Yes, yes I am still making the trivet.  Yes, I am having more fun than anyone should be able to have with some felt and some string.  No, I don’t expect anyone else to understand the appeal.  But I’m fairly sure you’re all an obliging lot and won’t begrudge me my odd obsessions.

I started by cutting out three equally-sized rectangles (size determined by setting the teapot on various books until one looked right, and then tracing around that book).  Then I held them together with a few pins and started stitching.  There was no particular plan for the stitching, I just wanted swoops.  Closed swoops.

I’m going to keep going, until most of the fabric is filled with swoops.  Then there may or may not be some snipping away of the top layer of felt inside the swoops to make little holes and let the yellow middle layer show through.  I’m not sure yet.  And really, its goal in life is to keep my teapot from marring my table, so it’s allowed to be somewhat…freeform.

I have, however, discovered that I can work on this for just about precisely 15 minutes before my hand starts to cramp up (erm, and what you see there is two of those 15 minutes stretches of stitching), so it will be a few more days before I have to make any decisions.