Wool Felt
I've just ordered quite a bit of legit wool felt from Purl.. All the felt I have is either from my coveted stash from National Nonwovens, craptastic craft store acrylic, or of the felted-wool variety (where it was woven and then felted). The last type would be all right but I only have scraps in a few colors, and it's a little floppier than I would like.
I have plenty of the acrylic type but it's just.. of such quality that I know it'll pill up and get nasty in a short period of time. I should know: I used it to make about a thousand tiny stuffed cats when I was in middle school.
Jears
Yesterday, I was hunting through various containers looking for some wool felt. In one container I found the shoe box of jears supplies! I made jears in 2008 because, well, it was funny.
The new - and final - season of Lost starts on Tuesday, so I decided to spend today making some jears. This is an old one I have up on etsy:
There are three types: plain, flashback wig, and flashforward beardwig. hee!
Schmancy Olympic Challenge
I signed up to participate in Schmancy's Olympic Challenge.. Like I needed to add more things to do to my plate! But it seemed like so much fun that I could not resist.
I'm on the bobsleigh team! Which means I just have to make something related to the bobsleigh event. Of course I think I am going to go in the vein of cats and hamsters, since that's what I've been doing the most of lately. So here are some bits from my sketchbook:
Linus bobsled populated by hamsters in goggles? Hmmmm.
Linus; Tumblr.
My favorite thing about Linus' website is when someone new signs up as a follower, and then proceeds to go through the whole post archive and hit the like button on every single picture.
Tumblr recently did a couple of things:
1. They shifted the stats to the dashboard (instead of having to click on the "Tumblarity"). This is a little strange because now the follower count is RIGHT THERE. I kind of hate looking at it, because I get a tiny pang of sadness if I lose one - even if I have no idea who it is and I wasn't following them anyway.
2. Messages. This is kind of awesome, because I'd set up a Linus email account on squishythings.com but couldn't get it to work with Mail - I assume this is because I already download one squishythings.com account to there, and it didn't like it when I tried to do two (did not care to investigate). But really I got about four messages in it ever, so it didn't matter. (Luckily 1and1 just revamped their webmail from THE SUCKIEST EVER to THE SECOND SUCKIEST EVER so it's been easier to manage.) BUT, then the Messages happened. Now I get requests and questions right there! It has been excellent. And a couple messages have just been about how people love Linus, which makes me feel WAY better about all the time I've spent on it. phew.
3. They just opened a Directory of popular stuff, and included Linus in the cute section. So now part of my concern of #1 has been a little bit decimated - the number has gone up a rather large jump in just a couple of days. UNSETTLING!
end to toil
Thankfully I finished all the umbrellas on December 7th. Here are twenty-one, with the foil on them! Fifteen new ones and six repaired.
Delivered them to their owner on the 9th, and am blissfully freeeeeeeee of thinking about them anymore 
toil, toil, toil
I've been slowly making it through my current longterm projects - a couple of little baby quilts and fifteen small modified umbrellas - and punctuating my time with needlefelting some ham ornaments.
I'm going away for the whole week of Thanksgiving, so I won't be able to use my machine or other things in my home studio. The umbrella project is a little more dire, so I got all the dyeing and machine sewing out of the way. Here's the stack.
They don't need to be perfect. They just have to work when I'm finished! The marked up muslin will be covered, so it doesn't matter what it looks like now.
The next step is to slide icky steel binding wire into the four channels on each umbrella, and then handstitch the wires down. At this point I've finished inserting all the wires, but the sewing part takes forrreeevvverrrr (as you may imagine!), so I will be taking them on my trip. I doubt I'll have much time to work on them, but anything at all would be helpful.
Needlefelting a tapir..
Recently I posted an image of some first-day parts of a felt piece I was making.. Well, here's some more.
This is after attaching the head and legs: tapirs are pretty chubby, so I wrapped roving around and around the body to create bulk, and reinforce the joints. I used toothpicks when attaching the legs to give them a little extra strength to hold up the weight of the body.
Once the tapir was the right shape, I made its "skin" out of black and white wool. Then I added its eyes and ears, and did some extra stabby work on the face to give him that funny tapir smile, and nostrils!
I am happy to report the recipient was pleased 
