Crafting: felting and embroidery

I was trying to figure out how to best work on this piece. I'm like Aster, I have trouble following patterns. The photo is awful, but you get the picture! It's been hand felted. I thought it needed a little something. When I sketch, I often go around my figures with a fine black marker. 

Of course, there is a video for everything: felting video! This is a new method for me. I checked out another video. The Darning Foot seems a necessity. I trundled down to our nearby store, Sew Crafty, but they are closed for holidays. 

Darning Foot

Once I tried it, I realized I've an old machine, and I have minimal skills. It turns out that this kind of stitching only works if your piece isn't a thick as mine. Lesson learned.

I was similarly motivated by my crafty grandkids. I began embroidering trees. Yes, that's what we'll go with. They are trees. 

Whoopsie. I had to unpick this. I wasn't paying attention to the back. Rookie mistake, and I've been doing embroidery for many, many years! I won't say that the RomCom I was watching with my glass of wine contributed to this... 

Then I poked myself! The felting requires a lovely, sharp special needle, you can see it stuck in the back. 

This hand also has a bruise and a scab. I was adding wood to the indoor log holder, and whacked my hand on the metal. 

I'm tweaking it some. 

Once I'd seen the video, I realized hand embroidery might be the way to go. I hauled out my stash. 

Blast from the past. My Mom and Dad were very particular: organized, and methodic. I found my dad's handwriting on a piece of cardboard. My late mom did a lot of embroidery, and dad must have helped her get the skeins organized.

This is what Aster has to organize her stash. If you search for 'organize embroidery floss' you will find all sorts of options. What a great idea.

 

I discovered this article, and the author says that when you research organizers to think about how much you want to spend, how many skeins you keep on hand, how many projects you do at once, and if you have different types of threads. My stash isn't nearly big enough. I've just got loose ends! 😆🧵

One of the gifts we gave the teenaged grandies was a kit to make your own journal cover. They both write a lot, and we always give them nice looking journals. This time, I thought I'd let them create their own.  

Aster crocheted me a cat for Christmas. 

Joseph has been working on his candle collection. 

This is a start to the morning. One that is best met with indoor play. 

We will watch the drama on CNN with a speaker election.