Sebastian’s Grand Endeavor – Part I

Yesterday as I was busy sewing and sewing, I heard Sebastian sigh.
He seemed a bit out of sorts but I kept sewing.

Then he sighed again. What is it Sebastian? Don’t you have anything to do?

Maybe you could read some of your books.

Oh, you’ve read them all twice, huh? What about doing something else?
How about playing with your race cars?

Vroom, vroom. Vroom, vroom. Sigh.

Alright then. How about playing with your trolls? You haven’t done that in a while.

What? You’re tired of bossing them around already? Okay, okay. How about something that would challenge you? You could see how many monkeys you can link from your Barrel of Monkeys game.

Sebastian, I am running out of ideas. Okay, here’s one. Why don’t you work on perfecting your yo-yoing skills?

It won’t come back up? Well, that’s the whole idea. You try to get it so that it will come back up.

Too frustrating, huh? Give me a few minutes and let me see if I can think up any other things for you to do . . .

I must have taken too long to come up with something, because he pulled out his harmonica. Oh dear me. That is a woeful sound.

There must be something Sebastian can do to entertain himself while I sew. That’s when I came up with an idea – a fairly good idea. The thing is would he be game enough to give it a go?

Please tune in next time for Part II of Sebastian’s Grand Endeavor.

Friday in the Studio

What began as a sort of dreary and sometimes rainy day ended with some happy sunshine and a bit of a blue sky. Our winter here has been very mild so far and I keep thinking to myself, “Okay, if you’re not going to show me some seriously pretty, incredibly peaceful, landscape-altering snow, then let’s get on with spring”.

I mean today we could have easily entertained outside in flip flops and short sleeve shirts. And that’s very weird considering this is January 27. I’m not complaining mind you because while the snow could be very beautiful to look at and delightful to play in, the cold and I cannot agree on what is an appropriate temperature. (I’m always in favor of one that is warmer.)

Today in the studio, I had a visitor.

He kept me company while I worked on this little guy.

He (or she) is a small ted created from two previous patterns. I wanted to see how he would turn out. When the head turned out okay, I kept going.

It’s not an efficient method of operation – one limb at a time, but each advance made me want to keep going until he was completed. And now he is and measures in at 4½” tall.

Thus I have created a new problem for myself – I want to make another but then I have other bears I want to make too. Such is the dilemma – decisions, decisions.

Parallels in Progress

Wrapping a birthday gift.

Updating my calendar.

Making hotel reservations for shows.

Trying to figure out what the weather will be the next day.

Finally ordering some mohair.

Sweeping the kitchen floor.

Finishing lunch.

Making spaghetti sauce for dinner.

Letting the dog out for a bit.

What have you been up to lately?

Here it is.

Just a little past midnight.

It’s time to announce the winner of my giveaway!

Thank you all for your sweet and kind participation. I’ve met some lovely new people and discovered some fun blogs to follow. If you are new to my blog, thank you for joining in as a follower. I hope you find some fun reads here.

I was looking back at my past giveaways and I was amazed at the variety of places these little guys have gone. For the first one, I sent a small bunny to Maryland. Then Posy went to live in Oregon. Peeka BOO! settled in Michigan. Noelle went to Spain. Blossom happily resides in the big state of Texas while Jilliana is around the world in Germany now. Maybee lives in Serbia and now we are all wondering where in the world will Bouton live. So . . .

On with the show!

The winner is E.V. from Spain

or should I say España?

Congratulations and enjoy your new little friend.

Bouton is busy packing his suitcase and will be arriving at your doorstep soon.

Happy Trails my little friend!

Bouton’s Goodbye

Who knew that something could become a tradition on a blog? Yet that is what has happened over the last couple of years with my giveaways. A couple of days before the winner’s name is randomly chosen the giveaway teddy bear gets to take over the blog to say goodbye to all you lovely people who have made him feel so loved.

Bouton and I would like to wish each of you the very best of luck in the drawing this Saturday. Thank you for entering and for all your wonderful and encouraging comments. Now I hand it over to Bouton who wants to wave so long and farewell to each of you.

Goodbye. Au revoir. Auf Wiedersehen. Farvel. До свидания. Tot siens. Slán leat. Arrivederci. Adiós. Viso gero. La revedere. Näkemiin.

Vintage Buttons and a Pin

First, the pin. Some of you had asked to be notified when Sebastian’s pins were available. In that regard, you can find them at the link below. They are $5 each. Sebastian wanted me to put $50 each on them, but I convinced him that his friends would appreciate a much more reasonable price. After all, what would he need the money for anyway?

