Saturday's Artist

Yesterday I was reading one of my most favoritest blogs, one that incorperates unschooling and crafting, Ordinary Life Magic. Stephanie mentioned that she wanted to start doing a link party so that her readers could link to the past weeks favorite creative moment. She has titled it Saturday's Artist.

I don't normal do link parties because, well, they tend to be pretty specific and I have to think ahead about it and stuff.

I am not so great at the thinking ahead/ planning thing.

What I like about Saturday's Artist is that I can link to a post about any creative thing Emma and/or I have done during the past week.

Well yesterday, when I was reading Stephanie's post about Saturday's Artist, I knew immediately what I wanted to blog about.

It was this:

I was attempting to make a little felted wool pillow with a flower (both from recycled wool sweaters). The sweater had other plans though. After sewing up the three sides, I turned it right-side-out so that I could get ready to stuff it. I tossed the flower on the not-yet-stuffed pillow to make sure it would still fit and stopped. I could almost hear the sweater telling me, "I want to be a purse, not a boring old pillow, a PURSE!!"

I aim to please. 

I lined it with purple jersey fabric (that I kinda did backwards), tossed in a little pocket, added some store bought handles that I covered with more recycled wool, stitched on the flower and added a magnetic button closure. 

I aim to please, and boy was I pleased. This purse is my new favorite :)

Anyway, like I said, yesterday I knew exactly what I wanted to link to for the Saturday's Artist. Then today, I made this:

The above purse was made using the sleeves of a wool sweater. After I cut the bottom portion of the sleeves, I had two somewhat "V" shaped pieces left. I kept glancing at them yesterday, thinking I would like to make a hat out of them, but not really sure how it would turn out. 

Today I mustered up the courage to give it a try. I am so glad I did. I tried the hat on myself and loved how it fit (how it looked was all together a different story, but living in a cold region has made me care less about how a hat looks, and more about how warm it is). The sides came down nice and low so my ears would be covered, while the front curved up a bit so that I could still see. Jared and I decided it needed some dangling pom-pom things. I wanted to continue to use wool if possible, but I didn't really have any scraps that would work, and I didn't want to cut up a new sweater just to make pom-poms and strings. 

I also realized I was a little tired of the white color scheme. I needed more color. 

Enter some beautiful Autumn colored roving from Prarieland Herbs. It seemed like just the thing, so I grabbed my needle felting tools and the roving and got busy making some abstract art on a felt hat. 

It turned out so awesome, that Emma decided she wanted it. 

I was ok with that, it looks way better on her anyway.

(Emma wanted everyone to know she is 5)

(in this picture, Emma, wanted everyone to see what the hat looked liked with the pom-poms behind her shoulders)

I decided to make a scarf that would go with the hat, but realized doing abstract on the scarf would be difficult because there was already a pattern on that part of the sweater. 

Oh well, you win some, you loose some. 

 Emma and I created a lot of fun things this week, but this hat is my favorite. 

(edited 13Feb11- I am not sure if I added it correctly, but I wanted to have the fun little Saturday's Artist logo.)