wool felt and rocking chairs

The little inner voices told me to leave the house early yesterday so we could stop at the thrift stores. I wasn't in the mood for more sheets, but I called Grandma and asked her if she wanted to meet the kids and I for lunch and run around a bit.

The voice knew what it was talking about. At the second store, I found a HUGE bag of "wool scraps for quilting" for $3.75. Lots of different shades of Green and brown and red and plaid...



I can't even guess at how many yards there are here. The bag's got to weigh at least ten pounds, and the pieces are big. Some is yardage, some is cut from clothing.

Wool felt is one of those things I've been drawn to but haven't tried because it's kind of pricey. I've felted a few pieces of wool clothing, and made myself a holder for my dpns out of an old Pendleton shirt, but that's about it.

And suddenly I've got so much wool I barely know what I'm going to do with it! So I'm reading blogs and looking for ideas, because that's easier than digging through my collection of quilting magazines to find the patterns I know are there.

I've already run three loads through the washer, and I've got several more to go because I'm sorting it by color to avoid tragedy. But I really should do the actual laundry, which won't be sorted nearly as carefully.

I'm thinking one of my first projects should be an owl bookmark.

I also need to make a thread catcher. I didn't know it until I saw Beth's and followed her link back to Bonnie's. But I need one. Somewhere I've got a huge bag of Bill's torn work jeans, but I don't know if it's in the attic or shop or barn of if I got rid of them in a fit of sanity.

I'd called Alex over to look at this make your own hankies tutorial (we've been using old cloth diapers, which there are only a few of) and she asked when I was going to do something with all the old jeans in her room. Her old jeans have glittery embroidery on the cuffs, so I can make a really cute thread catcher. Or six.

I also want to find a pattern for this H block quilt. Since it's so neat looking and I've got a kid whose name start with H.

Oh, and I got so distracted by the wool that I almost forgot the rocking chair! There's a junk store that we drive past every time we go to town. Most of their inventory sits out in the rain, occasionally covered with a few tarps. For months, they had a couple of old wooden rockers. I'd drive by and think about how much I wanted a wooden rocker to sit and weather on my porch and look picturesque, but I never stopped to see how much the guy wanted for them.

And then they were gone and that was that.

The thrift store had an old, unpainted wooden rocker marked down to ten bucks. So as soon as Grandpa's done doing some minor first aid, I've got my porch rocker.