Wool anyone?

I feel like it's been forever since I've posted...while my break from blogging was several months long I was busy creating fun stuff.  Of course, I photographed basically none of it and gave most of it away as gifts for the holidays, so my bad there.  My resolution for 2012?  1) Take more photos of my projects.  2)  Take more photos of my projects BEFORE giving away as gifts. 

Here are two that were given as gifts using wool...one of my favorite materials!

A tree pillow using my kid's hand prints as the branches & trunk.  The red background is from a recycled sweater found while thrifting.  I was able to get two 14x14 pillow faces out of it, plus some scraps left over for future projects.  The hand/arm print is suede leather from a women's shirt also found while thrifting.  I purchased a bunch of wool felt from Felt On The Fly which made up the leaves once I cut out a bunch of little circles and stacked them up here and there.  The cover has a zippered back for ease of removing and cleaning if need be.

And a little knitting....I like this yarn and hat pattern so much I may make myself one too!  I used Malabrigo yarn, chunky, in the Sealing Wax colorway.  Love it!  The pattern was a free one found on Ravelry but I can't for the life of me find the bookmark so I'm going to have to go do a big search for the pattern again when I have free time to devote to it. The flowers are cut from wool felt scraps left from the above pillow project and hand sewn on. I used this  tutorial for the smaller one and just winged it for the larger one, which is a pinwheel design.

Yeah for wool!