Felted mittens, and lovely mail on a bad day

The last few days I have been fighting against a flu. Yesterday I spent most of the day wrapped in a quilt and shivering, today is a little better. My personal mailman, Mr. K., had the nicest mail to make my day on Thursday:

Melanie sent me black and white wool for felting/sharing with Mr. K. for flytying, and a wide selection of Green&Black's delicious chocolate. Amazon sent me the next Arthur Ransome book, Coot Club, just when I had finished the last one I had for Christmas. And finally, for the hours of lower energy level, there was my new issue of Kodin Kuvalehti. Their chief editor commented on the big German women's magazine Brigitte's decision to start using real size , non-professional models: Kodin Kuvalehti has been using their readers as models for 16 years already! - The chocolate was a good medicine, I slept well last night and only started sneezing again after I stood up in the morning.

As I have mainly concentrated on tea, chocolate and reading in my spare time, I have not much to show. The washing machine must run every day, no matter what, and so my mittens are now ready for use. This is the before picture, the safety pin at the top is holding a plastic bag in place inside the mitten during the felting process.

 

and here are the mittens after their spin in the washing machine:

 

A closer view:

 

They remained fairly soft, but they are still a bit too large for me, just DH's size.  Mr. K. only needs warm mittens for the snow pushing, but the wool is not very durable in such use. (This is not something I would even dream of darning!) I think I will wash them once more and see if they can get a little smaller still. The thumbs are too wide and long. I don't think I will make another pair very soon; it was fun to give it a try but I prefer knowing beforehand what size I'm going to get.