I think I mentioned in passing (year-in-review post, maybe?) that Tom and I hosted a small-ish winter solstice gathering last month. (We used to host these big solstice extravaganza parties – both winter and summer – before the pandemic, and finally decided to dip our toes back into the “hosting” waters — but at a more manageable scale.)

Anyway. One of our guests last month brought us a bottle of wine topped with this Most Adorable Snowman . . .

             

The friend who brought the wine/snowman is a recently retired high school art teacher, and the two of us spent considerable time together that evening “breaking down” the snowman, with plans to (perhaps) make some of our own in the future.

As I was putting away some of my holiday décor over the weekend, I decided to make up a pattern for myself . . .

             

I measured and I traced and I photographed. He’d be easy to recreate — except maybe for the hat and carrot nose (which are three-dimensional). The felted wool on the original is nice and thick — good quality, although I’m sure this would make an adorable hostess gift with basic craft store felt, too. The seams are hand stitched with a buttonhole embroidery stitch, but they could easily be stitched by machine as a quick alternative. (I’d stick with an external seam for sure, though.) The buttons are also pieces of wool felt, and just hand-stitched on with those big cross stitches you can see. (Actual buttons would also be cute.) The eyes and nose appear to be glued on, but my friend and I thought a little needle felting would work well, too. We’re pretty sure both the hat and the carrot nose were crafted with needle felting, although I think there could be lots of ways to get a decent carrot nose — and don’t you think a little knitted beanie would be cute if needle felting is not your bag?

Just thought I’d share this bit of holiday inspiration.
Y’know . . . in case you’re interested.
For someday.