into the trees

It's deer hunting season here in Minnesota which means we haven't been out walking in the woods lately.  Since we're surrounded on three sides by hunting land, I get uneasy about letting the kids play outside, even with their blaze orange hats on.  All of this indoor time has made us all a little stir crazy.

I tried to quell some of that excess energy that was coursing through my kids yesterday by having them make some little tree ornaments for the upcoming holidays.  The older boys cut circles out of felted sweater and they all worked on stacking them for a while.  The activity held their attention in spurts but over the course of the day a small forest grew on our table.

The next job will be to sew them all together and add the trunks, something we'll work on together.

Since yesterday was the last day of rifle season we'll be able to venture back out in the woods today to be among real trees.  I can't express how much I'm looking forward to that.

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Julie made some colorful little trees this weekend too.

Today I'm mailing off stones to their new homes.  A huge thank you to everyone who stopped by to look and to those of you that gave my pieces a home.  Thank you.

I hope your week is a good one.

A wooly giveaway

I've been spring cleaning lately, going through the studio and putting excess supplies in my "extras" shop, and through the closets and donating bags of unworn clothing. I found, tucked away in a closet, my wool dress coat. It is several sizes too small (sadly), and not really my style anymore but holding it in my hands it was clear that it wanted to be useful to me somehow. It was begging to be cut up and used for crafting, and that's just what I did.




Because the weave of the coat was so dense, there wasn't really any felting that needed to be done. I cut it up at the seams, pulled out the liner and cut off the buttons, and washed it on hot for two cycles to make sure it was clean. After it dried and I ironed it out, it was a beautiful pile of felt - 2 and a half pounds worth - that was remarkably similar to commercial 3mm wool felt. Making your own wool felt is remarkably easy and if you're a wool lover I encourage you to try it. I'm so pleased with how it turned out that I'm offering a small giveaway to celebrate and share the recycled wool love.



I'm offering a small stack of recycled wool pieces and a little blackbird brooch made from the wool to one random reader. All you have to do is comment here and make sure I have a way to contact you should you be the winner. I'll be randomly drawing a name on Monday and will post the winner here.

Good luck!