CraftSanity with Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood

With the holiday craft wave behind me, it was time to make something "just because." So that's what Abby and I did tonight after her little sister, Amelia, tuckered out. Meet "Lucky Dog," the first in what I hope will be a series of new softies that will adorn our home in the coming year. I got this pattern out of "Softies: Simple Instructions for 25 Plush Pals" by Therese Laskey. This is a delightful book that the girls and I have paged through numerous times, marking pages with sticky notes so we can easily find the softies we want to make.

The "Lucky Dog" design is by Leesa J. Perry and Australian maker who writes a great blog called Little Munki. According to the book, Leesa creates softies "that will please her little boy." What a great reason to make them. Although, I must confess I like handmade plush toys just as much, if not more, than my daughters.

As you can see our dog looks similar to the dog in the book with some slight variations. (Honestly, I don't know that I'm capable of making an exact replica of anything.) For example, Abby and I didn't take the time to weight down our dog's arms and we skipped the felt collar with a button and decided that our dog's name was "Lucky Dog," not "Lucky."

I thought this project was screaming for a typewritten dog tag to dangle from the collar we fashioned from a scrap of binding tape. I can't wait to show Abby the tag on the back when she wakes up. (She tuckered out after we finished stuffing.) The tag has our names and the date we created this toy. I'm trying to make a point to label special projects because I can never remember when I made particular things and figure this is a great way to elevate our projects to a whole new realm of special.

Speaking of softies, here is a photo of the sock monkey, my sister, Julie, made for Amelia for Christmas. Isn't it great?! I absolutely love it. You can't tell from the photo, but this little sock dude is wearing a removable vest.

Check out this great site for everything softie.

Yeah, and about that podcast... I'm going to tape a new intro right now. Seriously.