In my stash I have some nice thin goat skin leather. Unfortunately, it was wrinkled and was starting to feel a little dry.
I used a generous application of Weiman’s leather conditioner to ease the wrinkles and return the suppleness.
Other leather conditioners, such as mink oil, would have also worked to add oils back into the leather.
A white cat with gray stripes was next in the order of cats on the Bucilla felt kit for the house cat wreath. Hm. I grabbed a piece of darker gray felt from my stash and substituted parts of the white felt in the instructions to make a gray tabby with white face, chest, and feet.
I used the stamped white felt as templates to cut the gray felt, and appliquéd one on the other. I also changed the eye color to gold, and used up all the silver sequins so the back leg and tail tip have white instead.
You may recognize the model. Thor the gray tabby was the inspiration for the cat color. It amuses me that the felt cat is wearing a bright red collar bow, the real cat removes any collar placed on him by biting through the buckle.
Cat number three is complete on the Bucilla felt wreath kit.
I changed a couple small things on the brown cat, giving it three stripes of sequins on the forehead to break up the space, and making the eyes green rather than the pattern indicated white.
Two more cats to go, and I am feeling particularly rebellious.
In March of 2016 I crocheted and embroidered a Roman military helmet with face guard for my sister, who teaches ancient history.
I did not record my sources, so am not sure what specific style I was emulating, if any. It did amuse me greatly to make it.
Ripping out knitting or crochet is just a matter of pulling. When I decide to undo a looped project, it isn’t that easy. I had started a new loop and twist bag, but then learned of a new-to-me ancient technique of looping around a core cord. That sounded much more interesting to try than continuing on a second iteration of the same bag I’ve made before. So I pulled out the knots, first the twist, then the knot, for each loop.
The whole of the cord has to be pulled back through each twist and loop, and since I made the cord as I went, I had quite a lot of twined flax to pull through. Eventually it was too much and I kept dealing with tangles, so I cut the cord. I was able to recover a good bit of hand made twine, so it was worth the effort.
This recovered twine will become the core for the loop around a core construction of the next project.
Critters and Craft 