handmade – Hootido.com

It’s wedding season!

After a long dry spell, I’ve been to two weddings in two weeks.

I very much enjoyed a scavenger hunt in Las Vegas to find a surprise bouquet for the bride. I still can’t believe how hard it was to find flowers on the Strip on a Sunday…apparently it’s practically impossible after 2 in the afternoon. So the concierge at our hotel helped me out by taking these from the arrangement on the desk. And I just so happened to have some yarn in my room…

And of course I needed a cute little bag. After all, what would a Vegas wedding be without a little bling? I spent two weeks knitting and felting a bunch of little purses. I gave one to the Vegas bride and here’s mine.

The second was my good friend’s mamma’s Hawaiian themed wedding. These were a surprise for the bride for her eight bridesmaids. We had a wonderful time going to the flower mart to pick out the flowers and then putting them together.

The daughter of the bride was also working with her sister-in-law on table decorations. After combing Pinterest for ideas she came across a Pin for using wood rounds as risers for a centerpiece but that looked really expensive. Turns out the sister of the bride has some property that has an orchard so they cut up one of their trees and the daughter of the bride had them finished at her work. The sand dollars are cookies, the sea shells are candies, and the sand is cookie crumbs. These really came together beautifully!

They also needed a ring bearer’s pillow and had an extra yard of fabric from the bridesmaid’s dresses, so I whipped up one of those too. I also surprised the daughter of the bride with a little bag. After all what would your mamma’s wedding be without a little bling?

So much fun playing with flowers and knitting and sewing. And boy was it good to do girly stuff after that long little boy baseball season!

Slippers

Had another wonderful wet felting class and pot luck with Jonatha Foli the other day. Small group of women, great food, great fun, great results. (And a bonus foot massage too!)

Used a clothes dryer instead of rolling for this project, boy howdy did that make it a whole lot easier. Definitely can’t do this by myself without a shoe last though, it takes a lot of work directly on the foot. I’m now one step closer to making a pair of boots. Woo hoo!

It’s here!

This time of year in Sonoma County is often referred to as the “Crush.” Little Joe helped me squeeze my first batch of concord grape juice. He lasted a little over a minute and said his purple hand came clean. When I showed him mine…

…he said I just needed to use soap, his came right off. Hmmm, maybe he didn’t crush long enough cause mine’s not coming off.

Got an entire bucket of grapes off one vine, only from the bottom vines.

Wasn’t sweet enough to drink straight, gonna have to cut and sweeten it I think.

Tonight’s Unexpected Project

After a fruitless search for an orange pillow for #1 son to bring to class, my good friend Katharine said, “You should just make him one.” So I thought to myself, well I do have the stuff…

Thanks also to my small sister for providing the copious yards of fur that I had no immediate use for but excitedly accepted when offered!

After seeing what #1’s pillow looked like, and helping me sew and stuff it, #2 said he needed one. So of course, now #1 needs one for home too. Told them both the ones for home weren’t going to be anywhere near as big as the school one. Two was all I could handle tonight though, this was a LOT of hand sewing. #1 will just have to make do with his school pillow for now…

While no animals were harmed during the making of these pillows, it looks like I plucked a bunny in my room!

Monthly Needle Felt Exchange

I really am loving participating in the monthly exchange in my Facebook group – Needle Felt Exchange. It forces me to do something creative at least once a month and it’s FUN!

This month’s theme was Circus. So I made a Circus Monkey, with a Fez, just cause he had to have one. Instead of framing this time though I made it into a pin. He’s going to live in Illinois.

He makes me smile.

Jungle!

Here is my jungle themed needle felt exchange project. This little guy now lives in Colorado.

Needle Felting Exchange

The theme in my first needle felting exchange was ocean. Supposed to be a small item so my pic is 3″x3″ and the frame is for a 4″x4″ picture. This little picture lives in Lake Tahoe now.