Hail to the Chief!!!

I had the opportunity to attend a rally for Presidential candidate, Barack Obama, in February, around the same time I was working on my basic character doll pattern.

On the way to the rally, I decided it would be really funny to make dolls of all the presidential candidates. So I got to work on Barack as soon as I got home that night.

Hillary was next, and I could NOT figure out how to do her hair. She eventually got helmet hair, as you can see, which gives her a bit more appeal in my opinion, lol.

Senator McCain was last, maybe because he is my least favorite candidate (no, I'm not republican...), and while his lumpy face gave me a bit of trouble, the rest of him was fairly easy.

I did not write down a pattern for any of these candidates, sorry for those of you who are wondering. The dolls will be for sale on my Etsy first, and my website soon.

Sherri

Even More Changes

As I mentioned last time, I had switched my website from my first host, DoodleCart.com, to Bluehost.com, thinking I could easily set up a shopping cart and make it look more professional. Then remember how I found out that HTML and shopping cart set up were harder than I'd anticipated?

Well, I've been playing around, and studying up and buying tutorials on how to work a ZenCart shopping cart. I bought the official ZenCart guide, and some other tuturials I found on Lulu.com by Leslie Richardson, who writes tutorials for ZenCart and others in plain english that is easy to understand. And, guess what? I about have it figured out. Woo-hoo!

I'm looking at relaunching the even newer and more improved Sherri Crochets & Crafts on April 1st, and that's no April Fool's Day joke. I'm really happy with it right now. I like the way it looks and acts (no, it's not live yet, so you can't see it right now.) I am going to be able to send newsletters from the site and will be able to do away with my Yahoo group. I'm going to be able to sell downloads right from my site, so I can do away with my Lulu.com store. And I might even do away with my Etsy store, since I'm getting really tired of Etsy's fees... I might even set up a bulletin board. Yeah, me!!

Also, I have a few new products.

There are new patterns:
a Huggable Pirate - a larger size doll, who looks like my Scurvy Pirate, only nicer, friendlier and bigger!
My Basic Character doll pattern - people are always telling me how they turned my Scurvy Pirate doll into Elvis, or The Boy Wizard into C3P0, so I figured, why not make a basic pattern and make it easy on them?
And lastly, Macaroni the Penguin - last summer my son wanted a penguin and we couldn't find one like the one he wanted, so we made one up. Based on a real macaroni penguin, this one stands taller than most of my patterns at about 12 inches tall.

That's all for now!
Sherri

New Web Site!

Yeehaw! My website is now up and running. Thanks so much to SimpleDimpleDesigns.etsy.com (link to her shop at the bottom of my shop page) for the great work. All shopping is now linked back to my Etsy shop, which is so cool.

She also made the banner and avatar you see here on this blog.

Check it out at http://www.SherriCrochets.com !

Sherri

Introducing -- TapeSters

After taking the month of December off (I only crocheted or knit for myself for the whole month of December) I came back with the idea in my head that I was going to make some fun tape measurer cozies – a cute crocheted way to hide your measuring tape. You can see one of the "TapeSters" in the pic here. So far I have a teddy bear, sock monkeys and a puppy. You can see more pictures of each one at my Etsy store (click link in the column on the right).

Also during December, I switched web site hosting companies thinking I could do it better on my own. Well, guess what? This girl isn’t as HTML / web design savvy as she thought she was - which you know if you’ve visited Sherri Crochets & Crafts lately. I did write the HTML code for what I have up there right now, but links and a background ain’t all that.

So I’ve just hired someone to help me set up a new website which will link back to my Etsy store for purchases. I’m real excited and will let you know when I get it all set up. She also did my banner and avatar -- check out SimpleDimpleDesigns.etsy.com. I highly recommend working with Thanita! She's fun and does great work for very affordable prices.

I also wanted to let you know that as of January 31st, I’m going to raise the prices on my patterns – 50 cents each. So if you’ve been putting off buying a pattern, waiting for a good reason, do it now!

That’s all for now,

Sherri

I'm Having Fun Now!

I decided to "take off" the whole month of December. To me, this means I'm not crocheting for my business, I'm only crocheting (and knitting) for fun. Woo-hoo for me!

Here's what I've made so far.

First were these cute little Knitting Gnomes. I made them from a pattern I bought from MrsBear87 on Etsy. It was really easy and I like it for two reasons. One is that it was my first felting project. The second is that they are hiding tape measurers inside their bodies. I'm going to give one to my Mother-In-Law for Christmas. Don't tell her! I made these both following the same pattern, using the same needles and they turned out completely different. I obviously screwed up somewhere, but it's my fault, not the pattern writer! LOL.

The second thing I made was this Garden Gnome Knitting pattern that I got from Amy Gaines on Etsy. After making the first gnomes, I decided I needed one with legs. I'm not happy with how he turned out, but let me explain.

I wasn't happy with how the white beard looked next to his pale skin, so I researched gnomes on google images and found that some of them have gray beards. So I thought, "Hey, I have grey furry yarn, I'll use that." But it was darker than I thought it would be. I'm also not happy with how dark his "clothes" are. I should have used a lighter color. Anyway, again, not the pattern maker's fault, it's mine. I'll probably make another one later on and but doesn't this one look like Yukon Cornelius from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? You can almost hear him singing, "Silver and gold, silver and gold." He needs a belt, too. I'll have to work on that.

My current project is a pair of felted slipper socks. I bought this pattern from Pawfelts, again, on Etsy. I have one done and the other is on the needles. This is the biggest project I've done on double pointed needles (DPN's) and the first using 5 DPN's.

The fuzzy strings along the front, or top, of the slipper, will be cut short right before I felt them. If I make this pattern again, which I think I totally would, I'd not change colors at the end of every round. Or, if I do, I'd not cut them but carry them up each round so I'm jsut changing colors. Not cutting, tying and starting again. It takes a LOT of time to cut, tie and start over.

I've got more, but adding these pictures is very frustrating and I need to get Jake started with homeschool. We're already 7 minutes late. :)

Later,
Sherri

Little Santa Claus and his Christmas Tree

Introducing the newest member of the Sherri Crochets family of Little People -- it's Little Santa Claus.

Easy to work up with scraps of red, white and green worsted weight acrylic yarn, the pattern comes complete with his little bag of toys and a small tree. You can find this pattern at SherriCrochets.com or at my Etsy store.

The plush toy is also listed at both stores, just in case you don't crochet.

Thanks for looking,

Sherri

My How Time Flies

How sad. I've had this blog for 4+ years and I've posted twice... Thank you to the 14 year old who commented to me because they noticed that I had no comments. That was sweet of you. But you said if I'm over 18 you can't talk to me. Well, I'm 45, so I guess I can't comment back... LOL.

I used to have a blog on Xanga that I posted on all the time. Then I lost interest. I have a MySpace blog for my "company" that I post in occasionally. I also have a Yahoo 360 that I recently started using for my family. Links are to the right -- over there -->

Anyway, that story two entries below still cracks us up. We were just talking about Camden and the Haunted House the other day.

OK, so I'll decide what I want to use this blog for and start using it.
Sherri

Hello!

Gosh, I forgot I had this blog. I've been seeing all these cool Blogspot knitting and crocheting blogs I wanted to subscribe to, so I tried to make a blog here and it said my user name was already taken. So I went to it and sure enough, it was me. LOL.

So here I am, exploring and figuring out what's what.

Just to make this crafty, here's something I've made recently. I call this Frank the Weiner Dog.

That's all for now. Off to explore Blogger.