endless winter

I have done stuff, so I should say stuff.  

First (not really first, but the gods of blogger picture upload have decreed it shall be so), panda mittens!  They are cute.  They were not too hard.  I was on a wild corrugated ribbing tear.   

The big panda side is for the back of the hand and the little panda side is for the palm.  I used black Palette and Bare Hare Fingering weight from Knit Picks. 

These were for a panda fan in my life.   

These lovely little mittens are made from Hazelknits superwash sock yarn in signature black and strawberry lemonade, a color I've hoarded for years and just love.  Looking at it actually makes me happy, especially during the grayest winter I can remember. 

Again with the corrugated ribbing.   The pattern used was Plucky Mittens by Virginia Sattler-Reimer, which I bought on Ravelry.  It called for a heavier weight than fingering, but the stitch counts checked out for what I normally use for fingering weight, so I went with it.  This yarn is noticeably soft, so while I'm not at all looking forward to needing mittens again, it will be nice to need these. 

I made a pair of clef mittens for a raffle fundraiser for a youth orchestra: 

Here is my first finished foray into decoupaging.  Decoupage is one of those things that I'm nearly always wishing I were doing.  It's so different from fiber crafting, with the sanding and the painting and the waiting while paint and glue are drying, so it's often hard to switch back and forth.  I should, though, considering what my elbow has to say about three hours of cross stitch a night.   
 

I've gotten two sets of drawers from Ikea (here), little decorative ones that I'm trying to make plans for.  Will I use collaged pictures of yarn?  Will I use this very cool wrapping paper from a gift one of my kids got from a friend?  Will I use cut up crayon drawings that the kids have yet to produce?  

I've also got another drawer set like the one I just finished, as well as a slightly wider and shorter one with four drawers.  

After a spate of friend babies, the baby-having died down for awhile, but now I have friends due soon - one with a boy and one who is not finding out sex before the baby's born.  I have three quilts saved up, but quilting would be a good alternative to cross-stitch right now, so I started another gender-neutral quilt last night.  It's hard to be gender-neutral without being babyish (pastels, yellow ducks, etc.) and I'm nearly out of the many oranges that I got for Love Grows a Grove, so I may need to take a trip to a fabric store soon.  There will likely be one blue-green-orange quilt and another koala quilt, both of which I need a little more variety for.  

Happy crafting!