Today’s Fortune: Your flair for the creative takes an important place in your life.

I guess whoever writes my cookie fortunes has heard about the witches and the sock monkey costume we have been working on. While we were visiting in Boston, we went to Auntie Kate’s yarn store. It is called The Creative Stitch. I don’t usually like to go to the yarn store much, because it can get kind of boring, but this time, Mom and the aunties were signed up for a “needle felting” class. They thought they were going to make pumpkins, but when we got there, the project was for a Halloween witch, which we thought was even better! Mom said I could help, which made me very happy!

Auntie Kate and Auntie Pam took the class with us, and they were hard at work on their witches, so we sneaked a picture of them. We had lots of fun!

Needle felting is different from the kind of felting Mom usually does where she knits something and then sticks it in the washing machine with hot water and tennis balls, and shrinks it. We really like that, because it is like Shrinky Dinks, only with yarn.  Dad does not like it so much, because it clogs up the washer pump, and he has to take the washing machine apart.  He has to do a lot of work around here because of our art projects.

Needle felting does not require any hot water or a washing machine. All you really have to have is some foam, a special very sharp needle, and the soft stuff they make yarn out of, called “roving”. All you do is shape the roving and lay it on the foam and poke the needle up and down until the fibers are locked. You can make almost anything you want this way! It is very cool.  The hardest part of needle felting is to not stick your finger.  If you do, you can bleed on your project, which will make it messy looking.  It will also make your finger hurt.

Here is what our witch looked like at first, before she got a face.  We made a cone out of black, and added a face blob.  Then we poked the face blob with the needle where we wanted her eyes and stuff to be.  It was really interesting to learn.

I worked really hard on our witch.  She was too short at first, so we had to add some extra to the bottom of her, and she turned out to be the tallest one of all.  This made mom very happy, because she is always the shortest one of all.   I think our witch turned out great.  She is very scary, which is definitely what you are after with a witch.

The project was great fun, but after the felting class was over, it kind of turned into a regular yarn store trip.  Mom shopped, and I got bored.  Again.

Mom took a picture of all of the witches that we made in class.  That’s Auntie Kate on the left, Auntie Pam on the right, and Mom is the tall one in the middle!  We decided to call them the “Witches of Weymouth”, because that is where Auntie Kate lives.

I was glad when we got done at the yarn store, because we got to go to a great place called “Plymouth”.  I will have to tell about it tomorrow, because we saw and did a bunch of awesome stuff there, and it will take a whole blog post to talk about it.  It was way more fun than a yarn store, for sure!

In other sock monkey news, Mom had to make a sock monkey costume for our grandbaby Lily.   She could not find a pattern she liked, so she sort of made one up.  She “improvised” a pattern for the suit, and made her own pattern for the hat.  It is made from some stuff called “polar fleece.”  It is soft and warm like a polar bear, but it is not made from polar bears.

We think the sock monkey suit turned out really good.  Especially since Lily is in Nebraska and we are not.  It is kind of hard to fit a baby that you don’t have on hand.

Lily is almost 11 months old, and this is her very first Halloween.  We think she is the cutest sock monkey we have ever seen.  The sock monkey suit will fit her all winter, and she can wear it as a snowsuit, which is good, because it gets very cold in Nebraska.

She does not have very many teeth yet, so I am not sure what she will do with Halloween candy.  Maybe she will send it to me!

Today’s Vocabulary Words: Needle felting, roving, improvised, polar fleece