Time Flies!

Wow! It is November already!  It feels like I just posted about our extreme heat.  Fall has pretty much arrived in north Texas, thankfully. But, it is still fairly dry here and we still need rain.

A couple of weeks ago, I had our younger granddaughter over and we made some cut out cookies together.  I let her have a free hand at decorating the cookies, encouraging her artful self ,and we had some wonderful cookies to look at and to eat. It truly was a fun time!!! When I took her home, she was able to take half of the cookies home to share with her sister and parents. :)

I have two large plastic boxes filled with felted sweaters.  Felting sweater is habit forming. Once you start felting your thrift store finds and realizing the great fabric that you have, you want to go and get more and felt more. :)
If you have never felted a wool sweater, here is how I do it.  First, I have a top loading machine.
-I set it on the longest wash and hot water.  Set the level of water appropriate for the size load that you have.  If my sweater is all alone, I will put a t-shirt in with it. Be careful and put only similar colors together.
-Fill washer, with hot water and put in your normal amount of laundry soap.
-Check the sweater, about every 10 minutes, before the hot water drains.  If it isn't felted enough at the end of the wash cycle, reset the cycle and agitate again.
-When sweater is felted as you want it, let the washer finish rinsing and spinning.  I use a cold water rinse. Shocking the wool, with cold water helps it felt a bit more.
-When washer is finished, you can air dry your sweater, BUT I like to place it in the dryer for a short drying cycle. Make sure that you clean your dryer filter when done.
-After the sweater is dry, cut it apart at the seams, so that you now have fabric.
Hints: Use only wool or animal fiber sweaters. Cotton, or other plant fibers, and acrylic(man-made fibers) will NOT felt.  You do need to use only wool or other animal fibers; ex. cashmere, angora, mohair.

So, I cut up several co-ordinating sweaters and then sewed the squares together to make a scarf.  Then I used one of the sweaters and made some hand warmers.  I crocheted a lace edging on the hand warmers, and did a simple machine stitch around the scarf. The scarf is made from wool, cashmere and angora. The handwarmers are from a wool/angora sweater.  Soooo, very soft.

 The set is for sale in my etsy shop.

In July, I decided to write a new pattern. I thought that I would get it done quickly, but no.  I have knitted it several times and have had it tested.  After receiving the tester's notes, I decided to put some more work into the pattern.  I love that my tester is honest with me.  :)  Originally, the pattern was for fingering/sport weight cotton. Now I have been using wool sock weight yarn and wool worsted weight yarn. When this pattern is done, there will be many variations that will work .

This one is knitted from cotton sport-weight yarn.

This is the same scarf, stretched out lengthwise.

It, too, is for sale in my etsy shop.