Organizing and Brrrrrrrr.....

I have not been felting, but have been organizing ALL of my crafting supplies. Stamping, sewing, felting, knitting, crochet, embroidery, stained glass, lampworking, and general crafting....I used to seperate all of the items by what craft they went with....but now I have organized by like items and it is soooooo much easier to find things. We have had some chilly nights here in sunny Florida. It actually says 27 degrees F, on my thermometer right now! The kids would love to see snow, but the most I can give them is some frost.....Hope everyone is staying warm,,,,,,,

Merry Christmas!

I cannot believe how quickly this Christmas Eve has approached!
I wanted to say Merry Christmas to all of you and to thank you for all of the kind words that you have shared with me this year.

My husband, I and our 2 daughters exchanged our "homemade" gifts with each other today and it was wonderful!  My family showed me much love in the gifts they handmade for me and each other!  Both of the girls were so proud of themselves as we were of them also and declared they wanted to continue this new tradition.  I will post later with pictures.  We are off to celebrate with my sister, her husband, and my parents! 

I'm not good at being sick....

Well ...school ended on Friday and it looks like my 2nd graders left me with more than Christmas wishes....I think I have the flu...uuuggghhh!  Achy, stuffy, drippy, grumpy, yep those all are great descriptors of me right now.  Since I can't run around and get things done, I decided I would use my down time wisely....crochet in bed...lol  I am currently on my 3rd scarf in 2 days.  So whether they (my family) wanted a scarf or not, they are getting one.  My hubby has been taking great care of me :)  Off to drink another gallon of OJ and hope that the vitamin C does its thing.

Glittery scarf

Another present complete.  Here in Florida we don't get long cold spells.  But when it does get cold, it's nice to have one of these cobweb scarfs handy.  This one is for my mom.  I hope she likes it.....merino, silk caps dyed a peachy orange, and some peach dyed angelina fibers for some extra sparkle.  Outside the sparkle did not show up too well in the sun, but it's there...just very subtle.

More batts...no..not flying mice ;)

A few months back I washed and dyed a bunch of raw wool that I had purchased.  I had bags of the wool locks stored away waiting for the day I would be able to create batts.  Now that I am officially on vacation, I have been digging the wool out and making batts in between shopping, cooking, and just plain relaxing..although a what I hoped to be a quick trip to IKEA was NOT relaxing.
Anywho...here are a couple shots of the before/after of the two latest ones.  I am becoming quite good at cleaning the drum off between batts!

Also, a HUGE thank you to all of the wonderful comments.  My family members just shake their heads when I start blathering on about wool, so it's nice to know others are just as in love with the stuff as I am!

Inside out batt

Today is going to be devoted to experimenting with batt making.  I want to make a batt that I can felt into a variety of pouches from the same piece of felt.  The inside of this batt is a sunny yellow.  When you flip it over, you have a variety of greens with a hint of yellow.  Throughout both sides of the batt I included silk that was dyed the same color as the wool.  I will share more later...have a fabulous day!!! :)

Felt covered buttons and typical ramblings....

Today I finished up a birthday present for my sister that I started this weekend.  I started off with my very own self dyed merino.  I carded up a batt that used 4 different colors but I kept same colors together and let them migrate into each other just a tiny bit.  I felted it as a thin panel, and then machine sewed it together.  After I finished that, I did a simple blanket stitch on the outside to give it a little something. And then moved on to finding the perfect button....I could not in all of the 100's of buttons that I have find one that I felt worked well....so.....I covered a button blank with a piece of felt that was a remnant of the pouch and Viola, a matching button.

Now I am sitting here wondering what took me so long to figure out that I could have been making these buttons for my pouches all along!!  Sometimes I'm a little slow I guess....or maybe it's this freezing weather we are having here in Florida- my brain is slushy- I'm not used to wind chills anymore....

So anyway.....here it is...I hope she likes it!

Felt Ornaments

I made a felt panel with some very soft colored gray wool this morning.  I wanted to get an idea of how much it would shrink so that I could use the wool to make some slippers.  After it dried, I decided to use the test panel to make some heart ornaments for the tree.  I like how simple they turned out...the next batch I will fill with the leftover lanvender that I ordered this past summer.

My felted trees...

My inspiration was found here.  I used the same oatmeal color wool that I used for the stockings shown in a previous post.  As an added accent on the top layer, I used a fine merino/silk blend.  I love the effect!