Woolly Items

There's not much cotton fiber activity around here these days. I'm knitting when I get the chance, and my sewing room has been pretty clean for weeks. With my work schedule I don't get much chance to spend time in the sewing room and I don't have the energy for it either. I do want to quilt my Halloween quilt so I can put it out now that October's here.

Debra suggested tacking it with buttons instead of quilting, but since I want to use it for a table cover I've decided to quilt it. I've got a couple of quilts I've tacked with buttons, and I've discovered that when you use them on a table you lose flat surface space to put things like glasses or vases on. I've got second quilt pin basted, so when I switch on the sewing machine, that's what I'm going to do first.

But in the meantime, I do have a few finished woolly items: more fingerless mitts, and this hat for Allie.

Isn't she a great model? The pattern is from Crazy Aunt Purl's site. It's her Super-simple fast and easy chunky hand-knit beret knit with fat yarn on big needles. It makes up fast and it's very stylish.
I also made this bag up out of my imagination and some wool scraps. The buttons are 60s vintage: they've got a facsimile of a cave drawing on them.

The binding has an interesting story: A few years ago, I found at the thrift store a bag of wool bias strips, all double folded and wound on wood thread spools, . The person who make them was probably braiding wool rugs, and I could see (there were 8 or 10 big spools) they had cost someone a lot of effort, so I bought them not having a clue about what I would use them for. I've since discovered they're great for binding wool items like this bag.

Our Vogue Sweater knit-along is set to start on October 15, so anyone who wants to play along should give a holler. With all this wool I'm getting ready for winter.