Although I haven’t had much time to blog or do any fiber work, I did get a few things done. Here is a needle felted pumpkin pin cushion that I made over the Christmas holiday. I also showed the grandchildren how to needle felt and they both made dogs. Unfortunately, I didn’t get photos of their creations. They had a great time though. After we got home, we have been dealing with tons of snow. It seems like we are shoveling and plowing every spare minute of the day. The snow even crushed one of our “garage tents” where we store the boat. Quite the disaster. I am trying to get organized for my machine embroidery course at the end of the month. I got some of the supplies but I’m having trouble finding 30 weight rayon machine embroidery thread and 100% cotton. I guess I’ll have to check out the quilt shops and see what they have. I did get a little further with my December TIF project.

My sister Margaret sent me a whole load of paint and ink supplies that she is no longer using. She included an old wool white blanket. So I used it to begin making a cover for my notebook for my class. I dyed it with jet black acid dye in a low immersion technique. It needs to be cut down now so it fits. I wanted to give myself room in case it shrank but it didn’t. Then I’ll sew on the pomegranates and sew the edges.

Here’s a close up of the dyeing process. You can’t really see all the color changes in the photos as it was getting dark here. Note to self – get it together and make a light box for taking photos some time in the near future (as in now!)

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. It’s quite inspiring to read every one’s goals and words that they have chosen for 2009. I don’t usually do resolutions or the such but I’m going to be trying to enter more of my work into competitions etc. Also, to concentrate on developing my own style and completing more projects. In this light, I will be doing less challenges and exchanges. I really enjoyed doing TIF but it seemed to take a lot of my time which is limited. So that’s the plan for 2009.