Still busy

I have woven some new towels but I’m still working on hemming them so no pix yet. I have, however, completed some other projects.

First, I finished my knitting of mittens to donate for this season. Here are the last 6, all kids sizes. This brought my count up to 15 pairs of mittens and one hat. I’m happy with that, even though I used all worsted weight yarn so each item went pretty fast.

I liked the colorful nature of using a different color of yarn for the cuff. And although camouflage is never my aesthetic, I thought it would likely appeal to some of the kids so went with it.

Then I finally went to the local craft thrift store and bought some fabric to make myself an apron. I like the fact that the ‘front’ fabric is a little fancy with that bit of gold running through it. (That doesn’t show up great in the photo, but it does in real life.)

It was a bit of serendipity that the store had the perfect coordinating fabric for the back. It’s sort of like an old-fashioned mattress ticking. After having made 6 for Christmas gifts, my apron came together quickly.

Since I was in the sewing mode, I jumped on a project that my Guild learned about. A local pediatric hospital, specializing in children with cancer and other serious illnesses, participates in a program called Beads of Courage. Basically, the children collect beads throughout their treatment, one for every medical event. The beads are collected in a cloth bag until they have enough to make a necklace. The hospital always needs people to sew bags, and I was happy to go through my fabric stash (most from all those masks I made) and come up with enough appropriate fabrics to make 10 lined bags.

Interestingly, it took me about the same amount of time to open the seam and thread the ribbons as it did to do all the sewing.

I just learned that the local hospital gives these bags to about 30 kids a month. While it’s really sad that so many kids needs them, it inspires me to make more. I plan to make 10-12 a month. So the next time I go to the craft thrift store I’ll pick up fabric and ribbons specifically for this.

That and the regular activities of life have kept me busy enough. Plus I’m updating my Etsy shop, piece by piece, if you’re interested in checking it out. Some changes will not be obvious to you; they’re things mostly designed to drive more traffic to my shop. But I like the new banner at the top of my page.