Things don't always come out as planned

When one of my favorite customers approached me about making a felted hand to keep her rings organized, I was excited and at the same time wondering how I would construct something sturdy enough to maintain stability to hold jewerly, how to connect it to a base for it to stand upright, and how to make sure the shape of the hand would be small enough for the rings.

Where to start? First work up the hand....

I had only made mittens before, never gloves and I was thinking that gloves cover the outside of a hand, not the inside of a ring. So, whatever I chose to do would need to be smaller than any standard pattern, yet at the same time, worked up larger due to shrinkage when felting. I also came up with the great idea of stuffing the "glove" with polyfill before the felting process. So, I proceeded to crochet up a glove, all the time trying to predict what shrinkage would occur.

Well... that definately did not work! Imagine my disappointment when this came out of the washer!

Ok, definately not what was planned. So I took out my double pointed knitting needles and started knitting a simple glove. Well, I have never been one to follow directions very well (just ask my mom, husband and children.. not to mention my boss!) so, I just did what I thought would work. And I it came out ok. Now, the fingers from the first go-round were not quite sturdy enough with polyfill, so I made little log shaped bunches of yarn and inserted them into the fingers and stuffed the rest of the hand with poly.

I was pleased this time when the hand came out of the washer. It just needed a bit of shaping with some pulling and stretching. I then made a cuff to go around the wrist to give it a bit of pizzaz. That was the fun part!

So now, how do I get this hand to stand up on it's own? It would need a base wide enough to prevent tipping when the jewerly was on it. This is where my husband comes in (he is a machinist and can figure out anything). So he made a base out of wood, put a nice rounded edge on it and I painted it an antique white.

I crocheted and felted a patch the same dimentions of the base of the glove. This patch was stapled onto the base and then I sewed the hand to the base with double strand of quilting thread for strength. Once that was done, I glued some soft fleece to the bottom of the base to prevent scratching.

Here is the finished product.... it came out rather well, I think. Sometimes you need to have some failures. I learned so much from the disaster on the first go-round. I truly believe that something good comes out of everything, no matter how disappointing it is!