It's .... Warm...

Remember the movie Better Off Dead? If you were alive in the 80s and loved John Cusack as much as I did, of COURSE you do! There's that scene where the mother got her husband and herself special hooded coats for Christmas. His is an ardvark. He puts it on and says "It's... warm..."

Cracks me up! Anyway this sets the scene for this post, believe it or don't.

I made mittens last night. I started off with arm warmer samples over the weekend. Forgot to tell you about those, I guess subconsciously for fear I'd tire you out even more and you'd never come back... I worry like that. :\

I didn't take pics of the arm warmers and Meri wore them to school today. But they're basically fleecy fingerless, thumbless gloves that go up almost to your elbows. According to Maddy, they're perfect for playing piano out in the snow. How we're going to get the piano out there when it snows is a different post altogether and I doubt it will happen.
The above picture is the second time I emptied the lint trap out of the dryer when I washed the heavy brown blanket in hot hot water to felt it a bit more. Wow. The nublets that fell off the blanket when I pulled it out of the dryer are in the garbage and look like someone did some clipping on my son's roommates dreadlocks or something you have to clean up in the yard... It looks gross so I won't show you that.

Did some hunting online and found a pattern to make mittens. I'd been looking for something to make those blankets that I showed you yesterday into. After making a sample pair out of some scrap fleece, I figured I was ready to dig into the heavy stuff. However I'd need to make the pattern a little bigger as the blanket fabric is kind of thick. Here is my fleece sample pair.

Meri took them to school too.

Anyway... back to the blankets. My mind tends to wander. I cut into them and only then discovered that two layers of them were too thick to fit under the foot on my sewing machine. *great* *rolling my eyes with sarcasm* So I started stitching by hand. Took 20 minutes to sew around the whole thing and the thumb area. Turned it inside out and it looked pathetic! Every uneven and even stitch was visible. AND it looked like a pot holder. A poorly made one.

So I did something I'd never done before. I took the foot part off the sewing machine and just pulled the fabric through and stitched. The little post that the foot attaches to is the only thing that held it in place. Worked pretty slick actually! You can still see the stitches a little when you turn it right side out, but they're much more uniform and the glove WILL hold together much better.

Here's one of them.

I accidentally turned the brown underside finger area backwards when I did the first one, so left it as if it were intentional.

Using my family as guinea pigs, I broke up their card game and made Robb and Meri both try them on. Meri said they were itchy and I WILL line them with flannel... Just haven't yet. Hubby said they made his hands sweat. Um Honey... It's ... warm...

So I guess I'll be the only one out in the snow blowing out of the drive this winter as I'll be the only one who can wear these blanket mittens. *darn*

OH! Robb also said they're look better with eyes on them. Can you see it?

Yep! I just made wool puppets.