Ashlee Brotzell Designs daughter

You can probably count on this (a sale in August) being an annual thing – August is a big month of celebration here!

We already celebrated my husband’s birthday. This week will be Melody’s 2nd birthday. And next week will be Alice’s 7th. Plus, the end of the month will be our 12th anniversary!

I was also celebrating reaching 5000 members in my Facebook group! I gave away a couple patterns and I bought two beautiful skeins of yarn for this too! I mailed the soft merino wool away yesterday – and then bought myself new Retro Stripes yarn today! Am I a yarn addict?

We made Mitch a musical piano cake. His favorite flavour: Butter pecan; from a box mix. I use melted butter instead of oil and milk instead of water. They always come out fabulous and it is quick and easy to do with little kids around.

Alice carefully put sprinkles spelling “Mitch” on top of our piano cake.

Then I made plain buttercream icing. I even forgot to add vanilla flavor! I was so distracted trying to find my black food coloring gel. We have moved twice in the last year so I guess at some point I must have decided it was too old or maybe I actually used it up and just can’t remember. Either way, it isn’t here.

My black piano ended up being a weird blue. Almost purple-black. I can blame it on young kids 🤣 but really it was me being too tired to go out and buy black. I had already gone out for more icing sugar (and then found the bag I was looking for once I returned home).

Melody and Remi took turns decorating this cake made up from the leftover cut out pieces.

I have had a headache for a few days and it really sucks when I can’t make it go away even when something important – like a birthday – comes around. It doesn’t seem smoky outside but the weather station keeps leaving an exclamation mark on my phone warning everyone that the drifting some from the B.C. forest fires can affect people with asthma and other respiratory issues. It might be triggering my headaches too.

Anyway, the plan was to use kit kat bars as the piano keys but when we went to the store they didn’t have the flavor with the white chocolate. So I grabbed something else that was on sale. And I wasn’t sure how much I would need, so I now have 4 leftover chocolate bars in my freezer. That might have been almost-on-purpose. 😬🙈🤣

We didn’t put up any decorations or balloons but we definitely will when the next birthdays come. The kids LOVE having balloons. It really marks the day as special when they wake up and see balloons and streamers.

Daddy’s lap is always going to be big enough for all three kids, right?

Mitch’s favorite gift might have been the fancy coffee beans from his mom. He is a coffee-aholic. He has even convinced me that coffee doesn’t always taste bad (I don’t really do hot drinks at all).

I tried to get a picture of us together but it was blurry and horrible and this picture of my husband looks GOOD 😍

Today I realized that I hadn’t put my patterns on sale for awhile and I decided three birthdays in a month is a good enough reason to celebrate with not only my family here but also my new friends all over the world!

Thank you for encouraging me to keep making patterns. Thank you for making them look beautiful! Thank you for being my new giant circle of worldwide friends!

You can get ~~30% off everything in my Ravelry store from now until 11:59 pm CST, August 13, 2021 by adding at least~~ ~~TWO PATTERNS~~ ~~TO YOUR CART!~~ No code needed, but you have to pick more than one pattern. I thought about making it three patterns minimum because of the three birthdays but I haven’t done a sale like this before so I figured I would try just two for now.

Ashlee Brotzell Designs on Ravelry

Everything is included, even the eBooks (which are already heavily discounted)!

And, if you’re an Etsy-only user, you can get the same deal there too! ~~30% off when you purchase at least~~ ~~TWO PATTERNS,~~ ~~no code needed! Expires August 13, 2022.~~

.-*-. Etsy Shop .-*-.

Now I am going to get back to crocheting and drawing and hugging my family.

If you’ve read any of my bio here or on Facebook you will know that I am a stay-at-home mom to three beautiful children!

My eldest, Alice, is 6 years old. She loves to color and draw and play with little figurines. She overheard me telling Dad that someone asked for me to draw a deer for my big 2020 Holiday Squares eBook.

Being the sweet child she is, she drew a deer for me to use! Although, you may notice, I also drew a deer for the eBook. She used the chalk board, and luckily I snapped a picture before the 3 year old wiped the slate clean!

Many people in my facebook group encouraged me to create an actual pattern from her drawing, so I asked Alice if she would like that and of course, she did!

You would think there aren’t that many details in the chalk drawing, but you would be wrong.

I tried to create a 40-window square (which is a chart 81 x 81 like all the squares in my eBook) but Alice was not pleased at my inattention to detail.

I made the chart larger and we tried again. She made sure I got the ears on and corrected my “wiggly tail” to be “much straighter”. She also declared that her name was Feline and it should be written, “right here”. I suggested that we needed to add more decoration to make the image work as a crochet pattern.

She said, “ok, icicles”. And that is what you see at the top of the image now. I also added a few snowflakes to complete the picture and we were done! She wanted her to be pink, so, pink it is.

This chart is 121 x 121, which should come out to about 30″ square if you use worsted weight yarn (that’s a 4 – medium weight yarn on the Craft Council’s chart) and a 4.5 mm hook. This is a good size for a baby blanket or you can add a few more panels and create a larger blanket.

I have published this pattern on Ravelry and Etsy.

100% of the gross sales of this pattern will go to Alice. She currently wants to save up to buy a princess sled, a princess dress, and a princess bed.

I was also going to remind you all to sign up for my regular emails, now that the Abstract Queen CAL is done, but mailchimp is having issues so I have no link to give you.

I hope you all are doing lots of crocheting! Talk to you later!

Tag: daughter

August Birthday Sale!

Alice’s Debut Pattern: Feline the Deer