it's a tree tree ornament

nope, not stuttering

it's a Christmas tree ornament in the shape of a tree

(you may now commence singing "O Tannenbaum")

I picked up this idea from an online quilter's emag, and decided to give it a try

I like this one so well that I pulled some other appropriate fabrics out of my stash boxes to make a few more

oh, and that ric rac? right out of the box of goodies I bought at an estate sale this past summer (from what I saw of the lady's house, she would approve!)


these are the wool flowers (and leaf) that I've been knitting for my hat

the idea here is to do all of this felting at once

my main issue right now is that I just don't have much in the way of felt-able wool yarn on hand that isn't either off white (like the left overs from the knitting of the hat) or some very dark color

so the next few that I knit will probably be all that off white then I'll have to do some work with the colors later -- maybe use the Copic markers on this

I worked up this swatch last night

but it will never be a sweater

problem #1 -- I seriously did not get gauge -- usually I'm pretty close, but it's supposed to be 18.5 stitches = 4 inches and this is more like 15 stitches = 4 inches

problem #2 -- even though we like the striping pattern, those "floats" between the colors will be a problem in the finished product -- we have a dog that likes to sit on the DH -- dogs have claws -- claws + "floats" = lots of snagged sweater repairs

so I'm on the prowl again for a sweater pattern that fits all the needed qualities -- ie: the DH likes it and I like it well enough to stick with it and get it knit -- I found one this morning -- a free download even -- problem is I don't read German!!! {sigh}

I did find a couple others tho', so I'll keep working on it

you'd think that someone that can babble on in a blog almost every day of the year would not be having such a hard time writing the Christmas letter, but no, I'm struggling with it -- best get back to it