My Tea-Cozy Hat

This is a great example of a project that took a left turn. One of my favorite sweaters accidentally went through the washer and drier - tragedy! I loved the green wool too much to simply sigh (or cry) and put it in the goodwill bag. I decided to try to recycle it. My kitchen gear lacked a tea cozy, and I thought my poor shrunken sweater would serve the purpose.

Alison had a tea party that weekend, and we always hang out and do crafty work, so I brought it to be my project. I deliberately felted a thrifted sweater for the applique, measured (one of) my tea kettles and stitched the pieces together. I used a needle felting tool to attach the applique. At this point, high on sweet black tea and sugar cookies, I got silly and put it on my head. Everyone went "ooh". I ran to a mirror and went "ooh" myself. We decided it HAD to be a hat - my tea kettle could continue to go bare. Alison made the tassels, we stitched them on, and BAM, cutest hat ever. Just having it to wear makes winter a little happier.

I <3 felt!

You can do such sweet little things with wool felt. I've spent the last two days home with an icky cold, so to do something productive, I made a pincushion! It's about 2" tall and similarly wide. It reminds me of a little cake - someday, I'm going to learn how to make and work with fondant, and when I do, I'll make a little petit four just like this pincushion. It's all hand sewn, with appliqued, embroidered felt leaves, and stuffed with wool fleece.

I used to love embroidery when I was little. When I was nine or ten, I'd embroider on kleenex using sewing thread - little houses and flowers. Sadly, I wasn't given any encouragement, so the desire to really learn how to do it faded away, and I didn't have the resources to pursue it on my own. Later, when I started sewing, I decided I didn't like embroidery after all - too time consuming and fiddly. I'm beginning to reconsider now, especially when there are so many little projects to do that would go fast and be so sweet and pleasing. I'm really happy with this pincushion , even if I do have a recurring desire to nibble on it.

Something in the Air

What is it about Olympia? Some of the best artists I know live there. My friend Alison lived there until a couple of years ago; now she lives here, and very glad we are about it, too. Nikki McClure (high on my list of "artists I'd like to meet" list) is also from that area. And my friend Bill Dawson lives near Olympia. He's an amazing artist, and I'd like to share some of his work with you.

Medieval re-enactment is one of my hobbies, has been for years. Bill was one of the people in that world that I met very early on. He's always been a good friend and has always encouraged people like me to pursue whatever facets of art interest us. His multidisciplinary level of achievement is just so inspiring to me. This is one of my favorites that he's done, a Santa Lucia crown. I've tried it on; it is SO pretty. This one piece has many different metalworking techniques, blended together to make something really, really special.

In addition to his other talents, Bill is a gifted teacher. He has some classes coming up soon, in Portland and Seattle, and I think he has a couple of spots left open. Here's the class schedule. If you want to learn some serious metalworking, he's one of the best.

Three Month Calendar

Just a quick calendar for January/February/March for you to print out, if you'd like. The next one will be up around the end of March. This is the first time I've put something together specifically to put it online for anyone who would like to use it, so any feedback you have would be very much appreciated. Thanks and enjoy!

One more thing about Friday

Ok, I don't want to sound like a total fangirl, but there was one more thing from Friday that Amy shared with us field trippers, an ad for Eco-Motion:



The talented Ms. Ruppel did the illustration (that's her on the green scooter!) and another local studio animated it. The very sweet singing voice is local girl, Laura Gibson. It is, as we say around here, so cute that you'll puke a rainbow. Which is a good thing.