Felting with Brooke

As many of you know, I learned to knit in Norway in July 2010, and since then, I haven't been able to stop.  I have even started a video podcast, wannabeknitter.blogspot.com to help track my progress, and also keep me motivated and challenge myself to improve upon the skills I have learned.

I have secretly been hoping that  my daughter Brooke would also share my same passion for knitting, and I started taking her with me to a knitting group I started in our old town of Thetford, UK, and began to instruct her on how to knit.

One night, one of the other ladies of the group was needle felting.  I have seen this done before, but had never really thought much about it.  Brooke begged to try, so the lady showed her how to do it, and then I bought some felting equipment. She loved poking the needles and creating pictures.  She took her needle felting to Utah, whe she stayed for 6 weeks while Sam and I moved to our new home in Ohio.  She even taught her cousin how to do it.

I started attending a weekly knitting group in our new town at our local yarn store, and as soon as Brooke joined us in Ohio, I brought her with me.  of course, she wanted to bring her needle felting.

I was reading a book about Knitalongs, which is where people knit together, or knit for a cause, or work on the same project at the same time, and in the book was a pattern for a cute hat.  I thought how fun it would be to knit up this easy hat and felt it by throwing it in the washing machine, then having her needle felt it.  I knit the hat on the biggest needles I had, felted it, and before I knew it, Brooke took it up to her room and needle felted a cute flower on it.

When I heard about the Mid-Ohio fiber fair, and saw that they were offering two felting classes, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to sign up and take my daughter for some mother-daughter bonding time. After all, I hadn't seen her for six weeks!   I was sorely tempted to take the double knitting and sock knitting course, but this was all about Brooke this time around.

Brooke is decorating our felted mittens

All our finished felted projects: Hat, bracelets,
and mittens.

The first class we took together was how to felt gloves from carded Alpaca wool.  I let Brooke decorate the top of the mittens with different colors of wool.  They turned out really cute!  Then we learned to make felted beads, which we then used to make a bracelet.

Our felted bracelets

We both had so much fun, and we can't wait to go to our next fiber fair.  I was so happy to have spent this time with my daughter.  She is such a delight to be with, and I'm glad that she is learning to love fiber art as much as I do, even if it isn't knitting.  I just bought a book on how to knit doll clothes, and she loves to make clothes for her Liv dolls, so there is still hope!

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