I never Felt this Good! *

* My apologies for the terrible pun.

An online contact was cleaning out her craft stuff and asked whether anyone wanted a stack of felt. I've never worked with felt before but paid all of four dollars shipping to get the stuff. It was like 30 pieces of 8.5 x 11 inch felt sheets in wonderful colors (muted nature tones and some brights) and while I've never priced felt, I think I got a bargain. Now I just have to figure out what to do with all of it!

One project I know will happen soon is a new pin cushion (or two!). I have one of those terribly boring and nonfunctional tomato pincushions that I've had since I started sewing for myself back in 1991 or so. It rolls around annoyingly and the filling is too stiff to easily get pins in and out (particularly one-handed while sewing). I have two different sets of pins. The first is a set of heavy quilt pins (also the first ones I bought way back when) and the second is a box of tiny antique pins from my mother. These are much more delicate and have tiny colored heads (some plastic over a flat metal pin top but others tiny beads of glass). I'd like to have a pincushion with a weighted base and very soft top for the little old pins and a second sturdier cushion for the quilt pins.

I also anticipate some Ham-oriented crafty projects -- perhaps a tiny set of finger puppets!

My art proceeds apace. I have two pieces cut: one a bony winter tree, the other a Japanese-style wave. They both need to be mounted on their respective backgrounds, a tedious gluing project that I confess I've been avoiding. I'm not sure how good these pieces are, but they were fun to work on. And they are, to my way of thinking, art. I'm not cutting from a pattern or tracing, but working from my own original sketches.

However I don't anticipate much time for either arts or crafts in the coming weeks as we are moving house. Not to our dream "forever home" as we might have liked, but to another rental. While we want to own again, we just couldn't seem to get anything to come together in the time we need. So for now, we'll be apartment dwellers (or town home dwellers I guess). One good thing is that the layout of our new place supports me having an office craft room on the same floor as the living room (as opposed to being in a spare bedroom).