make & listen (and read) along

Only once before have I joined in for the Make & Listen Along fun over at Simple Things Notebook, but this week has seen some making, so here I am.  Not quite a week into the world of needle and wet felting, and I've got a half dozen little balls (a long ways off from the garland I hope to make, but it's a start) under my belt, along with a repair job on a doll, a nearly finished wallet, a mini doll, and about 1/3 of a butterfly.  The possibilities are endless....  dolls! mobiles! ornaments! oh my!  And what fun it is for little hands as well.

the wallet still needs yarn stitched in from the bottom to create the ties, and I have to felt the bottom 2/3 together to form a pocket, but it's very nearly done~

My big felting goal for now is to make a playscape for Claire.  A large mat, maybe 2 x 3 feet, that is essentially grassy colored with a river/creek running through it and some flowers and patches of soil and sand.  Something she can roll out and use for playing with her dolls and animals.  Perhaps even some new felted dolls and animals.

In other making, there was french toast for breakfast, which lead to the making of a mental note regarding the status of our honey and maple syrup stash.

With a bit over a gallon still untouched, the syrup should last us until we make more in the late winter.  And the honey?  Still somewhere in the gallon and a half-ish range, but it's going fast.  And hot-tea-all-day-long season hasn't even really started yet.  Regardless, the satisfaction I feel every time I open the pantry and see the jars of maple syrup and honey lined up beside each other.... well, it's big time.

As for the listening~  in rotation as of late have been Etta James, Erin McKeown, and the Disney Pandora station (I know, it sounds awful, right? but if you whittle away at it until it's what you want, it's surprisingly good and includes lots of old stuff).

As for the reading, I just finished The Language of Flowers and loved it.  Now I'm moving on to two others that fall more into the memoir/creative nonfiction categories:  Growing a Farmer, and The Secret Life of Lobsters.

*for more making and listening along with others, check out Simple Things Notebook