Exhaling

Greetings from Winter wonderland! After the warmest November in 150 years, winter’s finally here, properly greeted by enthusiastic young ones who think snow is the best thing ever. I have to say I find snow rather pretty and don’t mind it at all now that I have brand new non-slippery winter boots to keep me safe and lots of wool and knitted garments to keep me warm.


Needing a rest from the knitting obsession, I have been working on a little piece of needlework which now is in the process of being stretched back into shape. I had totally forgotten how time consuming needlepoint is, and it’s just as easy to get hooked on as knitting.

I have also tried my hand at needle felting for the first time ever,

and it was fun although slower than I expected. I love how it looks on the back with the fibres travelling through,

and the pearl cotton stitching around the edge.

The weekend was spent in good company. Husband has been on a business trip so grandson and I ruled the house all by ourselves. One of the good things about our grandma-time-schedule is that actually I take every other weekend off and lower my shoulders and have fun no matter what else is happening. We finally finished our mixed media garlands which we started a few weeks ago. Talk about test of patience. First we painted ugly scrapbook papers on both sides, then cut the shapes, and then decorated the circles with paint on both sides. It took quite a while as we had to leave everything to dry between each step, so by the time they were ready to be attached to the string, one of us ran out of patience.

On Saturday we added circles from aqua cardstock, decorated them with stickers, and stapled everything onto fuzzy yarn. We had enough circles for 4 garlands; two for me, one for daughter and one as a gift, plus a little one for grandson’s room. Sorry about the pictures, there’s about a one hour’s window to get proper lighting and if you miss it, this is what you get.

We also built the world’s biggest PlusPlus ferry for our little PlusPlus “cars” which we have been constructing and reconstructing for a year and a half now. Neither of us gets tired of them; I still love playing with the simple geometric shapes and gorgeous colours.

My local craft store is next to a thrift store, so I pop in now and then just to have a look (read old table cloths and interesting curtains). This piece of thrifted art caught my eye the other day and I couldn’t resist buying it.

I find the image a bit unsettling, but I love the hand stitching.

I was hoping to be able to remove the fabric from the frame, but it is firmly glued onto the base. Maybe I’ll paint the frame or something sometime in the future.


Got to go to bed; have a wonderful week!