Felted Stress

It's crunch time at school. Grades and comments are due on Friday (a beast of a job in the first quarter when you have 18 extra hours of hard work on top of continuing to be an engaging teacher) and the school play (which I choreograph) goes up a week from tomorrow (read: Hell Week). The school day exhausts me and I fall asleep by 9:30 and then am wide awake at 5:30Am. Sheesh. The good part is that I take this hour to putz around on the computer and so I'm a blogging fiend!

I've taken the handmade pledge this year, which means I'm going to make all of my gifts, or at least buy handmade. I think that the handmade pledge has been an ideal of mine for the past few years, but I needed a pretty icon to help me make it happen. With Etsy as my backup, I'm pretty confident that I can make it happen. Of course, I can't blog about anything that I'm making, so after the holidays, I suppose I'll have a craftacular post showing all the handmade stuff. So for the next few days, I have some free-ish crafting time because I'm waiting for a Knitpicks order to come in (by the way, the best company ever...you know my amazing needle set? One of the number 5 needles wouldn't thread onto the cords, I called them and they just sent me a new set...without making me return the old ones...I'm not sure the last time I've been trusted like that by a company. Very cool.), so I actually picked up my book club book (A God of Small Things) and loved the first 20 pages and now I'm going to have to juggle reading with knitting. If only I could mix those two hobbies, I'd be set (I'm lukewarm about books on tape if that's what you're thinking). So this month might be my first time going to book club without having finished the book. The inner student in me has MAJOR trouble not completing her homework, but there it is.

And lastly, I've just finished making a few hair clips. I have been wanting to make hair doodads with those alligator type clips (mostly because I've bought a few hair clips in the past, and those are the best on my long, thin hair) and here they are! They are made using that lovely bundle of hand dyed wool that I got this summer in Lancaster and some vintage wool scraps that I found at an amazing 4-H giHUGIC fabric sale. They are up in the shop if you want to take a peek.