pillows

Here's a couple of little projects I did recently. I know, this is supposed to be my art blog but sometimes I need a little mindless crafting.

The geometric pillow is made of Pendleton wool - I fell in love with this fabric and decided to buy a yard of it. So nice that I can buy it by the yard! I got two pillows and a rectangle that I just hung on the wall by itself out of the piece I bought and I think I still can make a bag out of what's left.

The crochet pillow was a sort of "what can I do on a plane" project. I saw a photo of a cute granny square pillow somewhere in blog land around the same time I was going to be on a plane and I thought granny squares would be the perfect project for flying. No pattern to follow, really, and they're so small. I had finished most of the squares months ago and finally got them all assembled and onto a pillow form. It's also wool...Cascade 220 yarn in the closest matching colors to the Pendleton fabric that I could find, plus white because I like white. :)

So the last picture is what happens to these wooly objects with cats around: they're getting kind of squashed and I'm a little worried about the life expectancy on that crochet pillow. It snags pretty easy with all the little holes between the stitches.

Feeling festive

I wanted to share some pics of our tree this year - as I mentioned last time, we didn't really have a Christmas last year and I'm a little fixated on it this year.

My next project is to make a tree topper because I felt that the old one (a snowflake) wasn't really what I wanted in a place that doesn't get much snow. It seems like having snow-themed decorations inside and a lot of green outside would be too confusing :) I had an idea to make a new star covered in bright green preserved moss. In my head, it seems really cool and appropriate to our mossy surroundings and I hope it will look good in reality as well. If I ever get around to making it, I'll post a picture here.

My antler

This is an elk antler that I found walking in the woods near my parents' house a few years ago.  It's about four feet long and is kind of heavy.  I'm trying to find out where to put it in the new house (it was living on the porch before) and I'm kind of stumped.  It's just too big for most spots and it's a little pointy and huge to just put on the floor.  The cats seem like they want to destroy it whenever it's in the house and I'm moving it around to look at it.  So I should probably hang it on a wall...?  Maybe make a loop of twine to hang it?  I don't know, but I really really love it and it needs to be displayed in all its glory.