Molly’s mug cozy

For the past year (or thereabouts), Casey and I have been working together for an on-going project. Each month, there’s a drawing to determine the employee of the month. This lucky person gets a coveted parking spot in front of the Admin office (instead of parking in the staff parking lot, out past the barnyard), as well as a handmade, personalized mug cozy. Each person picks the color of their yarn, and Casey crochets the cozy, while I craft a label out of felt.

It may very well be my favorite part of my job. It’s a nice little challenge, trying to think of what to put on each person’s label. Of course, the real challenge is actually making something recognizable out of felt. The pictures can be pretty small. And this is felt, of course. It’s not the easiest medium to work with, in terms of fine details.

Of course, I’ve been doing these for at least ten months, and I’m only now realizing I haven’t been photographing each cozy label. No! I’m so bad at documenting my projects! I’ve managed to take pictures of a few of them, but I’ll have to see about getting the Employee of the Month pictures from Casey (each person poses with their mug).

This entire time, people have been asking “What happens when one of you are the employee of the month?” Our response has just

Dan’s tag

been that we’ll go ahead and make our own. This month, Casey’s name was pulled. She was all set to crochet her own cozy, but one of the other folks in the office, who happens to knit, volunteered to make it. She showed me the yarn she picked, so I could coordinate the color for the label. I’m quite envious of the yarn. And the fact that people can knit, but that’s another thing altogether. Casey’s yarn is really cool, and I’m hoping the tag will be up to the same level.

The sketch and template for Casey’s mug label.

I’ve already started work on the label. Usually, I don’t seek input from the employee themselves on what they want on their tag. I like it to be a surprise. However, there have been occasional suggestions and requests from people. Casey mentioned that she’d like a representation of Barnstable, our office cat, on her label. He resides at her desk, so the two of them are sort of a team. This is not the first time I’ve had to make an animal out of felt for one of the labels. So far, I’ve made a chicken, a bulldog, and a cow. Now, I’ve transformed our cat into felt. I think I’m going to go back and fix the nose before I stitch the cat face onto the tag but, for the most part, I’m pleased. Now I’ve just got to add some little thread whiskers!