This is one of my favorite designs (OK, I am going to love them all, lets be honest).  I have designed this project to help newbies create their own pattern to fit their hands. 

These fingerless gloves don’t require a sewing machine.  The yarn stitches close the seams, and adds a little interest.  The felted layered flowers are easy, and cute.

Fingerless gloves with flowers

For my son’s school I have submitted a grant proposal from a big box store for $3,600 to build 8 raised laboratory garden beds.   Each grade level will get their own 4ft by 8ft raised garden bed to plant.  We live in Chicago, and most of the students live in apartment buildings so they have little to no access to out door space at home.  This gives them a chance to see where food comes from, something the rest of us have taken for granted.  When I was little we had a huge vegetable garden that provided most of our fresh food.  It was a lot of work, but a valuable learning experience.

Lets hope we get the grant!

One columbine has come up- two weeks earlier than expected on the seed package, possibly a second.  I have also started Foxgloves, Gaillardia, daisies, black eyed Susan’s and traditional forget-me-nots.

I have a lot of indoor plants now and I don’t have an indoor watering can.  An outdoor watering can rains over a great area, while an indoor has a single spout to prevent a mess indoors.  I don’t have one, and have been using things that are less then satisfactory, either too small or they drip when pouring.  I started to wish that I had an indoor watering can, but I would rather not have to spend the money on it, or find a place to store it.  Then I thought about a tea pot- little spout, already have two, and have to store them, holds a lot of water- perfect!

I hope you all enjoyed the free mitten pattern.  I have a felting book in development and hope that it can be found in a bookstore near you soon.  While I am working on the book doing research into other felt crafters I am churning out ideas a mile a minute.  Some of those won’t fit with the theme- a book for young people probably shouldn’t have a wine bottle holder – so some of these rejects will appear here, free for all to enjoy.  Check back often to see what develops.  While I love crafting, I probably love sharing crafting more.

If you like my blog and want to help, pin my projects to pintrest and share with your friends and family.

I love crafting, but I think the act of the craft is more important than the product of the craft.  If you can’t enjoy the process, what is the point? I am a free form crafter that purposely designs projects that don’t need a lot of precision.  I find that obsessing over perfection ruins the crafting experience.  Instead, beauty can be found in intentional imperfections. 

An example: I was quilting some bags as gifts.  I wanted to make spiral shape quilt patterns, but  couldn’t do it free hand and perfect enough.  A machine would be needed with algorithmic programing or a compass to make it perfect enough.  So instead of trying, and trying to reach perfection I decided to make the lines wavy circles.  This made the spirals look like flowers, and they were beautiful.  And easy, and delightful to do.  So, the lesson here- layer imperfect flowers cut out of felt and no one will notice you don’t have a perfect four petal flower. 

Go free form and enjoy, instead of ridge and obsess over perfection most of us can’t hope to achieve.

Check out the felted patterns page for the mittens pattern.

I have finished frogging – unraveling- two of the 69 cent sweaters.  One sweater that was worsted weight yielded 17 Oz of yarn, that is over a pound!  The real find was the bulky weight 100% wool in cream, so it can be dyed as desired.  That sweater yielded 38.5 OZ, over two pounds! I was finally able to find the fiber content on the third sweater- 50% wool, 50% acrylic, a high enough content of wool so that it is hard for me to tell by feel.  That sweater wasn’t in great condition so I ended up discarding it.  Even so, it is about $50 worth of yarn, maybe more, for under $3.00.

I love tote bags- they make great gifts (will one of these be for you?), they organize your stuff and you can cram them full.  Last year I made from scratch a bunch of totes for family.  This year, I am making them from tightly quilted quilts I have found at the thrift stores.

I found a paisely patterned throw that I got two totes out of- with pockets.  I used the scalloped edge to make a nice finished top and two belts from the thirft store (.33 each) for the handles.

Red tote

I also found a beautiful baby quilt that made a perfect tote bag with a sunny disposition.

Pottery barn kids quilt- remade

I also found a baby room set (looked brand new) with ocean animal themes, with quilt, valence, bed skirt and diaper holder for $3.00- that is right- $3.00.  I made this into two tote bags with pockets, straps, and two shopping bags.

Ocean tote 1

These totes are a little on the small side, but how cute are they!