A Wooly Cowl, A Warm Hat and A Wonderful Hint!

As promised, here are pictures of the Buttons Cowl and the Better Bucket Hat. I took these magnificent shots on my iphone, where you can flip the focus on yourself. Man, is that scary!!! But, for better or for worse, here they are.

The Wooly Cowl

 

 

The Warm Hat 

I will never EVER be cold again with these two. It's -16 outside today, but I will take them for a "test walk" after lunch. I can't imagine needing all the buttons done up on the cowl, but in the second shot, you an see that I have undone buttons at both the top and the bottom. Perfect to keep your neck warm with a light sweater on.

The hat is incredible, since it doesn't give hat head, looks good with glasses and doesn't itch!!! Oh, and the fabulous brooch on the side of the hat? That was a gift that Jenn brought me back from her teaching stint in Reeth. I decided to forego a button so that I would be able to switch brooches depending on the mood - or the coat. Just the perfect dash of colour.

Ok, so now on the Wonderful Hint.

When I was at the Fiber Guild meeting last week, we were talking about having a demonstration on needle felting. (I am a complete rookie and have only tried it once, to put a bit of roving on a piece of wool.) While we were discussing all the great embellishing you can do with it, one of the women said it was a fabulous alternative to darning sweaters.

Since my husband's fine gauge wool sweaters seem to be caviar to something, he is forever discovering holes. There is no rhyme or reason to why they dine on his, cuz there is certainly lots of other wool about and I have never seen signs of a moth.  At any rate, I gave it a whirl this morning and decided to share the results with you, even though the results are far from perfect.

Brown Roving on left - matching yarn on top and right. Yarn wins!

At first I thought that roving would be the best thing to use and that is what I tried. Unfortunately, the closest I had in colour was a brown, which is a bit off for the colour. Then I remembered some wool yarn that I thought would be close. And it was much better.

It may not be perfect, but the sweater can now be worn without holes on a chilly day. He can put a vest over top or something. And it beats throwing it away (or cutting it up for hooking nudge nudge wink wink). If you have a felting needle and pad, remember to try this as a mending/darning alternative if you get the chance.