As some of my long-time readers might recall, in early November of 2011, after a more than year-long lobbying effort by my at-the-time 14-year-old son, we got a dog.

After attending a Halloween-themed adoption clinic sponsored by All Breed Animal Rescue of the Carolinas where we met and fell in love with a puppy named Clooney, we once again had a dog in the family.

To make Clooney feel welcome, I dove into my rather prodigious pile of unfinished projects, came up with some squares crocheted from felted merino roving, joined them into what I thought/hoped would be the perfect size blanket, and then felted it further for good measure.

Here is how it looked when I first finished it:

and here is how it looked after a couple of weeks with Clooney:

As a result of a plumbing incident last spring, it was decided that after the repairs were completed I could make the dining room over into my crochet empire headquarters. The transition is has moved forward one small step at a time, and this week I finally managed to clear off the top of the dining table.

Unfortunately, things under the table didn’t look quite as good:

I decided that some felted coasters were in order to protect the new floor and Clooney’s former pet mat seemed a good place to start.

I cut out one of the squares and drew a circle using an indelible marker:

and then cut out the circle, careful to remove any remnants of the line I had drawn with indelible ink.

Then I did it all over again with another color.

Next, I got out the assortment of yarns that I used to make the original project and tarted up the surface of both circles with a simple running stitch in a different color:

Then, with wrong sides together, I ran a running stitch around the edge with a yellow yarn that I thought coordinated nicely with both sides of the coaster-to-be:

Tomorrow, after I have gotten my son off to school and walked the dog, I will try my hand at re-felting this table leg-coaster-to-be, and if all goes well, I will be able to salvage the former pet mat and have my crochet empire headquarters one step closer to ready.