Year Enders

I imagine I'll have some snowish pictures come daylight (and even more as the day goes on, since we're slated for another 10+" today, and we're smack in the center of another Blizzard Warning). But in the meantime, here are a few last pics of 2010.

 I can finally post pics of my sister Terri's Christmas presents. I designed some personalized knitting fabric in her favorite color through Spoonflower. I made her a pair of slippers, a zipper box, and a roll-up knitting needle case. Terri reads the blog (she signs herself as #4 in the comments), so I had to wait to show them off.

 Super Hero Boy (who might be Skateboard Boy, or Pokemon Boy by now- he's in transition), finished coloring the large robot of his cut-color-sew set (designed through Spoonflower). I got it sewn and stuffed and it's ready to send back to him.

 Frog Girl got the vest and bag colored from her Spoonflower doll set, so I sewed them together for her.

 She still has to finish the skirt. Bee Girl and Ladybug Girl are almost done with their vests. I love the Op Art look of their coloring (I opted for solid colors on my set- how boring).

 Speaking of Grandgirls- they decorated a Gingerbread house yesterday. Pretty good, if I say so myself.

 And I finished another pair of leftover socks for the Big Tub 'O Knitted Things.

I think these are my favorites so far.

Super Secret Stuff

I can't show you what I'm making, but I can show you what I'm making, if you catch my drift.

One of the current can't-show-you-the-actual-item projects is this zippered fabric tote, from this tutorial by Dragon[knit]fly. I've made a couple now, and though I had a hard time visualizing what I was supposed to do, I just followed the instructions, and voila! I had a lovely little zippered box. You can make one with 2 fat quarters, some interfacing and a 12" zipper, easy peasy. It's a fun blog, and maybe there's a new baby in the Dragon[knit]fly family by now.

I'm also sewing these slippers

from Favorite Things, though maybe they're no longer producing the Pitter Patters pattern  I bought my copy from Keepsake Quilting, and it seems to be available from them still. This is a really versitile slipper pattern, sized to fit infants through adult men. It's not a difficult pattern to sew, though by the time you get done, you're stitching through quite a few layers, and I opted to hand-tack the outer bias tape on top, rather than try to machine sew it around the outside of the slipper, or hand sew it to the non-slip bottom (and by this, I don't mean that I hand-sewed the bias tape to the slipper. I used the machine for that. I just hand-tacked the fold-over down). I do think the footpad is a mite narrow (on the other hand, I come from The Land of Wide Feet), but that's a fairly easy adjustment. Once my next shipment of Jiffy Grip arrives, I intend to make a pair for myself, which I can actually show you.

I can show you the progress on the Lapland mitered square hat, though, since I don't know if that will be a gift or not (I'm thinking of putting together a mitered square workshop, and may just toss it in with other samples for that class). It's coming along, and I was right to try mitered squares with this yarn- they're a perfect match.