Click here to be whisked away to Sebastian’s buttons.

The little guy has just about every luxury one could want; a wardrobe full of clothes, cookies and coffees to his heart’s content and a nice place to lay his head – even his very own tent when it comes right down to it. No, he has no need of any kind of extravagant financial compensation. Let’s just leave it at $5, shall we?

Secondly, the vintage buttons. A week or two ago, my sisters and I went to a Quilting and Fiber Art Marketplace. It was a gathering of small business owners whose focus was quilting fabrics and supplies. It was my kind of place – second only to a bear maker’s marketplace, if only there were such a thing!

There was a vendor who dealt in Vintage Buttons and Linens. I had never seen so many beautiful old buttons in one place before.

She also had tablecloths from the 40’s and 50’s – she must have washed and ironed for ages to get them so pristine.

I probably could have stayed and rummaged through her baskets of buttons all day long. They were so different from what I see in the fabrics shops. Temptation was everywhere I turned.

I heard a little voice inside my head that kept encouraging me to say “Yes, ma’am. I’ll have one of everything please.” Thankfully, I paid no attention little attention to it.

I eventually tore myself away from her booth only to find myself drooling in yet another one. I’m sure you’ll understand when I say I often forgot I had a camera with me. I did snap this one though.

Leave it to someone with a like mind to wish you the best in language you understand.

What Bears Do After Christmas

Well, let me clarify. This is what some bears do after Christmas.

They hang around with the leftover Christmas decorations until the “After Christmas Christmas Party” is over.

These photos were taken at a friend of mine’s house tonight. Yes, we all know that it is January 14^th after all.

However, she has discovered that people get really, really busy during the holidays and they sometimes find it difficult to slow down enough to get together with friends.

But after the holidays have passed and the calendar turns from one year to the next, they have more time for such things.

So we fixed a dish to share and scurried on over to her house which quickly filled with familiar faces – including some furry ones.

Sebastian wouldn’t let us out of the house unless he was allowed to come along. “Why sure! Come along Sebastian. You’ll meet loads of bears there.”

And so he did.

We all had fun.

The kind of fun that you wish wouldn’t end.

The Unveiling.

Hello again. Sebastian here. Finally, it’s my turn at this blog thing again. Sometimes it seems like it takes for-ev-er when I have to wait.

I have some news to share. It’s the sort of story that kind of goes wiggly and you might not be able to follow it but I’ll try to make it easy for you.

When I have been out with other bear people and then again at Disney, I noticed that a lot of them had pins. Not pens like you write with although they probably had those too, but pins like you wear on your collar or lapel.

I know you’ll forgive my namedropping, but my friends down at Disney – Duffy, Cinderella, Donald, Mickey and so on, they all have pins. They are so colorful and it got me to thinking.

I got to thinking I should have a pin because well, because, I should. So I approached you-know-who with this idea and she surprised me. No, she shocked me actually by saying, yes; she had been thinking that it would be a good idea.

At that point, it occurred to me that perhaps she had been thinking way too long. Like, way way too long. Over thinking it. She does that occasionally.

So, I asked, “What’s the hold up? These things don’t just magically appear. You have to DO something.”

Her reply?

“Yes, I know. I know. I know.”

So I said to her, “Well then, go and DO it!”

And then she said, “There are steps to it. You can’t just say to someone “Make me a pin.” And then, Poof! You’re a pin. There’s finding just the right person to carry it out, then finding an artist and describing exactly what we want. Then you have to wait for them to arrive and hope they are right. Then there should be some way to explain them. Like a card or something.”

To tell you the truth, I began to lose a little hope. It all sounded so complicated, but since I can feign ignorance very easily, I said again, “Just go and DO it!”

I was very surprised when she did. I mean she really did. She did it. She did all those things – although finding the artist wasn’t very hard as I have my own personal portrait artist just a few hours down the road – or up the road. I can never remember which it is.

So, here they are – my pins. My very own pins.

I am so excited! Do you think it looks like me? I couldn’t decide if I should wear my glasses or not. In the end, I decided they added to my allure, don’t you think? The pins aren’t huge nor are they tiny – they are just right at one inch across.

I think the plan is to make them available for purchase. I am going to encourage her to put them on my her teddy bear website.

Then if I see someone on the street wearing one, we can do a thumbs up kind of thing. Like a secret club or something. Although it might have to be paws up since the thumb thing still has me baffled.

 

signing off for