Lately Ivy's been bugging me to use the sewing machine, insisting that now she's four she's big enough and she'll be "really, really careful." Teaching her to hand sew hasn't been much of a consolation, especially when she decides on projects such as "a stuffed cat" or "clothes for Miranda". Last week, someone bought a felted mouse from my Etsy shop (which I still need to ship, thanks to the weather and now President's Day...) I couldn't find the one I had made, all my Etsy merchandise is in two large bins but no little felted mouse. So I got out some wool and my felting needles to make another one.

Ivy wanted to make one as well. If you have ever used felting needles, you know that not only are they very sharp, they have tiny barbs at the end. It's not recommended that children under 10 use them. But Ivy's getting pretty tired of being told no to everything she wants to do, so I came up with a solution. I gave her a lump of wool and a tapestry needle and told her to start poking at it the way I was doing. Every so often I would ask if I could have a turn and shaped it a bit with the felting needles. Eventually we ended up with a little mouse she was quite proud of.




9 more days until the end of February. I suppose it's probably a bit ambitious to think the snow might be over with the arrival of March. And it hasn't even been that bad this year, it didn't even get really cold until January, and the snow has only been here for a few weeks. But I am finished with Winter.