I have been busy, mostly with the flu/cold! Have managed to get a few hats done, several of which will be posted here as soon as I can get the photos taken and get then put up on the blog.
This hat is a combination of several of my favorite things: felt, crochet and needle felt. In the past, I've made felt for the sole purpose of making felt, with nothing in particular in mind. In my attempts to get organized ( a challenge thrown down by my dear friend Dawn) I am using up some of those felts to create hats that are a bit different from what I've done in the past. This one is an example of that marriage between felt making, crochet and needle felting. The band is handmade, merino wool felt with hand-dyed merino silk on the surface. I then crocheted the top of the hat with a soft grey colored wool yarn. To add more texture to the hat. I needle felted Teeswater locks into the crocheted top and allowed the locks to tendril down the side of the hat. I like the many textures playing together and am going through my box of felts to find what other little pieces will ask to to married into something. It is a much longer process, but I am enjoying it very much.

The weather has turned significantly cooler and it feels as though it is time to do the things that take a bit longer to do. Many evenings I am now crocheting or drawing out designs. After a long day of cleaning closets, trips to Goodwill, and filling orders, all through the fuzz of a bad cold, crochet is about all I can manage to do. I am totally convinced that the common cold is misnamed. It should be called '"MISERY"; cold sounds so benign, when in fact, one can be quite miseraly sick with a cold.