I am exhibiting at Vogue Knitting Live this week on Friday at 1:00 pm eastern time and on Saturday at 10:00am eastern time. Today I am putting together a collection of my favorite patterns to showcase during my hour long discussion of my design process, favorite yarns, and best practices. I’d love it if you would join me, tickets are still available.

It’s a tough time right now so I totally understand if it doesn’t fit into your week. As I was going through my designs I had to pause a moment to show you a couple of my favorites, the felted pillows I contributed to the 30 Year Anniversary celebration for Noro Kureyon and my humble collection of felted flowers which I have accumulated over the years from scraps of this and that.

Creating useful felted items is one of my go to solutions to avoid having a big stash of yarn. When you finish a project and wish it well as you send it on its way, what do you do with the random skein you have left over or the last few bits from the colorwork? Pompoms make fun gift toppers, and so do felted flowers. So, grab your favorite pattern and a few random left over skeins of feltable wool, alpaca or angora and get your stitch on with a few different flowers. They are easier than socks to keep in a small pouch in your brief case and there’s the added benefit that if you have a dropped stitch on a feltable project, no one is going to be the wiser. My go to source for inspiration on felted flowers is the classic text by Nora Bellows, now available for Kindle:

Got a few skeins you need to use up but are no sure what they should be? HOme decor options of any interest? If so, how about a pair of pillows? A little short on yardage? Make the fronts one color and backs another coordinated color.

I hope you enjoy this curated collection of books and other ideas. I don’t get much in return for endorsing particular retail outlets over others and of course I always try to buy local but if your local resellers like mine are refusing to do curbside pickup, do what I do, let your fingers do the walking on over to Amazon.