Oh yeah!

A couple weeks ago or so I had posted about a cute little crocheted hoodie sweater I made and at the time of the post had it in the washer being fulled. Well, here's a picture of the now very tiny sweater. Gosh that green looks pukish in the picture. It's really a nice funky olive green color in person. However, it turned out much smaller than I had anticipated. I wanted it to end up fitting say a 6 - 9 month old, or even a wee bit bigger, which the little green mary janes would fit, but it's come out more 0 - 3 month, and maybe even bordering preemie size. Know anyone with a cabbage patch kid that's in need of a hoodie? I don't even want to bother putting a zipper in this one now, because I think it's kind of pointless. Just goes to show you though, there really is no rule of thumb when it comes to fulling or felting wool. The mary janes shrank much more minimally than the sweater, and they're crocheted with the same brand, type and dye lot even of wool as the sweater. I can only assume it's because there was more body to the sweater to allow for more agitation in the wash, hence more friction to the fibres resulting in more shrinkage. Well that's my theory anyway, and I'm going to stick with it! I really do love this sweater pattern though, and I think I might make another, but not in a wool yarn to felt -- this time I'll try a nice cotton or bamboo yarn instead and make a lighter weight springier looking hoodie, since Spring is going to be early this year, according to our beloved Wiarton Willie the groundhog that pokes his head out of his hole every Groundhog day here in Ontario to give his prediction!

Olivia

arrgh! this non-working spell checker is making me crazy!

Nice Booty!

I don't really know why I'm doing this, but lately I've been crocheting up some little booties. You know, the ones for babies?! Okay, I do have two little twin great nephews that I could make things for, but did I? No! I did little girl booties! So I don't know what I'm going to do with them exactly when they're done, but they're going to be cute, from the looks of them so far.

I've really got into felting, and I had a vision that some felted baby booties would be just to gosh darned cute, so I had to make that vision come to life. I've started with three pairs of booties that I crocheted from 100% wool. I then water felted them, and they're cute on their own like this...

They're stuffed right now while they finish drying by the way. So anyway, I want to embellish them still. You know, jazz them up a bit! I'm going to needle felt some sort of decoration on them, to give them a little oomph.

I had received some money for Christmas this year, so I decided to buy some felting needles and some wool roving to try my hand at needle felting. I've been intrigued by it, and what all you can with it. I want to try some sculptures with this medium. So far I've just made a ball, with a another ball felted to it, and this serves as a pin cushion kind of thingy to stick these wicked needles into so I don't have some sort of accident with a stray needle. They're really sharp, and they have barbs on them as well. I tried to get a close up of the needles with my camera, but I couldn't manage to get those little barbs to show clearly, but here's a picture -- a kind of blurry one at that -- of the needle felted pin cushion ball I made, and it's holding my needles...

So what I'll do with these booties when they're done, I haven't quite decided yet. Maybe my niece will get pregnant again and have a little girl for the twins to protect when they get older! Or maybe I'll try selling them on Etsy or something. I've never sold anything there before, but it may be worth checking it out. I don't know... we'll see.

Olivia