Mary, Skeletons and Bacon, oh my!

I can show off some embroidery I did now since my friend has received her gifts.  A few years back I was sitting at my weekly Stitch n Bitch and I was working on some embroidery instead of my usual knitting. And it struck me as funny because all these knitters kept saying "oh my that looks so complicated, too hard for me" and they were totally serious.  Included amongst them was my friend Ariel who was probably in the middle of knitting socks on size 2 double pointed needles.
Any one who has visited Ariel's place soon notices her collection of religious and Day of the Dead well, stuff so I knew the Dia de Los Muertos patterns from Sublime Stitching would be just up her alley. I stole this first photo from her blog she took because for the life of me I could not get a decent shot of the skeletons. I embroidered these and then made them into teeny pillows and while I am proud of my embroidery, my sewing skills are still a bit well, sucky. It's not my fault, the sewing machine is possessed!

And for some added silliness, I crocheted up some bacon 'cause also if you know Ariel you know how she feels about bacon. 

Totoro and his Mittens

Last month Craftzine had this post showing Totoro mittens, and I immediately thought of my cousin who is a big fan of Totoro.  The next day I get an email from said cousin hinting strongly that she loves those mittens and she did have a birthday in January.....

(By the way, Totoro is from Hayao Miyazaki’s Japanese animated film "My Neighbor Totoro".  I have it on my Netflix queue but there is a Loooooong Wait for it. )

Since it does not take a whole lot of arm twisting to get me to A) Make something cutesie and B) Knit stranded mittens - I knew what what my next project would be. I had some Berroco Ultra Alpaca in Winter White leftover from the scarf I had made my cousin for Hannukah so her new mittens will match perfectly. I headed downtown to my LYS to pick up a blue or grey and found this great new colorway of Ultra Alpaca called Blue Steel.  A great color (I like greys) and the added bonus of sounding like a cheesy 80s action movie. Then woman ringing up my sale asked my what I was making, it turns out she is a huge Miyazaki fan and was thrilled to talk knitting and japanese film. 

I seemed to bang out the mittens pretty quickly, there are some long floats that you have to deal with but otherwise a straightforward knit.  I think they are pretty sweet.

After the mittens were done I still had a ton of Blue Steel left over so I scanned through rav and found the cutest stuffed Totoro.  Turns out a ingenious ravelry user had adapted the stuffed cat, Kate from Knitty into Totoro and was kind enough to put all the changes in her project notes (I love rav).  I got this guy done in one night of insomnia with just some detail work to be done the next day.  He is pretty frakkin' adorable if I do say so myself.