December ... poof gone

This is one of those posts that sounds like the beginning of confession LOL Rather like .. Forgive me Blogger for I have sinned - it's been almost a month since my last post LOL.

It's been a rather stressful month for me as my stepfather had a series of small heart attacks that landed him in hospital for various procedures since December 8th - he was in hospital until Dec 21.  He went to a rehab facility for post hospital therapy and monitoring.  On Christmas Day when I was driving him back he suffered another small heart attack.  He's back at the rehab facility and we hare hoping to have answers soon to the second heart issue and looking forward to his continued improvement.




With all that was going on, I only managed to knit a pair of fingerless mitts that were a gift for my friend. I'm hoping that I can get back into my knitting stride now as I took advantage of Christmas money and great sales!

My friend LOVES owls - and I saw these adorable owl mitts by Amanda Jones.  I totally fell in love with them!  And this sort of project fits my poor awkward stash.  I actually ended up using one of my mum's skeins.  It felt really good to be able to use her yarn!  I've no idea what brand it is or where she got it, but mum only used wool.

My only issue with this pattern is that it is worked flat and I didn't want to mess with a bunch of seams.  Luckily for me (and my research / nosing around skills)  I found another knitter had converted it to in the round!!  YEA!!!  Many thanks to Snuva for doing this :)  I could've done it, but didn't have to now.   I picked up some new bamboo Hiyahiya needles to work this and it did worked up super quick - when I was able to concentrate on it.  I did add a thumb to this pattern as it didn't come with one.

We were finally able to get together last night to visit and I was happy to walk in with pressies for her.  She suffered a loss just before Christmas and I hoped it would lift her spirits a bit.  That box contains various types of chocolate bark that I made for Christmas. There was white chocolate with cranberries, pistachios, walnuts, peppermint, and pretzels.  Dark chocolate with salted caramel.  I have a lot of fun making these for everyone.  I personally think I'm going to hell for the salted caramel.  Cripes but it is RICH!!

I decided to add eyes to these mitts and found the most perfect pair at joannes - they are just buttons that truly look like eyes .. if they were just a smidge or orangy yellow in the colouring then they would look like owl eyes spot on!  She was so happy with them.  During the visit, she kept putting them on and taking them off, looking at them, picking them up - yep I'm glad I made them for her to see the smile on her face!

Now to get back to my Enya socks .. I've been stalled at one sock done since before everything happened in December.  I'm glad I was able to get the KAL done that I signed up for - that was fun and I look forward to joining in many more KALs.