Year-end catch-up

Due to other priorities, I haven’t had much time for crafts in the last couple of months. The biggest thing I worked on was Child Two’s hippy-girl Halloween costume. Fortunately it was an open-ended project; what got done got done, and it was fine. Even better, the only thing we had to buy for it was a pair of jeans and a ball of Handicrafter cotton yarn. Everything else we already had.

I used this pattern for her hat. It was quick and easy. Here's Child Two enjoying hot chocolate and fireworks after a busy evening of trick-or-treating.


Child Two drew on the jeans with a chalk pencil and then I spent many hours surrounded by stitch dictionaries and my boxes of floss as I embroidered them.

This is the first kind of needlework I ever learned, back when I was her age, and it was fun to just go for it without a pattern or much of a plan. She was so happy with how they turned out that she now wears them all the time. We’re going to add more embroidery to them, and I just might start a pair for myself.

Other than that, I’ve gone to a few classes I had signed up for before work took over my life: a mother-and-daughter workshop on English paper piecing, a workshop on bookmaking (the paper kind, not the betting kind), and a class on making bath products. I haven’t had time to use what I learned yet or to do much else except start a pair of fingerless gloves for myself, but now that my workload is more manageable, I have lots of plans for the new year.