Holiday Weekend Sale!

Hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving filled with plenty of turkey!



Holiday shopping is full swing and The Pudgy Rabbit is having a sale on all crochet kits and patterns!  Get 25% off your entire purchase this weekend through Monday, December 1st. Just enter code HOLIDAY at checkout. Happy shopping!

New Patterns and Kits!

I can't believe how fast the holidays are coming up! With a couple of craft shows on the way, I've been getting ready with a bunch of new items in the shop.



I've been toying around with different designs other than the usual animals I create, so I came up with this goofy coffee mug. I love coffee and I love yarn, seemed like a perfect fit!







Also new to the shop, a chill polar bear, penguin, and panda. And if you're looking for something to hang on the tree, the snowman ornament is back!



All the kits and patterns are available in my Etsy shop. I also have a kit combo, where you can get two crochet kits for $48. So if you're looking for fun and creative gift ideas, be sure to check out all the designs!

In other news, I'm starting up a shop newsletter, where you can receive the latest updates about new items, sales and promotions, and any upcoming craft fairs. Join the mailing list here or you can use the sign up tab on the right side of the blog.

Hope everyone's holiday planning is going well and stress free!

I Wrote A Book!

After working through a mountain of yarn, bits of felt, and stuffing, I'm proud to announce that I've completed my first crochet book! Actually, it was completed earlier this year, but it didn't feel official to me until all the editing was done, a title was picked, and the final cover finished. And I guess now it's super official because the book is available for pre-order online! Hooray!!



Happy-Gurumi is filled with a fun mix of projects, ranging from goofy animals, to smiling daisies, to a happy birthday cake. For those that have never crocheted before, there are basic crochet instructions included with lots of step by step photos. There's also more advanced patterns for those looking for a challenge!

I had so much fun creating all the patterns for the book, especially making all the puppet style mouths, and figuring out how to turn my drawings into actual projects. I have a whole drawer stuffed with various animal parts and test samples from each pattern, it's amazing that the book came out of that mess of crochet!

The release date is set for next year, March 10th, 2015. You can pre-order it now at Amazon and Barnes and Noble at a discounted price, so check it out!

Pumpkin Coffee Cake with Pecan Streusel

Happy Halloween, season of all things spooky and pumpkin! While I'm not actually super big on pumpkin, I couldn't resist making this cake after going apple and pumpkin picking and sampling all the baked goods at the orchards. There's nothing better than the smell of spiced cake in the kitchen as the weather cools down.



I have to admit, it took me several tries to get this recipe right. Way too much pumpkin puree the first time and the cake was just a dense, gloppy mess. The next couple tries were pretty good, just not quite what I wanted. Finally, the fourth cake was everything I was looking for, not too dense, lightly sweet and spiced with a nice crunch from the pecans. The perfect fall afternoon snack with coffee! Or perfect breakfast, warmed up in the toaster oven. Really, this is an anytime of day kind of cake.

Bleach and Glitter

So I haven't done any personal animation work for quite some time now and have been trying to come up with an idea for a new short. I was going through all my old files and came across this piece that I made several years ago during an experimental animation class.



It's a scratch film/direct animation, where I drew or scratched the images onto clear and black leader film. I used all sorts of materials such as glass paints, sharpies, inks, bleach, and glitter. Then I cut the all the bits of film together and my friend, Andrew Champlin, composed the music.

I had so much fun making this film and putting it all together. With scratch film, it's kind of spontaneous in that until you run your film through the projector, you can't be 100% sure exactly what you're going to get, there's no instant gratification. You can kind of plan your timing out with 24 frames a second, but not knowing is part of what makes it fun. Hope you enjoy!

Thank you for voting!

So voting for the Martha Stewart American Made Awards ended this past Monday. A HUGE thank you to everyone who voted over the past few weeks! The final count for The Pudgy Rabbit ended up being around 2,500, and I know that the voting process was a bit tedious, so thank you all so much for taking the time to show your support!!

Winners will be announced in a couple of days, so hopefully I'll have some good news by the end of the week! And even if The Pudgy Rabbit doesn't win one of the grand prizes, it was still some great exposure for the shop. I've been getting more requests for wholesale orders, so the crochet kits are finding their way into stores. I'm also happy to announce that I was approached by the American Made team to sell the kits in their Ebay store, so in a few weeks, you'll be able to shop Pudgy Rabbit products in the official Martha Stewart American Made Market!

Again, I can't thank you guys enough for all the encouragement and support as I build and grow my little business. It means a lot and I'm looking forward to what's next for the shop!

Make your own jack o' lantern!

Geez, I can't believe that September is almost over! But that means Halloween is on its way, one of my favorite holidays! Every year I pick out the nicest pumpkin I can find and make plans to carve it into a super awesome jack o' lantern. Something that would really impress the trick or treaters. And every year, I end up with a rotting, uncarved pumpkin on my front doorstep by Thanksgiving.



