Spent the past week cro­chet­ing and sewing, and final­ly a shop update! :D I haven’t been putting a lot of effort into the Etsy shop, to be hon­est, but my friend has just opened a phys­i­cal shop down­town and I real­ly want­ed to make some stuff for her, so I thought I’d put some new stuff in my shop as well :D

 

I had this idea in my head for a long time, a grassy brooch with flow­ers on it, but could­n’t fig­ure out what I should use to make the flow­ers, what kind of flow­ers I want to make, etc. It final­ly all came togeth­er when the weath­er was get­ting warm and the dan­de­lions start­ed bloom­ing, and I was remind­ed of the back­yard in my fam­i­ly’s first home in Cana­da. It was in North­ern Ontario and we had wild ros­es and, of course, dan­de­lions in the yard. We’ve nev­er had a yard or gar­den in Hong Kong, so this was quite new to us. We plant­ed oth­er things too, like pan­sies. But the wild ros­es and dan­de­lions, they’re the ones that came back spring after spring with­out water­ing, tena­cious­ly, per­sis­tent­ly, care-free.

So! The spring gar­den brooch is in the shop! :D

 

 

I also made an oval one.

 

The brooches were a lot of fun to make. I’m hop­ing to make more soon, maybe with dif­fer­ent flowers.

And here’s snow mush­room’s cousin, spring mush­room! :D

 

Spring mush­rooms like sun­bathing and pic­nick­ing on sun­ny days and falling asleep to the sound of the rain. He has shiny sequins on his cap. 

 

There’s also anoth­er cousin of snow mush­room, the snowflake mush­room. She will be liv­ing in my friend’s shop.

 

Snowflake mush­room has snowflakes on her cap.

 

The orig­i­nal snow mush­room is still avail­able at the shop :D

And here are the ones I’m bring­ing to my friend’s shop — the teacup mushrooms!

It’s also an idea that I’ve been think­ing about for a while. The grassy bit is a lid, so one could put things in the teacup, like can­dy, loose change, a rock col­lec­tion, love notes…

Here’s anoth­er one…

 

When I was at the thrift store I saw these glass­ware and I thought these would be just per­fect for the snow mush­rooms! So I had to make them too.

 

They have spark­ly beads on their caps :D

 

The teacup and glass­ware mush­rooms are only at my friend’s shop for now, but I’d be hap­py to mak­ing them on com­mis­sion :D

 

It was a bliss­ful week cro­chet­ing, drink­ing tea and watch­ing Gil Gris­som solve crimes…

The mush­rooms and I wish you a love­ly week­end! :D 

 

 

 

Yay for cus­tom orders! :D

 

You may have noticed that my mush­room friends have appeared on the Etsy badge over on the right side­bar- they’re a cus­tom order for a very cre­ative bride-to-be :D And they’re going to be cake top­pers, along with oth­er cre­ations that the bride is going to make! I can’t wait to see what the fin­ished cake top­per (and the cake!) looks like :D

They may look plushy, but they’re actu­al­ly pret­ty hardcore.

Well, that’s what a mush­room’s got­ta do when it’s going to be on its feet (foot?) all day! Yes, inside the mush­room stems are screws, and wash­ers at the bot­tom, so that they could stand on their own with­out tip­ping over.

I also added gills…

 

And one mush­room has spark­ly sequins atop its head…

 

I love cus­tom orders. I love hear­ing the sto­ries behind the orders and I feel so hon­oured that my plush friends can be part of the sto­ry. And I’m just so excit­ed that the snow mush­rooms are going to be a part of a wed­ding! The orig­i­nal snow mush­rooms appear on snow days to spread hol­i­day cheers. I’ve asked these spe­cial top­per mush­rooms to spread wed­ding cheers and well wish­es at the recep­tion; I think they will do a good job :D

If you have some­thing in mind that I may be able to make for you, feel free to vis­it my shop or con­tact me, I’d love to chat!

Have a love­ly Wednesday!

 

So! The cus­tom order I have been work­ing on ear­li­er this month has gone to its new home, so I can final­ly show you what they are! :D I’ll share some of our favourites here, but you can also see the full set on flickr.

Yes, it’s a full set of alpha­bet fridge mag­nets with cro­chet food items. Each mag­net stands 1 — 1.5 inch­es tall (the bunch o’grapes is the only one who is too tall for its kind, but the rest accept­ed him anyway). Mike came up with the catchy team name “alphafood” :D

Try­ing to fig­ure out how to incor­po­rate the let­ters took a bit of exper­i­ment­ing. At first I tried to cro­chet the let­ters, which looked alright…

But then when I got to “B” I had a hard time stop­ping it from mor­ph­ing into an “8”. So I tried cut­ting the let­ters out from felt. I did­n’t think it would work so well because none of my small scis­sors are super sharp, but between my one pair of large but sharp fab­ric scis­sors and my small dull scis­sors it actu­al­ly worked out real­ly well with all the let­ters. And then I just tacked them on with fab­ric glue and secured them with some stitches.

See? Much bet­ter :D

There’s some­thing about cut­ting let­ters out by hand that I find real­ly sooth­ing. I do that a lot with paper, and I’m hap­py to know that it works with felt too. Some of my favourites are the banana…

… and the strawberry.

The radish is Mike’s favourite.

And this is where the give peas a chance pat­tern comes from.

It was fun to come up with food items that are not too obscure and would trans­late well in cro­chet at the same time. While work­ing on them we had some friends over and they seemed real­ly excit­ed about guess­ing what some food items were. I did­n’t expect it could turn into such a fun guess­ing game…

Every­one took a while to fig­ure out this one.

V is for veg­etable soup!

One per­son got this one right away, I was pret­ty impressed!

U is for ugli fruit!

I thought peo­ple would have trou­ble with this one, but they guessed it right away.

Q is for que­sadil­la! (topped with a Q‑shaped dol­lop of sour cream! :D)

Anoth­er proud mem­ber of the Mex­i­can cui­sine that peo­ple took a while to guess. (It did­n’t help when I tried to give a hint by telling the rid­dle: “what do you call cheese that does­n’t belong to you?”)

N is for nacho! (a tri­an­gu­lar nacho chip, dipped in bits of sal­sa and nacho cheese! :D)

Besides Xigua, which is Chi­nese for water­mel­on, I could­n’t find a food that starts with the let­ter “X”, and water­mel­on has already signed up to rep­re­sent let­ter “W”. I found a forum where peo­ple were dis­cussing food items that start with spe­cif­ic let­ters for writ­ing a chil­dren’s alpha­bet book, and some­one sug­gest­ed the Her­shey’s Kiss for “X”. I thought it was a fine idea.

 

I hope the alphafoods will make it fun to learn the alpha­bets for the lit­tle boy who’s get­ting them! :D

Meet every­one on the alphafood team on Flickr! :D

Feel free to drop me a note through my Etsy shop or send me an email at genuinemudpie[at]gmail[dot]com if you want to chat about cus­tom orders!

Have a sweet week­end everyone!