A friend of mine purchased something like this from a local upscale grocery store. “Seems like these would be really easy to make,” she said, “but who has the time?”
I have the time, I thought. That shouldn’t be too much trouble at all. Twenty minutes maybe. Two and a half hours later I had two lovely felted sweater pot holders. They’re the end of the year gift for our parent-child class teacher.
I would give detailed instructions and/or a pattern for these but they seem pretty straightforward. The eyes and wings are sewn onto the outside of felted wool sweater pieces while feet, nose, ears, etc. are placed between the identical front/back body pieces before those are sewn together either by machine or hand.
One day, we're thinking, we'll have more than 900 square feet of yard space and we'll fill it not only with chickens and vegetables but with bees, groves of trees, goats and mysterious and magical nooks and hideaways to explore. Until that day we're collecting the mojo in our little minds. At the Oregon Garden we found some really sweet structures and layouts including a grow box with a plexi-glass window through which one can watch the potatoes grow! What a treat for the children.
We recently revisited Tryon Creek State Park in Portland/Lake Oswego. It was named after Socrates Hotchkiss Tryon who originally established a land claim there in 1850 and who I only mention because of his exceedingly excellent moniker. We've twice taken Naiya to this park and twice returned posthaste to the car after not too successful attempts at pleasant afternoon strolls in the woods. This time though, our rambunctious toddler walked, ran, slid and tumbled over nearly three miles of trails on her own. It's a lush and sometimes quaggy succession of paths, but even after she'd slid down a muddy bank and lost (then recovered) her boot in a boggy stream she (and we) still had a fantastic time.
