Warm hands

Take some wool fingerless mitts:



Add a couple of pocket warmers:



Send to a friend in Michigan to keep her hands warm.

(Optimistic mitts pattern; mine are made in Paton's Classic Merino Wool. The pocket warmers are poly-fleece stuffed with rice; pop in the microwave for about 30 seconds to keep hands warm.)

Happy Valentine's Day!

I've always liked Valentine's Day. Even as an angsty teen, I liked giving little trinkets to my friends, so it was always a fun day. Even better now that I have a husband and two little girls!

Gnarly's preschool class is doing a valentine exchange tomorrow. I kept pondering and pondering about what to make for half a dozen toddlers that wasn't candy, didn't take long, and was fun, sturdy, and easy to use. I finally came up with these:



What, you can't tell what they are? They're heart finger puppets! Very easy, made out of felt for minimal fuss. The embroidery is, shall we say, rustic, and I'm no expert at machine-sewing, but I like them. Gnarly does, too, and so did her friend A. I hope the rest of the kids do, too.



(I told her to show me her finger. She did. I'll be more specific that I want the finger PUPPET next time.)

And since I had the sewing machine out, I also made a taggie heart for Walby:



And Gnarly has been obsessed with having a taggie blankie of her own for a while. Well...truth be told, she has one, but since she never cared for it, I passed it on to her sister. Of course, then she wanted one, too :) I was happy to oblige:

Spoil-a-mama-rama

Back when I was newly pregnant with my first daughter, I joined one of the big pregnancy groups on Ravelry. There was a thread for women due in June, and I joined it; I also joined the due in July thread, figuring that since this was my first baby, I'd go late (wrong!).

We ended up liking each other so much that we started our own group, and we've been friends ever since. Some of us have even met in person (I live down the street from a couple, and our kids play together all the time).

Anyway, in the last month or so, we started a spoil-the-mama swap. To get more people to be able to participate, we had a $5 upper spending limit, so the goal was to use what you already had on hand. You could send anything, really: regift something, make projects from supplies you had on hand, bake, send stashed yarn and fabric...It's been great fun coming up with things to make that my partner will like!

I finished my package last night, and thought it was a good ice breaker to my blog. I'll talk about some of the projects in more detail later.

My most favorite project for this was the needle book, inspired (erm, very strongly) by the ones here: