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Posted on June 19, 2012July 28, 2019 by Elizabeth Ruffing

All eyed and hearted

This is what I’ve been up to for the past two weeks. I picked up more batiks, feeling inspired after going to a trunk show that featured colorful paper-pieced quilts by Deb Karasik.

I started with greens. I finished the edges of my fabric and prewashed it before I cut and sewed a batch of Hug Me Slugs and Hug Me Bugs.

The batik toys, and cotton toys in general, take more time to make and are a fussier to work with than the fleece toys, with so many curves to clip and Fray Check on the inside.

After the machine sewing and the stuffing are done, the hand sewing begins. Their bottoms are sewn on by hand. I embroidered their smiles and attached the whites of their eyes with a blanket stitch and floss. They looked like zombies. Then I moved on to the hearts and pupils. Now they can see!

I still have to photograph them individually, and post them in my Etsy toy shop.

Hope everyone enjoyed Father’s Day. This is my dad holding me when I was new to the world.

Our lawn was covered with and abundance of pretty dandelions this week, and the butterfly bushes and the shoal creek chaste tree have been in bloom.

The bees and butterflies love them, and they are such beautiful shades of lavender, blue, and purple.

The one above is the shoal creek chaste tree, and below are the two, the butterfly bush arching over the other.

And this is a special sleepy cat flower.

Posted on June 7, 2012July 28, 2019 by Elizabeth Ruffing

A couple of slugs for Thursday

These Hug Me Slugs have already been spoken for and are on their way to their new homes, but I thought I share them anyway. I finished them today.

I also thought I’d share this mysterious pile of night-traveling newspapers. This was a three-cat job, at least.

Posted on June 3, 2012July 28, 2019 by Elizabeth Ruffing

Turquoise and orange spotted toads

I finished a small group of Hug Me Sock Toad stuffed animal toys today. They all have polka dots.

I will be putting my handmade stuffed animal toys and other creatures in our Ruffing’s shop.

This one is examining a beautiful lace-cap hydrangea that was a Mother’s Day gift years ago. It has gotten huge this year.

This is what they look like on the bottom. I sew signed, handmade tags made of coordinating quilting cotton to each one. I turn under the edges of my tags and stitch them on by hand to make them neat.

Phoebe assisted me with my photo props today, checking out our doll bench and playing with the straw hat I used to cart them outdoors.

She likes to participate in her own way. She’s been letting me pet her on the tail more lately. We’re hoping she’ll let us pet the rest of her eventually.

Bertie, below, is more confident. I think that even shows in her face.

Posted on May 31, 2012July 28, 2019 by Elizabeth Ruffing

Replenishing the toad population

I was fresh out of toads this morning. The last Hug Me Toad I had ready is heading off to the Netherlands. I can’t do without toads.

I got this pink one done and posted this afternoon. I will be posting my new handmade stuffed animal toys in our Ruffing’s shop.

I’ve had to take a couple of detours to do computer junk.

My WordPress blog theme wasn’t displaying right. I lost some of my widgets on my sidebar, and gained an extra menu at the top of my page. Unfortunately, I didn’t save a copy of the last version of my theme before the latest update. I tried to change it to an alternate theme, but for some reason, it didn’t change anything, except that it ate some of my widgets. The message at the top of the admin page said all my widgets would be put back where I had them, but some went missing.

After trying various advice, and trial and error, I finally got rid of the extra menu by going into my theme’s stylesheet and changing this:

.menu {
/*width:940px;*/
float: right;

to this:

.menu {
display:none;
}

I was relieved to have figured that part out, but I still had, and still have, some missing widgets from my sidebar. At least I know how to put new widgets up, when I get a chance. It took a while to get my Sitemeter widget back, so I can see view my website traffic.

Aperture, one of the programs I use to edit and organize photos, wasn’t cooperating with me the day before. It was too full. It wouldn’t even open so I could delete anything. It seems to be functioning again, after cleaning out the trash I’d forgotten to empty. I’d forgotten Aperture has its own trash folder in addition to the main one for the computer. I get annoyed having to take time fiddling with computer/software issues. Thankfully, most of the time, everything goes smoothly.

Phoebe finally got Zoomie to give her a bath today, like he does for Bertie. She has been shyly approaching him, pushing her forehead under his chin. She was so happy. After her bath, they took a nap in the sunshine together. Zoomie is going to have paws full with the two girls asking for his attention.