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. 

🍁 Yay October 🍂

It's been dry in September. We shall see what October brings. I watered the garden yesterday. 

I took a nice walk in the forest, the shoulder seasons are the best, and found a few trees down. 

My first wood duck nesting box, wrecked by a bear, and three cubs, needs repair. This is my non-mental note to remind me.

Our colourful mushrooms are done, the fungus is still going.

I feel so badly for our large white pine trees. Shorn, as they were in 2023 storms. I've been stacking the wood.

After my break, I got back to work stacking. 

During and after. The rest of it is too big for our wood stove. I may just fire it down the hill! I could get them back, but I'd just have to stack it!

👀 Now, those of you with eye floaters know whereof I speak. I am still not used to them. 

Not only that, but we've these durned no-see-ums. They aren't biting, and for that I am grateful (some of the 5000 of this species do), but they hover in a cloud just to fool my eyeballs. When I sat down for a break in my orange shirt, they all landed on me! Then, I looked at the hops vine, and there they were. 

 

There was a ceremony on TV for Orange Shirt Day (←excellent information from the Canadian Encyclopedia). I taped and watched it. This is a day to honour the 4100 named missing Indigenous children at residential schools and missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW). It was a moving two-hour event. White people must bear witness, and listen to their stories if they are able.

This is another shameful saga of white colonial history. Children sent to horrid institutional schools, torn from their families. It is well represented by this famous painting.

The Scream
Kent Monkman ~ Cree
2017 pic.twitter.com/KP1Y4h3fXJ

— Canadian Paintings (@CanadaPaintings) September 30, 2023

Felting

This is a new craft for me. I watched several YouTube videos and I am getting the hang of it.

I am working on Christmas presents! SSsshhhhh – don't tell anyone in Vancouver! I have been revising it. I originally ordered a kit from Topsy Farms, one for each girl, but they only had the one style. That first one worked out well enough. 

This is Bernie, one of the kids' cats in Vancouver. Bernie lives near a busy street and he is a runner. He is often leashed. I was trying to figure out my second piece, having redesigned it myself. 😸 

I decided to improvise. My bird didn't work well. I pulled it out, felting is very forgiving, and created a dragonfly.

I tried to order more of the felting base, but even Topsy Farms has trouble finding it. I ordered kits from Amazon. More on that later!