The primary reason I started a blog (other than to get my creative writing ya-yas out) was to document my crafting. So far I haven't said much about it. I haven't been very good about taking photos until recently. I don't even have pics of all the quilts that I've made. Anyway, here is the acorn I finally (finally!) finished for my friend Ursula. The inspiration for it was a pair of squirrel scissors I found in a craft catalog back in November. At least the photo in the catalog made them look like a squirrel. I had to get them because of my recent squirrel encounters, but I couldn't justify buying them for myself just to satisfy my insane scissor fetish (which I really do have). Nor could I get them just because they were a "squirrel thing", which I've decided I now need to collect. I was just starting to do amigurumi and was frustrated because, until I got the hang of it, everything I made that was supposed to be spherical ended up looking pointed like the tip of an acorn. I kept thinking about making an acorn and then one day I ran across something on a craft site somewhere where someone made a crocheted acorn bag for keeping sock knitting projects. Aha! How perfect was that? My friend Ursula knits socks and also collects scissors. The plan was perfect: give her the scissors (which I could still admire from afar) and I would make her this nifty acorn. Perfect, no? Except that when the scissors came they didn't look anything like a squirrel. In fact, they weren't recognizable as any sort of image at all. When I showed them to anyone, the most popular guess was "Um, beaver?", which at least is a mammal. Other guesses included "tree stump", "kangaroo" and "something made out of wood". I can't even show you a picture of them because the catalog in question has discontinued that particular item. Probably because of so many disappointed customers. Anyway, I made the acorn bottom according to the instructions, except that I made it out of wool and felted it. I thought it would be too difficult to get the size right for the top if I felted it too and I liked the idea of using yarn with some texture. I used an acrylic boucle, which was wonderfully stretchy and imitated a shaggy acorn top. I surprised myself and got it right on the first try. I had originally intended to make sort of a hinge so that the top would be a "flip top" with just a button in front to keep it closed. After some thought, though, it seemed to make more sense to put four buttons all around like the instructions said to do. I had some trouble with the closures fitting over the buttons and am still not happy with that aspect of it. I may get it back from her and do something else. When I do, I will make sure to take a better photo of it. This one sucks. I was on my way to give it to her and was in a hurry and didn't want to take the time to set up the camera or anything so it's way too dark. The buttons, by the way, aren't what I wanted. I really wanted to find something cute like squirrels or acorns or oak leaves. Of course, I couldn't find anything like that. I have thousands of buttons but couldn't find anything that worked. I finally went to JoAnn's and found the leaf buttons. Not the right kind of leaf for an acorn, but the color looked good and, hey, they're leaves. You get the idea, right?
Here are some of the felt ornaments I made for Christmas this year. I had a lot of fun doing them and have been on a felt kick ever since. I made the balls by wrapping wool roving around small yarn balls and then felting them in the washing machine. I was worried that my front-loader wouldn't do the trick but I put them in with a load of jeans on hot and it worked just fine. I got a little carried away with a few of them (see the black and gray one with all the bling on the right? Val named that one "The Harley Davidson").
Here's some more detail. Again, sorry about the bad photography. I'm obviously not a photographer.
I would like to make some of these in egg shapes for Easter and decorate them. I have been doing a little bit of needle felting but so far haven't fallen in love with it the way I am with this or felted crochet. Maybe it's too slow. Or maybe it's the fact that I'm holding a very long, extremely sharp, barbed needle and rapidly punching it up and down a fraction of an inch from my fingers. Yeah, I think that's it.
Soon to come: quilt photos. I don't have many and I need to take pictures of the one I've made recently. I want to photograph them outside because the light's so bad in the house, but the weather's been so dreary. It's sunny today but still really cold and I'm just not going to make it outside today.
