärnum wall brackets that are 11” deep, they that is the same size as the cubes, how nice. Oh and look there is a bored the same length as the table, even better.

Now for pegboard. Just a good thing all around to have if you have lots of little tools. Target saved me again with a great pegboard for indoor use made of a pure white plastic with cute hooks and mini shelves that fit. The pegboard was also in16” squares so it would be easy to install on a normal home. But I live in a house made in the mid 50’s and after putting up several shelves my husband and I decided that the construction guys eyeballed where the studs should be because not a single one is 16”. With the pegboard I can keep my tools out and I just love that I can have a jar of eyes handing on the wall.

Putting the whole thing together was fun at times but other times it was a real pain. 50-year-old wood does not take to kindly to having a screw put in it. We also marked up the wall real good, which led to a half-hour of erasing.

Ok so here are the final glamor shots.

Too bad it will never be this pretty again.