hole punch + felt

Inspired by a project mentioned in the book Feltcraft, I’ve wanted to mess around with using little bits of my wool felt as beads. I had some tiny scraps of felt from cutting out a rainbow ball loitering on my desk-I keep even the littlest scraps-and used a hole punch to punch out tiny disks.

I poked each disk through it’s middle and interspersed them with glass seed beads in an umber-y brown. I made a loop of beads and felt disks just long enough to double over my hand for a bracelet, without having to mess around with a clasp. I added a length of plain beads to make it long enough. The beads give the bracelet a nice weight and feel.

After awhile my hand got tired of punching through the felt, and I unsuccessfully tried to get my kids involved. Doing a necklace of several long strands like I’m planning might require finding another way to do this-isn’t there such a thing as an electric hole puncher?

New knitting design- sneak peek!

I have been slowly working out a new design. It's both for a Christmas gift and a new pattern, but my sister Abby promises she'll act surprised when I give them to her, so I can share them here. As I mentioned in a previous post, they are the first thing I've designed that are wear-able and that are not felted. They are surprisingly quick to knit (says the woman who has only completed one so far) and the beading is a fun new addition to the knit fabric. Here's a quick snapshot--

Ta da! Moccasins! When I was about 7, there was a shop my family visited that carried  Minnetonka moccasins. I coveted a tiny white pair that had a thunderbird made of beads on the toe. They were so soft, with lovely fringe. I guess I haven't worked that out of my system or something, because I have been really driven to come up with this pattern. 

I am especially pleased with the design as they are just about seamless. I knit them in two pieces, then turned the lining inside out and did a 3 needle bind off around the heel so that both the lining and the outer part would have the right side showing. I added the fringe and beads around the heel, but I couldn't figure out how to do the decorative beadwork on the toe. Perfectly, last night at my Stitch and Bitch, my friend Kelley (who is a gifted potter) brought beading supplies. She is usually whipping out some cool knitting project, I didn't even know she could also do beadwork! She generously shared her knowledge and some beading supplies with me, and I have started working out one of the designs I sketched. She works on cardstock covered with interfacing, but I am thinking about working on felt instead.

I am so looking forward to seeing how these turn out. I am a bit nervous about scaling the pattern so it can fit everyone, including kids an babies, but I have good motivation, I think it would be adorable to make a pair for each of my boys and Laura's boys for Christmas. 

I promise this blog won't turn into a home renovation showcase but I am doing a lot of work at our new house- we are re-finishing the floors and our careful, (slow!) prep work is paying off, I hope! Here's a photo of the still-wet first coat in the living room-

I will be so glad to be snuggled in to our new place, serenely knitting up moccasins for everyone on the couch! 

new paintings

I made some house blessings for the Berea Arts Council’s holiday show and sale. Everything was required to be 6 x 6 inches and less than $100.00. I had a bunch of ideas, (needle felted birds in a shadow box, naturally dyed silk scarves folded  6 x 6...) but seeing as how lately I’ve been painting our house and stitching the bloodroot the 6 x 6 pieces got pushed to the back burner. The day before they were due inspiration struck and I got to work painting and then stitching the watercolors to some of my wool felt.

I’m a bit nervous about putting them out there, I think sometimes my folk art-y, Pennsylvania German style doesn’t translate or is out of context down here in Kentucky. I enjoyed making these and am planning on doing more for little Christmas gifts.

melted crayon art

My boys and I have discovered a brilliant art activity in a book of  preschool  art projects called “Don’t Move the Mufffin Tins” c.1978.  It calls for a warming tray-I thrifted this one at the Habitat for Humanity Restore.

I covered the tray with foil, and then we set to work peeling the paper off old crayons.

We used longish ones for this and saved the short bits to smash and iron between wax paper-also fun of course…OK, so plug in the tray, and get to work:

after melting a puddle of crayons till its just right, we used the eraser end of a pencil to tap paper onto the melted  wax.

The wax immediately soaks into the paper. After transferring the design, there is still wax on the foil, which can be wiped off with a paper towel or used as part of the next design.

We were amazingly prolific (the boys grudgingly let me do a couple) and ended up with a big sheaf of “swamp drawings” as they were christened.

I found after they cool-which is almost immediately, you can buff the wax on the paper with a tissue and it will get glossy. This project has a few potential iffy drawbacks-hot surface + kids (this book was written by a preschool teacher who had success with classes full of kids-she cautions using a warming tray only and not an electric skillet which could get too hot and has awkward sides for little wrists.. .), fumes from melted crayons (we found working by a cracked window solved this issue), liberal use of paper towels….Its all worth it though, very fun. Eli, my 5 proclaimed it his favorite art project ever. Wow.

Celebrate!

I haven't been posting much because we are working on a huge new project- 

 

Our new house! Michael and I bought a house last week and we are sanding floors, painting, moving boxes and doing yard work at our new little place. It's already changed since these photos have been taken- the overgrown shrubs have been ripped out. It's a little house but one of the coolest things about it is that there is a covered beezeway...

that leads to another little place- a studio with a garage underneath.

I am so excited to have a place to work on craft projects that is not my dining room table! We could not be happier with our new place and my mind is buzzing with ideas and future projects.

To celebrate our exciting move, I lowered prices on three of my knitting patterns- the Gnome Home, the Small Dolls and Dusty and Satchel- the horses. For a limited time they are now $6.95 each. Many people have been buying my patterns to make Christmas gifts, and it's fun to picture all the knitters working away to make little felted toys for the children in their lives. I am planning on making a few of my designs for my sons and nephews, I need to squeeze in some knitting time between house painting and moving.

One more little thing- my Gnome Home pattern is featured in an etsy treasury today- it's full of other lovely "Enchanted Forest Folk," do go check it out for some gnome-ish inspiration.