Those Evil Mittens.

I just saw an advertisement on my blog that said, "give the gift of texas." WHAT?!..... I had no idea you could gift an entire state. How do you wrap such a thing? And where does one put it after they receive it? Please don't any one give me Texas as a gift my house is way too small for such a thing.

Even though the hat and mitten project was way harder then I anticipated (almost every project is. It's sort of a delusional disease I inherited from my father. "It should only take three hours to fix these breaks love why on earth would we pay someone to do it?" four days and many swear words later the breaks are indeed fixed.) I think they would be a better gift then Texas... Or even Rhode Island really.

This is the look I was going for with the hats.

He wouldn't let me put the other mitten on him.
You take what you can get with Conster.

I was going for a "adventure/WWI" bomber pilot look and I think it got half way there. If it's tied it just looks way too cute; so cute it makes me want to eat my two year old. But when left untied I think it almost looks like the little girls hat in "Up". I lined the hat with two layers of flannel (I love the flannel) and found this fake leather that actually looks pretty good (was hard to sew though b/c it was very slippery).  I am proud of the hat because I had to sort of draft a new pattern because the one I had only goes up to 12months and I was making three, one for my two year old, one for my five year old and one for my nephew that is 18 months. That actually worked out rather well it did take longer then I anticipated (of course) but wasn't too bad.

The camera hurts! Oh it burns!

More adventurish not tied. What do you all think?

After the hats I had tons of left over fabric (I have no idea how some of these patterns come up with the allotted amount) so I decided matching mittens would be cute. I also decided that matching mittens would be a snap. Trace the kids hands add a seam allowance boom done! Oh. My. I hate these mittens. I hate them so much. I made so many wonky pairs of mittens that I could have kept an entire deformed family of elves hands warm. The thumbs were too small, the opening were too small, this and that and this and that. Every time I fixed a problem a new one reared it's ugly plaid head.  But, I was determined because now I had it in my head that they need matching mittens.  Eventually after a little help from the google search engine, an extra trip to JoAnn's, and tons of time I ended up with two pair of passable mittens.  My nephew is not getting a pair (sorry kid but I ran out of lining again).

Conster's mittens turned out perfect... After about
three botched attempts.

Conster's pair turned out wonderful. They're so vintage looking and just perfect. Again they each have two layers of flannel. SuperH's had to have the thumbs cut off and new ones put in (I didn't have enough fabric or brains to do a new pair) and I'm sure there was a better way to insert the new thumbs but I did the best I could at problem solving after days and days. SuperH's sort of look like the thumbs were hit with a hammer and swelled up, but I have him convinced that they look like old fashioned boxing gloves so we're all good.

you can kind of see the thumb in this one.

In case you were wondering I'm not even near done with the insane sewing projects I think I can get done before Christmas. But, I'm still having fun and even when I'm not I read in Martha Stewart that this kind of problem solving helps stave off Alzheimer's so that's something.