This year, I've finally accepted that actual pumpkin carving is just not my thing, so I turned to my trusty yarn and hook and made this little crochet jack o' lantern instead! It's small, fits into the palm of my hand, and won't get all moldy and mushy. A win all around! Now you can make an everlasting pumpkin too with the new Design a jack o' lantern kit in my shop!



Like all my other kits, this one comes with everything that you need to make the project. The kit also comes with a crochet booklet that teaches all the basic stitches, so if you don't know how to crochet, this is a great stepping stone! You can choose to do either an open or closed mouth and there's an assortment of eyes along with some pink cheeks. Go with traditional triangle eyes or mix it up with round eyes and cheeks, or even do one round and one triangle eye. Celebrate the fall season with some yarn and crafting! Happy crocheting!

Vote for The Pudgy Rabbit!

I'm very excited to announce that The Pudgy Rabbit is a finalist for the 2014 Martha Stewart American Made Awards! Yay!!  A big thank you to everyone for their support so far! The American Made Awards is a program that honors American makers and small businesses across several fields such as crafts, design, food, and style. The Pudgy Rabbit was entered into the Crafts category under fiber crafts. There are ten award winners to be named, nine of them will be chosen by the judges and one by the audience!

Voting for the Audience Choice Award begins today and continues until October 13th. The registration process to vote is a bit tricky, so I've outlined the steps below. Once you've registered, you can vote up to six times a day, every day until the 13th!

1. Visit my American Made profile page on the Martha Stewart website here or you can click on the American Made badge on the upper right of this site. Once on my profile page, click on the vote button underneath my profile picture.

2. You'll then be prompted to register either through Facebook or email. The Facebook verification doesn't appear to be working currently, the site is a bit buggy, probably because today is the first day for voting. It should be resolved soon!

3. If registering through email, you'll enter your name and email address, then you'll receive a verification email shortly.

4. After verifying your email, you can start voting! You can vote up to six times a day every day until voting closes on October 13th.

After voting, please don't forget to share to Facebook and Twitter to help spread the word! All of your support has been really great and I can't thank you enough. Here's to taking The Pudgy Rabbit all the way!

Fresh Apple Cake

A few weeks ago at a family bbq, my aunt told me how one of her favorite desserts was this apple cake that a friend would make her every fall. Seeing as how the apple is New York's state fruit and I live close to several orchards in my area, I decided to come up with my own recipe for this apple cake!

American Made Awards

So I entered this year's Martha Stewart American Made Awards, whoooo! It's a contest that highlights small businesses and local, handmade products here in the U.S. Besides a lot of great exposure, there's a chance to win some prize money and tickets to the American Made summit. The summit will be a big networking event with Martha Stewart and her team, featuring talks by industry experts and a chance to meet with other creative entrepreneurs.



As the Pudgy Rabbit is in its baby stage, I thought that this contest would be a great opportunity to help move the shop forward, hopefully getting my crochet kits into some brick and mortar stores and branching out into other crafts such as sewing and needle felting!

To check out my profile and share my nomination, you can click here or click the American Made badge on the upper right of this site. The more shares I receive over Facebook and Twitter, the better my chances are of winning a wild-card finalist spot for grand prize consideration.

Thank you and here's to getting The Pudgy Rabbit out there! =)

Ice cream and a Labor Day sale

So I have a new kit up in the shop, mini ice cream key chains! I know the summer is just about over, but you can hold onto some of that summertime goodness with this cute pattern!





Each kit makes two double scoop cone key chains in strawberry, vanilla or chocolate with a cherry on top. Mix up the colors, do a single scoop, or leave off the cherry, whatever floats your boat!

And as a bonus, I'm having a Labor Day sale over at my Etsy shop. Just enter the coupon code LBRDAY14 at checkout to receive 20% off your purchase! If the ice cream cone kit doesn't strike your fancy, I have eight other designs ranging from cats and dogs to owls and bears, so come check it out! Sale ends at midnight, September 1st, 2014 and does not apply to shipping or taxes.

www.thepudgyrabbit.etsy.com

Toasted marshmallow ice cream

Nothing beats a summer campfire and roasting marshmallows on a stick. But sometimes it's just too darn hot to sit in front of a fire to get that toasty marshmallow. Cue toasted marshmallow ice cream!

Lemon seven-layer cookies

When it comes to cookies I generally love simple recipes, the mix-everything-in-one-bowl kind of deal. But every once in a while, it's nice to make a fancy cookie, one that makes people go "Wow! You made bakery cookies!" Which is how my friends responded when I gave them my test batches, even though the first couple of times they came out kind of wonky. 

Turtle PhD

So one of my best friends graduated this past weekend with her PhD and unfortunately I wasn't able to make it down to Georgia to see her walk  in the ceremony. As a little graduation present I crocheted her this turtle (one of her favorite animals) complete with his very own hood, grad cap, and doctorate!