It’s been so fun to read these wintry posts.  I like winter for many of the same reasons as my fellow guest bloggers but  I think mostly  I like it out of necessity…otherwise I’d be crabby straight through from October to May.  Getting outside even just for a bit is a high priority for our family but there are some days (like today) up here in Minnesota where it’s just too cold to have much fun outside.  On these days crafts and art projects are in order, so here is a fun sewing project for grown-ups and young sewers alike:

A Stocking Cap for a Small Friend (my first tutorial!)

Cut off the cuff and a couple of inches of sleeve from an old sweater.  A sock would work very well too.

Turn the piece inside-out and do a running stitch about 1/4″ from the cut edge with strong thread all the way around the top.  Pull tight and secure with a knot.

Turn it right side out and fold up the cuff a bit…hey look, it’s already so hat-like!

Now make a little pom pom.  There are lots of places to lean how if you have never made one before…like here.

I like to felt my pom poms a bit by rubbing them between my hands in warm soapy water.  This step is not necessary but I think it looks super cute and helps scale down your pom pom.  The yarn must be wool in order to do this step.

Now stitch the pom pom to the top of the hat.

finis

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I’m Erika from Fox and Owl.  I make dolls and animals and drawings and have a little blog where I talk about art and craft and show lots of gratuitous pictures of my adorable children.  Come visit me there sometime!

Thank you Meg for letting me be a guest on your excellent blog!

I was lucky enough to score this Drew Beckmeyer print from Tiny Showcase. Tiny Showcase, if you don’t know, is (in their own words) “user-submitted, limited-run, amazingly high-quality and archival artwork.” Basically little, affordable art. I didn’t know I loved Drew Beckmeyer’s work until I found it there, but I do.  The scenes he paints are usually fantastical and the colors he uses are stunning and so perfectly modern. I know that graphic design type art is really popular (and affordable as well), but it’s never appealed to me. Not because I don’t love graphic designers, because I do, and not because it’s not beautiful, because it is. Painting just seems to have more warmth, more depth.  But there is no accounting for taste.  I’ve wanted to buy art for our home for a while now. We only have a little, but the art we do have was made by people we know personally and I liked that a lot.  Our friends have become so talented that now we can no longer afford their work (long ago I bought a painting with a 6-pack).  But good for them! and good for me now too, because I have this tiny piece on my wall.