Felted Soap

My friend Amba is a felting queen.  She recently started her own felting business, The Felting Pot.  While I've worked with wool for spinning and such, I've never felted before.  I went to one of her mini workshops to learn some basic techniques, and made a few great holiday gifts while I was there. Now I can use some of the millions pounds of raw fiber (well,okay, not millions.. but alot!) that I have around here to make some more felted soap at home.  What a two-fer!  If you are in the Dallas area, check her out!

Challah cover embroidery

I'm the roomparent for Gunnar's toddler class, which means I'm the lucky one organizing holiday gifts for the teachers, specialists and office staff for his grade level.  I really hate asking parents for tons of money, especially with the economy right now, so I figured I'd make two of the 8 of the gifts myself to help keep costs down.

I stiched up two Challah covers using crisp linen fabric and regular 6 strand embroidery floss.  (Challah is a Jewish bread that is traditionally covered with a opaque cloth while it is being blessed for Shabbat).

Here's a closeup of the embroidery.  Both the star and the dreidel patterns are from Sublime Stitching.

Yes, I know, the Jewish star pattern isn't quite finished.  I did stich in those little outspray thingies that you can see an outline of, but I finished it in parking lot of the school about 5 minutes before the gifts were presented.  So no pic of the final fully finished embroidery, sorry.