Category: Felting

Aren’t they pretty?  These are the slippers I knit up during Nutcracker performances, all felted up, stuffed with tissue, and almost dry.  Sadly, oh, very sadly, they are too small for the intended recipient and I believe I may have to keep them for myself.  I’m thinking about knitting some small flowers with the handpainted yarn in the picture from www.beemerknits.com, and embellishing the slipppers with some beaded flowers.

More pretty things:  I thought I would share of few of my favorite Christmas tree ornaments with y’all. 

This is the first ornament I ever bought — a sweet little goose girl I purchased from the gallery of an artist in Fanueil Hall in Boston while I was there for summer school in 1977.

I went to school in Radofzell, Germany in 1981, and purchased this delicate little paper cone ornament, which has amazingly survived all these years, at the Christmas Market.

Finally, this little family house, from the year our second child was born.  He was born in October, but wasn’t released from the neonatal intensive care unit until Christmas Eve Day that year, so this ornament is extra-special.

I have a purring Maine Coon Cat in my lap and four skeins of yarn hung around my neck.  I’m off to dye some yarn — hopefully there will be no color changes in the kitten.

How much can one Mom knit during breaks from dressing and sheparding hordes of small children through Nutcracker performances and rehersals?  As it turns out, a good bit.

First — and I mention this although I’m still in the boring stockinette panel on the bottom part, because I am enjoying this yarn so much — is the Cahaba Jacket in Ironstone Yarns Island Cotton.  During two nights of Nutcracker, you can manage both the back and the side fronts all the way up to the start of the armholes.

Next?  One Anthropologie Shrug in Colinette Point 5.  This took the next few nights from start to finish.  I have fallen in love with Colinette Yarns and am hoping they will make a prominent appearance under my Christmas tree.  The shrug, which was knit in Point 5 in the Toscana colorway, is unblocked, but still beautiful.

Although the pattern indicates the writer preferred the reverse stockinette side (below), I think I will stick with the stockinette side (above) on the outside.

Finally, accomplished during the last two nights of nutcracker (while also working on socks and starting a new scarf in silk and alpaca, more on that later), is this pair of what will become felted knit slippers.  I’m enchanted with this idea and can’t wait to felt and embellish them.  The pattern is in this book.

All in all, I was sorry to see the Nutcracker come to an end.  The Balanchine version that the Alabama Ballet Company performs is beautiful.  And the knitting was grand.

I have a couple of things to share.

First off, I have been so happy with the short sweater that I knit for myself, based on Peony’s Anthropologie inspired capelet, that I decided to do one for my sister in law, again out of Noro yarn.  I hope she will like it — I thought it would be handy for keeping warm and snuggly while open enough to nurse a wee baby.

Then there is felting.  I am still feeling so inspired by the chance I had last weekend to work with Julie Williams.  Here is a much better picture of the scarf I did with her this weekend.

And here is a mohair-embellished piece I worked on the last few nights.