December has hit and as much of the crafting community has realized, Christmas/ Hanukkah/ Winter Solstice/ Kwanzaa/ Festivus is breathing down our necks, and it’s time to get busy. Along with the joys of having my own living space comes the adventure of being soundly broke for the month, and instead of rooting around on Etsy or heading down to the yarn store to cast on a little something for dearly loved ones, I turned to my felt stash. Long time readers (hi, H!) will recall the felt madness of last winter and I have stacks of felt and embroidery floss stocked away for such an emergency as a retro (read: Depression era) Christmas.
I sketched out this gingerbread dude for my little nephews. They liked the gingerbread man song and dance number from the “Muppet Show” video my sister in law showed them, and my brother thought it was them most bizarre skit he had ever seen. I thought it would be a good thing to remind Brother of that. This is just a mock up and I want to tweak a few things for the final ornaments, because 4 year olds and toddlers are tough customers when it comes to Christmas ornaments, as we all know. I’m not happy with the eyes, and not certain yet what I want to do about them. I’d like them to not be so very beady, but I don’t want to cut them from felt, either. Or maybe it’s fine.
This little one is just for me. He’s a rather generic owl, but I sketched out the pattern myself, so I’ll call him an original. I named him Dan Dreiberg, after the Nite Owl in Watchmen, and took the color scheme from Dan’s snow suit in the final chapters. I think I may take him to work to hang out with me and the girls and make me smile.
Another mock up of an ornament. I need to tweak the embroidery and trim the edges of the felt a bit, but you get the general idea. I’ll be making these in different color shemes for the VIP’s on my guest list. Everyone else gets my love this year.
And I couldn’t forget myself in all this, so I whipped up one in Stacey colors. She stays with me. : )
BTW: The smelly curtains dried and the toxic stench seemed to disappear, so I’m calling it “wet dog” phenomena. Unless I lose my mind and decide to douse my curtains with water, I should be fine and odor-free. Now I just have to track down an iron and a sewing machine to hem them up and I should be able to get them hung shortly.
